Marie Mutsuki Mockett

A Japanese relative once said to me: "Marie, you have so many places to call home. Aren't you lucky?"

At the time, I wasn't sure how to respond to this.







And now I realize, he is right.

I don't always feel so lucky. I envy people with family who are close by and who are always dependable (they are always dependable when they are close by, right?). I sometimes wonder what it would be like to be someone with one clear sense of place. Coming home would mean that everyone would speak the same language and that translation would not be the job of a select few. Is this a less lonely existence? In an emergency, someone would always be there to help me; I would never be on my own.

Then again, to have so much love for so many seemingly different places, and to have this love because I was taught it by my parents and my grandparents, seems like something to treasure. I'd rather have my father back than be forced to have the level of introspection I've been engaged in the past two months.



But on the whole, I'm glad to have been forced to think about the meaning of home and to have reclaimed a part of the country that I love dearly, and probably always will. (Now, if someone could please just lower the price of gas and/or airfare).

1. Whoever told me that one pair of jeans was sufficient during harvest time was either lying, or never tried to clean the inside of a bin hours before departing for the airport. I ended up spending the night at my Aunt's house, wandering around in my pajamas while the laundry spun, just so I would not reek on the plane back to California. Then again, I probably have overly sensitive olfactory senses.

2. Makeup is pointless on the prairie. Sunscreen is a necessity.

3. Hats with wide brims may make me look like a gardener, but they are functional.

4. Once upon a time we lived in a country where men read books and made things with their hands--think Thomas Jefferson. We have lost this element of our culture--or at least, there are very few who preserve it. People seem to fall into one camp or the other. I admire people who exercise both their brains and brawn.

More specifically; it is odd to go from a morning on the farm with men who make business with a handshake, and who must trust each other to conduct business, to an afternoon in the city where business is conducted with the "aid" of attorneys. No wonder my father could never entirely leave the prairie behind.

It is also strange to spend a morning on the farm with men who know how to fix things with wire and pliers, to an afternoon in the airport of a major city where men lug around Tumi luggage, while wearing some kind of overpriced sports-and-mesh high performance sandal and rely on a plethora of electronics. Can they fix anything?

Does it still matter if you know how "things" interlock? Does it matter if you know that old and rusted wire intended to keep a bin lid on a bin will fly off in the wind and knock over an augur and that the rain will wet the precious wheat inside the bin and that a crane must now pull the augur back up into place and that all this could have been avoided if the proper wire had been checked in the first place?

I'm old fashioned enough to think that it matters a great deal. I understand that we live in a world where abstract thinking is prized and highly paid and that it is acceptable to hire other people to do everything else. But we are still physical creatures who need to take care of the things that surround us--our homes, our food, our air--and it matters that boys and girls grow up learning how things work and that we are all interconnected. I actually think it effects the way the brain is wired--just a hunch, of course. But how can it not matter that some people know how to think systemically and others do not?

5. Farming is an act of faith. You cannot schedule when your crops will ripen. You are dependent on the weather. Personally, I think this is wonderful. It's very much an illusion in modern life that all can be controlled and slotted into a time frame. There is a reason why, as I keep quipping, the yellow pages in the Great Plains list more prosthetic limbs specialists than psychoanalysts. No wonder, then, that the Axial Age arose around the time that man figured out how to harvest crops. Farming is a delicious balance; it gives us enough food to allow us to pursue something other than worrying about food, but requires us to be trusting of nature.

6. Someone asked me if New Yorkers still had uneducated stereotypes of Nebraskans. I had to think about this. The truth is--and this was the answer I gave--I don't allow anyone to trash-talk Nebraska to me. It's too important to me. And then I got to thinking about the stereotypes we all hold about each other.

As simple as it sounds, I do really think that you will not know a people or a place until you go and see it and them for yourself. And I remembered again how important it is to me for people to really try and understand something and to think for themselves--and how much I want to live up to this standard I've set for others.

7. All farmers are handsome.

I drove from Kimball, Nebraska down to Denver with my wonderful Aunt Jane and cousin Brian. They both knew exactly what I needed after 10 days of beef 'n potatoes.



Brian had apparently long been wanting to take me to a restaurant called Domo, which has an unprepossessing exterior. But on the inside, it's a dojo-meets-restaurant-meets-museum. It was a taste of home.





Nonetheless, I confess to being sad to leave the plains behind. I have so many good feelings and memories about that part of our country.

The plane bounced nearly all the way. With clouds like this, it's not hard to imagine why. I just wish some of them would dump some rain on Western Nebraska.



