I just finished reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, and I’m brimming.
I’m heightened.
Responsive, eager.
At the end of the book, Kimmerer and I are dancing together.

—–

And there, in the lake, the island is no longer an island. The brown edge around the lake shows how low the water has dropped, and now you can walk across.

—–

And pointed out to me again, Jerry Brown’s house, his property, his estate. He never comes out to wave as I drive by. Partly because he doesn’t know when I’m coming by. Partly because he doesn’t know me. Partly because I don’t know exactly which spread is his.
I bet he has a big house. Of course, it would be. Those ex-Jesuits, after years of suspension and self-abnegation, know the pleasures of life in the outside world, or so I presume.
And I like the whole Brown family. They’re iconic California at its best.

—–

The nice thing about being a writer who reads is that there’s always more.
I wish I wish more people would read.
I tried so hard to get them to.
Students who learned how, then liked it.
But too few, not enough, one class at a time.
Whatsa matter, teachers? Why don’t we can’t we do the job that isn’t just a job?
It’s a calling.
If we call, they answer.
Are you listening?

—–

Why do trucks have to be so high off the ground?
So their drivers can look down on me as I pass by.

—–

There goes a truck dragging a house from one house-campsite to the next. They’re heading south, toward the Mexican border.
Good luck.

—–

And over there, the river.
I can tell, even when I can’t see it, by the vegetation paralleling my way, it’s the river, this time going my way the same way north to south. The Sacramento River, a real river.
I wish I had a boat.

—–

And there on the right, RV World.
The park for those little round-ended towable houses on wheels, space and amenities.

And now, just a little farther along, Camping World. It seems a healthy number of people want to get out and remember nature.
Cities can make us forget.

—–

To Camp or Not to Camp

“Wanna go camping, Dad? We could sleep on the ground.”

“Yes,” I say, already shivering.

And if I lay down a double tarp, folded against the cold, and an inflated air mattress to lift me above the hungry earth trying to suck the life out of my warmth, and a sleeping bag, extra thick, and layers and layers of warm long clothes to buffer me in sleep, and I’m still cold without that huddled cuddled body where we each warmed each other all night long, maybe I could spread an insulation along the ground beneath. And if I’m still cold, I could light a match. The memory of fire is the memory of warmth. The match too might remember its purpose, the ground might catch fire, and I would incendiarize conflagrationally like burned toast.

So maybe I won’t go camping. At least not in seasons beyond summer.

Maybe we’ll stay indoors where we can control the temperature.

That’s what civilization is for, to build us houses when the naked nature of the earth is too much for us.

That’s bleak. I don’t like to think bleak.

I remember when I was young and we went camping and I loved it.

Maybe there’s hope for the future as I get younger.
The flow of blood through the body does elevate one’s temperature.
Camping can wait.

——

Rest stop.
Miracle.
It’s open.

—–

Sign: Olives and Olive Oil.
They go together like a horse and carriage, or love and marriage.

—–

Sign: Chico Rice.
Really?
And you need a sign to tell me?

—–

When Work is not Work

Sometimes the work that people don’t like doing is work that doesn’t need to be done.
There is make-work, to justify time spent.
There is the drudgery system of work which supports an enterprise designed only to make some people rich at the expense of everyone else.
The long view of the bigger picture strips away the needless useless.
The value of work is thus redefined to allow the joy of satisfaction of accomplishment of necessity for everyone else who cannot pursue the total joy of choice.
Everyone in the whole world could be happy.
If/when we can find and pursue the ways of togetherness, family, community, love of self and others equally, transcending the meaner spirits of exploitation and self-aggrandizement and find the pure joy of just being…
That’s not so hard to do, once we recognize the way.

—–

On the radio:

Um…Um…
Trying to say something, trying to know what they want to say.

Been there, done that, still doing it.

—–

Radio voice says, “I was alive.”

—–

I cry, not from sadness, but relief that life still persists.

—–

The double-edged sword cuts us twice, coming and going.

—–

If there is a “government shutdown,” the government is not the government.
Isn’t that obvious?
And if not, why not?
And what do we do about it?
We need government.
Good government.
We’ve written it out carefully in documents.
If we can read, we know what to do.
I’ve been saying it for years and years.
Teach the children, and the world will right itself.

—–

If people understood what they say, believe, want, the world would indeed be what.
But people don’t wanna know because “it only hurts when you think.”
But the greater pain is losing the greater good.
So it’s “back to school.”

—–

I can’t afford to “loan” the government money that I barely have.
What to do what to do?
Keep on truckin’?
I know what we’re hauling…

—–

There’s something wrong.
Yes, so?

—–

The artist, a friend, because he married the daughter of a friend, went to Germany to host his exhibition. Didn’t learn a word of German.
Maybe one word, but I’m not sure I want to hear it.

—–

So many people have a burning desire to be an artist. Some think they already are, and loudly say so. Some quietly just are.
Some feverishly assemble the raw materials of art. They remain raw.
As with everything, some are, some are not, and a lot are in between.
I have friends who are.
They’re good to me. We get along.

—–

I’m glad we stop so often nearly every time at Rolling Hills Casino to gas up. Indian Gas. Nomlaki Gas.

It reminds me every time that we should try their buffet. Food. Laid out to keep you going energized to gamble more. It may be the luck of the draw, the roll of the dice, the house always wins, but my experience with Indian casinos is that the smorgasbord is worth going back and back and back to.

Food, and the memory of food, takes me back to the days when I actually ate more, if you can believe it. The past and my capacity is beyond recapture, but I can still put up a good front and down a platter slightly more commodious than merely human.

Yum.

—–

We’re in line, waiting.
We calculate the waiting time.
Time is money, not to be wasted.
We turn around, and head on down the road.

—–

Censored Transmissions.
Even if they control everything,
shut off the broadcasts,
empty the air,
the air is still here.
And for now,
I can still breathe.

—–

Time is running out.
I’m walking.