From the plane, I could see that the Big Sur wildfire was still active. Look at how the smoke is just pouring, cauldron-like, over the hillside. The air was a sick reddish-yellow. It looked like a wound.



Ahoy there, McMansionites. How does it feel to have your palace directly in a flight path?



The Monterey Airport has an observation deck, and I always try to go up there to watch the planes take off or land. I would so like to learn to fly a plane.

In the past, my parents were always on this deck waiting and waving to me. I don't know why it took me so many years to try to snap a photo of the deck while landing. I can make out my mother because I know where she was standing. She's the blurry black dot in the middle, relieved to see me home.



We went straight to the beach for the sunset. The sands were filled with parties and people playing games and eating and enjoying each other. I was in a daze.



My mother told me how, the day before, she'd come across a man fishing off the beach just for fun. He'd catch a fish, then throw it back in the surf. She couldn't stand it any more, and managed to talk him into giving her some fish for free. He was happy to share.



Over the phone, my mother had asked me what I wanted for dinner.

"Please make it fish," I had said.

I was originally going to include a somewhat humorous and somewhat serious series of pictures demonstrating the hazards of farming. The genesis of the idea goes back some ten years when I was in Nebraska and noticed that the yellow pages listed more entries for prosthetic limbs than psychoanalysts; the reverse, of course, would be true in New York. But as I was actually trying to get work done during harvest, I didn't take the number of pictures I would have had I been a mere spectator.

At any rate, I did manage to get a picture of this stubble fire.



I overheard Eric advising someone to not drive on the stubble for fear of starting a fire. He didn't say this to me directly, but to my cousin, Paul, and I had to ask later if I had heard correctly that a vehicle can start a fire, which it turns out, it can. In matters like this, I'm generally happy to err on the side of caution--which does not explain why we all ended up driving on the stubble anyway (?!?). We were lucky not to start any fires, but I did see this one out of the car window, and took a picture to post. It is so dry and hot in Nebraska, I don't see the point of ever tempting fate.

Gordon asked me to post this picture of "Suds and Mugs," which, as far as I was able to tell from my investigation, is a laundry/bar/video game establishment. I forgot to take photos of the signs which make clear which tubs are to be used for "greasers" and which may be used by regular folk like me. Presumably a greaser is not someone still trapped in the 50s with a comb stuck in a pocket.



I'd forgotten about this photo of a windmill, which should demonstrate even more clearly the scale of these things. I had a lot of fun driving the truck in the photo. It was enormous, but then again, anything large just gets swallowed up in the prairie.



Paul Jr. took us to an abandoned gas station located on the Nebraska and Wyoming border. There were apparently once two sets of gas pumps--one set for each state, and the price varied accordingly. People actually went from side to side in search of the cheapest price. Now the whole thing is abandoned, as though some sort of bomb hit it. As one of the combine drivers pointed out to me, things just sit outside, abandoned and preserved because of the dry air.



The abandoned office.



The boys found a bike and turned it upright. Tyler demonstrated his best grimacing biker face.



Mark was a more contemplative looking biker.



We end harvest with a steak dinner, which we initially intended to eat at the nearby reservoir. It rained that evening, however, and so we cooked the steaks just outside the quonset. I've learned that the vacuum cleaner has many uses. It can vacuum spilled wheat off of the ground, and assist in cleaning up the inside of a bin. When used in reverse, it is also good for getting coals to fire up in a hurry.



Uncle Mark made a chandelier by hanging a light bulb off of a large metal hook in the middle of the quonset. We'd saved this picnic table from my grandmother's house, and managed to fit the eight of us side by side.



Before I left Nebraska, I visited the grain elevator one more time to discover that it was completely full. Excess wheat was being dumped onto the ground (!) outside. Over the course of a few days, the pile grew and grew.



The pile of wheat bothered me. Looking at this, you would not think we were engaged in any kind of world wide food shortage.

I asked the manager of the elevator why the wheat was outside, and he told me: "A train'll be along August 1st." Of course, the wheat is subject to rain when piled up like this, but I was assured that the shape of the pile would mean that most rain would simply roll off of the top and into the ground. Nonetheless, it strikes me as very wasteful. Eric pointed out that the wheat would also mix a bit with rocks--this, when the elevator is so very stern about the number of rocks that enter into the elevator in the first place.



Though the pile of grain was an awesome sight, I hope this does not happen again next year. It is said that an accident of planning meant that the elevators were all full of grain, but the whiteboard inside the elevator seems to indicate that at least two of the tall bins (or are they called elevators? I have no idea) were full of "blended wheat." The wheat outside in the pile was perfectly good wheat. Why, then, was the elevator's storage used for blended wheat, while the nice wheat had to sit outside? This seems like an error in planning. If I were a farmer who did not get my grain to the elevator early in the harvest, I would be upset.

Once again, I found myself thinking that in another life, I would have turned all of this into some kind of logic game to be used on a standardized test.

In Steinbeck's Cannery Row, the character Doc muses on the potential of a beer milkshake. In Kimball, Nebraska, young Paul Mockett settled on a dilly bar and a beer. Sweet and bitter do go well together.

I asked Tyler what his favorite thing was about the farm this year. He replied that he liked visiting the wind farm, which we did this past Sunday as our "day of rest" activity.





The turbines are enormous and it's difficult to appreciate their full scale just from these photos; the land itself is so flat and vast that anything tends to get swallowed up by distance. This video of a man jumping off of a blade should give you some sense of the size and height of these behemoths in the plains.



Land out here is not just used for grain and wind, but for oil as well. I like this photo of an oil well, with the wind farms off in the distance.



Our day in the country included a visit to this vista where Tyler snuck up on me and took another of his secret portraits. I think he learned to do this from his father who has the disconcerting ability to capture private and contemplative moments.

We were all hoping to find arrowheads here, but the best we could do were some fossils. The white line you see in this photo is a road stretching all the way to the horizon. When I see a road like this, I just want to drive it.



It became apparent that it might rain back at the bins, and so the men climbed up the ladders to put the lids on the steel storage units.



I did not go all the way to the very top.



Fortunately Tyler took a photo of the view for me.



I've been trying to explain to people what my life is like out here. The environment is so different, that I think some of my city friends can't begin to imagine what I am referring to when I mention the "bunkhouse" or the "quonset." Here, then, is a photo of two of our steel bins (off to the left) and our quonset (off to the right). The latter is a semi-circular storage building which used to house grain and equipment. Now it mostly holds equipment and a small bunkhouse built against a wall.



The inside of the bunkhouse has 3 rooms connected by a hallway. In New York, we would consider this a railroad apartment. We have an office, a bathroom and kitchen/sleeping area. I, however, have been sleeping outside in a trailer.



As rustic as all this seems, we do have a wireless connection, thanks to my cousin Paul. With wireless, we do not miss television at all, and certainly the kids (and the truck-drivers dumping wheat just outside) are able to keep themselves completely occupied with computers. I wonder sometimes what we ever did before the internet. Now it is possible to constantly watch for storms, monitor the price of wheat, look up a plumber and driving directions without picking up the phone or suffering through television commercials.



Kids all learn to drive early out here.



Very early.



Our quonset, as I've mentioned, comes equipped with a kitchen. Every night so far we have eaten some combination of meat and potatoes. Here is a photo of my dinner: a patty melt, specially assembled by my cousin Paul, Tyler's hash browns, and a salad. I probably made the salad. Vegetables seem to be my contribution. Next year I plan to arrive with some corn-starch and soy sauce.



Sunsets anywhere in the world are beautiful. I've always been partial to the sun setting on the water, of course.



I think the sun setting over the prairie with a wind farm in the background is quite pretty too, and fairly exotic, depending on your point of view.

Sunday is a day of rest for our combiners, and so no wheat will be cut today. We are respectful of the need for a traditional Sunday, though it always causes us some stress; what if Monday is a day of rain and hail and we lose a crop that could have been cut? It has not been a problem thus far, but one never knows with unpredictable weather.



Yesterday was a hot day, but we took a tour of remaining fields to try to determine their condition. We ran into a patch that had been hit by hail and my uncle and cousin--scientist and computer programmer--did the counting and the mathematics required to determine what percentage of the field had been affected. My uncle already knew the average number of wheat berries in the average head of wheat. Then they took an average of affected heads in a row, keeping in mind how many stalks make up a "clump." It occurred to me that in another life, I would have taken this information to write up a tasty SAT question.

The tour of the wheat fields did yield some good news; look at the photo below in which we literally had to wade our way into the wheat. It has been many years since wheat grew this tall and this thick. In general, tall wheat is to be avoided because we want the "energy" of the plant to go into creating nice berries, rather than tall stalks. But in this patch of ground, the wheat was able to put her energy into absolutely everything: height, berries, 4 rows of kernals, ripeness. I hope to ride a combine through this to feel the blades struggle a bit to cut something so rich.



Tyler took this photo: big combine against an even bigger sky.



Machinery has made harvesting much easier. My biggest concern with farming is my complete lack of understanding when it comes to machinery. On off days, the men sit around repairing equipment.

Here, you can see a wheat truck dumping wheat to a pit, which is transferred by an auger to a grain bin.



Like I said, these machines are big. It is something to see the young kids (pretty much all boys) leap around trucks and ladders, already so nimble from a childhood spent around a jungle-gym of trucks and engines and wrenches.



I took a walk inside a bin before the wheat was dumped.



The bins must be airtight (or as close as possible). Some of our bins are reliable, though we used a different contractor for some of the bins, and these seem to be somewhat prone to leaks. Here, my cousin Paul sits on the doorway to a bin, fixing something, while his daughter, Katherine, watches.



It's like a cathedral inside. Behold, several thousand bushels of wheat.



Bins can be dangerous. The hazards of farming require a patient and even-tempered personality. Explosive people don't succeed as farmers.



We've been lucky enough to have Wolgemuth Custom Harvesters every year for some time now. They are careful, courteous and professional and we are always happy to work with them. Tyler took this photo of my cousin Paul consulting with Eric Wolgemuth.



Eric's truck is kitted out with every possible tool; he must be prepared for any kind of equipment failure and subsequent rescue mission. A few days earlier, a truck blew a tire and Eric was off to the rescue. During harvest, time is of the essence and interruptions are unwelcome.



Here is a bumper sticker on Eric's truck.

Someone asked me if I discuss politics with any of the farmers and I said that we do not. On certain basic matters--farming--we are all in agreement. Other matters--the election, foreign policy--are not brought up.

Farming is not easy, and yet we do take it for granted in the US that we will have plenty of food and that it will be affordable. Many of us are unaware of the struggles farmers face. Farmers know this. It is worthwhile for anyone to spend some time in a farm in the US to learn about the very real challenges that face farmers and to understand the things that make it eas(ier) or difficult. And, as I've said before, I think it is important to understand where your food comes from and what you are eating. I would hardly call myself a true-blue farmer, and yet I will say that I've spent enough time here to have some understanding of farming challenges and on farming related matters, I'm fully sympathetic. Farming doesn't happen if people do not work together. It is impossible to farm if you are not a person of faith; too much of farming is beyond human control.

Wheat is a pretty thing, goldish-red and gentle. Agriculture generally seems like a more gentle profession than, say, raising cattle. This is not to say that I don't appreciate ranching, just that there is something nurturing about communing with plants. Our wheat is hard red winter wheat, and it is true that when you look at grain pooling in the back of a combine, it really has a reddish hue.

Standing in a wheat field in the sun, I couldn't help but think about Superman, and how much sense it makes for the imagination to dream up a human being super-powered by the sun. You stand there and you think, all these crops are reaching up for the sun; can't the sun super-charge me too?



As happy as we look here, it hasn't been a particularly notable harvest so far. It's unclear just what the problem is, though we spend much time talking it over and wondering what we can do differently for next year. One solution is to try a new type of seed wheat, which locals are loving. In the past, we have tried experiments before others do; with this new seed wheat, we will be followers.

I'm generally struck by the primary colors I see everywhere; lots of red, yellow and blue. I suppose there is the occasional John Deere green combine, but mostly things are red and you can see why. The color pops against the background.



My young cousin, Tyler, took this photo after expressing disappointment with the pictures I'd taken of the town grain elevator. He finds interesting subjects and angles to look at, and I'm going to try to let him use my camera as much as I can.



After the wheat is cut, it is taken by trucks to the grain elevator where it is weighed. This only works, of course, if you know the weight of the truck when it is empty and can subtract this from the total weight.

I asked if the pressure was on truck drivers to keep a consistent weight, sort of the way that jockeys have to watch how much they eat. I don't know if food intake is monitored, but I did find this sign posted in the window of the grain elevator office.

I should also note that I saw a man get out of the truck one time, but he at least stayed on the scale.



And here is a truck on the scale. It was very hard not to jump on the scale. Jumping would not have been adult behavior on my part.



Sometimes we will put our wheat directly into the grain elevator. Other times, we will store the grain in our bins. Since the bin is currently not completely full, we can leave the top part of the door open. The bottom must stay closed, for obvious reasons. It smells wonderful--fresh wheat grain. I tried to take a photo of the grain pouring into the bin but, as Tyler pointed out, the lighting was terrible. I had a bad photo I was going to put onto this blog, but Tyler seems to have deleted it from my camera, as it offended his aesthetic tastes. He wants to wait until the sun is just right to try again. Being a person obsessed with aesthetics myself, I'm inclined to indulge him, even if he is only 15.



When we store wheat in our bins, it is dumped from the truck into a pit, then sucked into the bin by the cylindrical metal machinery you see behind me (I'm posing with Mark, son of Paul, my cousin). This piece of machinery is called an auger and works by means of an Archimedean screw. For many years, I repeatedly confused the word "auger" with "augur" on school tests designed to teach SAT words. To auger wheat obviously has nothing to do with prognostication, though I would happily develop the ability to accurately predict the price of wheat.



And here is young Tyler's wheat-field glamor shot. We found an old and abandoned homestead out by a field in Colorado. Among the treasures we unearthed was this car door. Tyler agreed to pose with it only if I put this old shed in the background. So far, it is the only photo I've taken of which he approves. I tend to take pictures for information and not for composition. But as I said above, I'm happy to indulge someone who is trying to refine his sense of taste.

Last summer, I got into the habit of making pancakes as a way to deal with the influx of ollalieberries. I promised Kaytie I'd make her a batch as soon as she got off of her plane.



They stacked up quite nicely.



Later that day, our resident pyro decided she was feeling well enough to take over fire-building duties. Nothing would suit her but a pile of pinecones to set aflame; their coals, she says, are particularly beautiful.



We enjoyed a nice selection of steak and seasoned chicken.



Kaytie helped me finish off yet one more wine bottle from our bloated stash.



I've been fascinated by the surfers this year. I actually think that under the right conditions (not Monterey), I would take surfing lessons. I have a friend who has offered to teach me. It seems that learning to turn your board around and then hop on top is sort of the key. It looks like fun to me.



Look closely, and you'll see a little figure in the bottom right hand corner waving. Beside her are the remains of our feast.



At home, Kaytie pulled out her ukelele and I couldn't help but try to sing along.



Angus and my mother listened.

This is how Angus shows appreciation for boys.



And here is how he hugs a girl.

My father thought that this might be the last year he would ever go to harvest.

He said that last year too.

I didn't want him to drive this year from California to Nebraska, and told him so. I also didn't want my mother to drive across country. He asked if I would come out from New York to go with him. I said that I could not, as I was trying to meet a publishing deadline.

Now I am going to go to harvest alone.



It has occurred to me that I need a pair of boots. Last time I went to the harvest, I was annoyed at the complete insufficiency of a pair of sneakers when I was out in the fields. I had burrs everywhere. There is a reason that farmers wear hats, gloves and boots. (Yes, I know that is a photo of corn farmers).



(When I went to Cheyenne for "Frontier Days," I felt the extreme, nightmarish pressure of being the only person not in cowboy boots. See? Despite my annoyance at the modern addiction to packaging, I'm still a girl, and the repeated image of a person wearing cowboy boots makes me think I need them too).



There are a lot of useless boots in the world, just as there are a lot of SUVs (I mean: do most people need SUVs? Do most people need boots)? But I really, really will need boots. (I will need a hat, too).

I did not know that the term "field boot," which is the article of clothing I am going to buy, is actually a fashion term. Here are two examples of field boots.




Now, which one do you think is practical?

I've been looking at online stores. John Deere and Carhartt of course have their own sites. I also like MuckBoots.com and Workingperson.com.

Nonetheless, I think I want a slip-on pair of boots, that I can just leave in the bins to use next year. Because there will be a next year. I think I will pick up the boots in Cheyenne, when I drive in from Denver.

And, for those keeping score, yes, I know that Cheyenne is in ranching country, hence the preponderance of ranching gear. Yes, I know that farming is different.

Now that I have my boot issues resolved, I will turn my eye to trying to understand weather patterns and soil. These things are going to be more complicated. Fortunately, there is no "glamour soil' and there certainly are no "fashion weather patterns" to deduce.

I just saw a weasel.

He was smaller than I expected.

"Naturally some people are more comfortable with change than others. For example, those with SATURN IN TAURUS may need to make the most changes and they may be the most resistant. Change can also be frightening to the earth signs, Taurus, Virgo and Capricorn."

While cleaning out some bookshelves, I found the following advice in the 1989 edition of Manuscript Submission by Scott Edelstein. (And, yes, that is how long I've wanted to be a writer).

The following people are especially likely to have writing and/or publishing contacts:

Anyone living in or near New York, Los Angeles, or Toronto
Anyone with a good deal of money
Any upper-class or upper-middle-class professional (a doctor, lawyer, middle manager, college teacher or administrator, etc.)
Anyone who is famous or well known in any field . . .

. . . Does where you live have a bearing on the kind and number of useful contacts you're likely to have or make? Of course it does, and so do many other factors. If you are a well-to-do white-color professional living in or near New York, many of the people you know probably have publishing contacts, or are involved in publishing themselves. But if you are a janitor in Billings, Montana, you are of course not going to have as easy a time making helpful contacts.

The years between 27 and 30 were my most painful. I have journals and journals of sad scribbling from this period, sure to rival any morose teenager's collection of sob stories.

After 30, I wrote some good stuff, then started to get published and then, despite the occasional writer depression/temperament issues, felt very much on the right path with my life. I was extraordinarily lucky. I also worked hard (and will continue to do so).

However, I remember being 27 and the anxiety I felt very vividly. "You are going through your Saturn Return," a hippy said to me knowingly on an airplane as we flew from California to New York.

My what?

Regular readers know of my feelings about astrology. Still, I think there is something to this notion of the Saturn Return.

One of my very favorite poets (my hero Lisa likes her too) is Kay Ryan.

How fascinated was I, then, to run into this very erudite blog post on the Saturn Return phenomenon as it applies to Kay Ryan. Some of you young writers might even find this comforting.

Kay Ryan was born in 1945. At around 30, her first Saturn Return, she took time off for long bicycle ride in order to “find herself”. She was right on schedule with the task at hand. Everyone should do this between 28-30! Something about the pedaling, pedaling, pedaling reminded her of poetry. She had an epiphany, as many do at 30, and decided to devote her life to writing poetry.

Ryan took a job in the teaching field where she could work just two days a week and pay the bills. In order to live like this, she stripped her life down to the bare minimum.

For the next 30 years she wrote and wrote. Nothing much happened and she did not seem to ask for much to happen.

When she was around 60 someone gave a book of her poetry to someone that mattered in the literary world and soon Ryan’s work appeared in The New Yorker. Thus the second Saturn Return was positive payback time. Ryan had worked diligently at her authentic task and the reward was bound to come. Thirty years seems like a long time but Saturn wants us to focus on what is really important to us between 30 and 60, not what someone else wants. These are our mature, serious years when we bear the yoke and pull the plow. The harvest comes at 60.

One of the fascinating things about this blog--and point of view--is the notion that the Saturn Return comes several times, and that each time can yield rewards--but only if essential work is done the first time around. I literally became cold when I read the line "You are not reading this by chance." I say this because the first time I read this blog post was probably about a month before my novel was sold, and I was wondering what I could do help myself. I don't even remember how I found the post. But I love Ryan's poetry, and the idea that work put into art starting around 30 can yield riches by 60 is very appealing to me.

It fits my agricultural roots.

The other thing that this post makes me think about are the repercussions for those who don't address the Saturn Return the first time around. That is to say, if you don't address fundamental questions around 30, you will feel the backlash at 60.

In what I have observed in people and in aging, this seems to me to be very true.

The psyche comes loaded with potential pitfalls and pieces of code waiting to be unleashed. It's important to explore them and let the programming run its full course. You really do not know what you are capable of doing, unless you ask yourself to do it.

Last year I spent about 6 weeks caring for my mother after she broke her ankle in three places while looking at flowers in Japan. My father called to tell me that he had food poisoning and would not be able to meet her plane in San Francisco to take her to surgery. So, I flew off from New York to meet her. It made me tear up to see this little frail woman wheeled out of customs in a wheel chair with her foot in a cast. She was in pain.

That was also the summer that a very well known publishing house you have heard about rejected my novel after first raving about it. I still have the editor's voicemail. This proceeded to happen about three times. Let that give some of you writers out there a dash of hope. Sometimes life is about not giving up. Nonetheless, I cried myself sick.

But I digress. At any rate, I found myself in California last summer--much as I do this summer--and since I hate the New York heat, I can't say that I completely minded (though this summer I'd rather have my father back--hey is this "bargaining?"). All the same, I felt very sorry for myself last summer, and I learned that gardening can be a wonderful solace. (I would like to say that I do not feel sorry for myself this summer at all. I can feel sorry for myself over small things. Large things just send me into action.)

My parents have always had a tremendous garden, the kind of place that people walking their dogs liked to include on a daily trek to see all the flowers and plants. And vegetables. And fruit. Because, while it has become very common for people around here to hire other people to plan and take care of their gardens, my parents liked to look after their own. I grew up taking care of the less glamorous aspects of gardening--weeding (and more weeding and more weeding), and trimming dead flowers and picking ripe vegetables. My father got to do the landscaping and planning, which meant he got to draw little pictures and employ loud and frightening machinery, while my mother disciplined everything into growing correctly.

No one was tending the garden much last summer. This bothered my parents. So, out I went with clippers to tend the dahlias and roses; the latter require a particular pruning method which, I was startled to learn, I hadn't forgotten. And you know, it's nice to work in a garden. You put in a certain amount of effort, and beauty is thrown back in your face. This is nice when compared to the vagaries of the publishing world where, you can put in a certain amount of effort, and no one may care about beauty at all.

This morning we sat out on the patio and had a breakfast of home-made sushi, and lemon meringue pie (made by yours truly). The first plums are ripening, so we also had some of those. Then I sat back and did some knitting. A couple of squirrels fought over a branch on a neighboring pine tree. Hummingbirds fought over a feeder. If those birds spent less time fighting, they would haven't to refuel so often.



Good friend Kaytie arrives tomorrow and I picked more lemons to have a pie ready for her.



My mother says that my father worried earlier this year that the lemon tree had too much fruit. "Don't worry," she said she told him, "Marie is coming and she always uses up the lemons." Now we are worried that I have almost used up the all the ripe ones. Fortunately, more fruit is waiting to ripen.

Also on the menu tomorrow for Kaytie's breakfast, are pancakes made from ollalieberries, picked from the garden. I tried to give some berries to a neighbor who said: "I just went to Whole Foods and bought some organic raspberries." This made me wonder. Do we, as a people, not understand what "organic" actually means? Do we think that "organic" from a store is just another way of saying "good"? My mother replied, "Our berries are organic." Because, duh, organic means grown in a garden, the way our berries are, and not sprayed or pesticided or nothing.



I finally packed some of our berries in an old plastic container I found in the tupperware closet. Thus packaged, the berries apparently looked "organic" and were accepted as a gift. It is sad how much packaging has taken over our lives that we need it to convince us to eat something.

A whole generation is going to grow up not knowing where food comes from. Is this okay? I'm not sure it is. Somehow I suspect it adds to neuroses. And eating disorders, that plague of the developed world.

Last summer, while caring for my parents, my father kept saying, "Please pick the berries. Don't forget the berries." And, with his voice in my head, I have dutifully been picking berries and making the occasional pie. Okay, maybe my pie making hasn't been occasional. I've been maniacal. I've made 6 pies. I'll make another one tonight.

And, since I am whining and raging, let me just say that while our food industry has made some progress in raising and shipping strawberries and tomatoes, I still refuse to eat store-bought plums. It's just, once you've grown up watching plums ripen from your bedroom window, and run out to eat the very first one that turned purple, nothing from a store tastes as good. The flesh is hard, the skin is thick and the flavor forgettable. So it was that every year my parents spoiled me and packed up egg cartons with plums and sent them across the country to me to eat.

My mother said she simply couldn't stand to eat the plums all by herself, knowing that I wasn't getting to eat them too.

That is love.

The photo below is for Maud, who understands my feelings regarding plums. I will try to bring some back to her when I finally go back to NYC. In the meantime, you can see how these burdened branches are doing their best to ripen their fruit.



Kaytie is arriving just in time to help us with the plums.

And hot on the heels of the purple plums, are these white ones. My parents have had this tree for a number of years, but this is the very first crop ever. It was my father's idea to plant a white plum tree. Sadly he did not get to eat the first crop.




Up next after all these fruits are apricots:



blueberries:



and figs.



By fall, we should have persimmons.



Hopefully we will also have walnuts which, in case you don't know, are actually the pit of a greenish fruit that grows on this handsome tree. My mother made a little attempt to "fix" a branch, while Angus watched from afar.



A moment later, Angus rolled around in the dirt. When he came in for the evening, my mother cleaned him off with a damp washcloth, which turned brown.



We're eating some fish for dinner which does not come from Whole Foods, but which a local fisherman caught and sold to us directly (and legally, of course). We're also going to have more home-made sushi. It was hard for her, but my mother wanted to prepare the sushi yesterday for the 4th of July, which we both think of as my father's holiday, as he was the one of the three of us who was the most American. Well, by birth I mean. And language. And culture. In that stereotypical way.

In all of this, I have a few things to say, just one of which I will share on my blog.

I have never--nor do I now--think of myself as the child of two people who were ill. How could I possibly see myself that way when surrounded by so much goodness? I still see myself as the child of two people committed to beauty. I doubt that picture will ever change.

The fires persist. This updated map shows how, amoeba like, the destruction continues to spread. There are now reports of animals fleeing for safety by the beach. Friends have lost homes. Zen monks are battling fear to save their structures. They say that fear of the fire is a fear of the future. Dude. Isn't battling to save your monastery based on an assumption of what might happen in the future too? All anxiety isn't a bad thing. We have adrenal glands for a reason. Honestly. Sometimes this modern desire to shut off all emotion as some kind of negative distraction strikes me as ridiculous. Really. It's fine to freak out sometimes, as long as you don't hurt anyone. And quite honestly, sometimes you have to fight. That's why those monks learned all those fancy tricks.

Speaking of the right to "let it all hang out," one casualty of the fire is the West Coast Poetry Slam.

"Organizers for the West Coast Poetry Slam scheduled for July 12-13 are trying to assemble back-up plans for the 200 people who were expected to descend on the Henry Miller Library.
"We're looking for alternative locations or we may postpone it," said organizer Renee Infelise, who said she has received e-mails from people who already purchased tickets.

"A lot of poets are coming in," she said.

It's really tempting to offer my back-yard, though it would be a tight fit. I've often had the fantasy of creating some kind of artist's colony here. There is also the Robertson Jeffers Tor House, though.



Finally, in other personal and fire related news, yesterday, while I was off indulging in an hour's break, two helicopters flew overhead, no doubt off to look at the damage, or to be involved in some way. I was reminded that life could be much worse, and that there are always people everywhere who are suffering. The Buddhists were right. We do not escape.

I've been working as much as I possibly can for the past few weeks. But the weather Thursday was glorious, and I thought maybe I deserved a small break. I remember whining a few weeks ago that I wanted to go to the beach at home, so I thought it only made sense to make good on my complaining.

I actually took this photo and the one above. Though I would never consider myself a good photographer, I was pleased by how well the pictures turned out. The landscape is simply this beautiful.



You can't see how the kelp is moving in the water, but perhaps you can imagine it a bit. I found it soothing.



In the distance, Bird Rock plays host to dozens of birds.



A Scotsman adapts very quickly to warm and sunny conditions.



Later in the day, we went to Carmel beach for a cookout. This is something I did with my parents many times over the years. I had the feeling that the weather was going to be better on July 3rd, than July 4th (and it later turned out that I was right) and really wanted to eat a steak today. Of course it helped that Gordon picked up a bottle of good wine.

Here, a novice pyro learns from a pro. My mother was not feeling well, but she put in the effort to get herself to the beach. She later ended up eating her entire steak, and didn't get sick over night.



This clever little grill collapses and is easy to clean. It's also easy to carry.

My father made the grill. He didn't like any of the ones that were for sale. His inventions have generally been better than anything on the market. He was like that, and his relentlessly innovative, problem solving-self is hugely responsible for the fact that I am unforgiving of followers while adoring original thinkers. He was also, simply put, a good person.

There are not enough good people in the world.

My mother and I bought these steaks back in November, hoping to have a small cookout around the time of my wedding. Unfortunately, we never managed to cook steak for any of our guests. But their loss was our gain.



Vegetarians beware. You won't like the photo below. Meat eaters will covet.



Can't say we look glamorous. But at least we are here. And we match.



A Scotsman pats his stomach, signaling satiation.



The grill below was surrounded by a barrier of small American flags, totally unattended. I had no problem with this, but a couple on the beach thought enough of the beach-hogging to report it to the police. I'm not kidding. This is what rich people do; they get upset that someone has chosen a "prime location" on the beach in anticipation of the 4th of July, and marked it off with small flags and a grill and left it unattended.

I give the policeman credit. He nodded and promised to investigate. "We moved here from San Jose," a member of the upset couple reported, as though this was some sort of explanation for why the abandoned grill was so offensive to them. They'd moved to Carmel, see, from San Jose expecting a greater attention to detail to their environment.

The service economy has really brought out a generation of wimps. But I digress.



By the time the sun set, we were not the only campfires on the beach. I always feel nostalgic when I see so many fires on the beach in the dark like this.

I told you that the mountain lions would be coming.

In happier news, troubled ambulance company WestMed lost its contract. Buh-bye.

You have to watch till the end for the "L."

As for "oresama no namae," well, you die-hard fans already know the answer.

(And for the uninitiated, this was apparently broadcast an hour before the Hana Yori Dango Movie premiered. Like others, I'm sorry the story is over).