Missing the Mall

Has it been three months since my last blog?

Update from my wish expressed then: my new glasses did not inspire me to warble hallelujah. Unfortunately, my old glasses still work better. I have another appointment next week to discuss possible solutions. But that’s not why I haven’t blogged.

The only excuse I can think of is lack of inspiration. Well, not exactly that, even. I’ve written a number of poems, most of which have been well-received. I also took a two week Road Scholar excursion to the National Parks in Utah, the subject of my latest poem. (I’ll include it at the end of this entry.)

Today, however, blog inspiration came. Just past noon, I walked the half-mile from my house to a shopping center. Halfway there, I realized my two choices for a bite to eat were Costco and the deli section of a market. Hmm. Costco was jammed. I crossed an acre of parking to the market. Nothing in the serve-yourself buffet looked appetizing.

I quickly found the vitamins I’d come for and proceeded back to Costco. By then, the lines had diminished. A hot dog took the edge off and gave me the energy for my return home.

While I do like my new home in San Luis Obispo, I struggle to understand why local shopping ‘centers’ seem to be so, um, un-centered. At the malls in Eugene – Valley River Center, Oakway Center, Gateway Center - you park on the perimeter of the shops. Two of those centers are completely enclosed. Rain or shine you can walk from store to store without going outside or moving your car. Additionally, each has a food court or at least variously priced restaurants. I often spent time browsing from store to store before or after a meal.

Here, the shops are on the perimeter of parking areas. You need to cross traffic to walk from one set of shops to the next. Or move your car. In addition, restaurants are either non-existent or placed far from the shops. No leisurely shopping, no convenient opportunities for coffee or a meal.

What were the designers thinking?

Oh, that’s right. This is California. The car is king. Drive, they said. Then park, dash in, and drive again.

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GEOLOGY LESSONS
A trip around Utah’s National Parks

The geologist’s enthusiasm catches hold
but not as she might wish.

Ten days circling Southern Utah
naming Neapolitan layers and
searching for joints and slots
in towering cliff-side casinos.

My eyes refuse to see
chocolate or vanilla
in the magic castles,
cathedrals,
Egyptian palaces,
and mushroom-capped guards
on buttressed walls.

Instead, I see The Ancestors -
robe-draped pillars, eyes on the horizon,
their children crowding close.
One leans against a canyon wall,
glowering at our intrusion.

A parade of elephants never move
yet ever march across rock dunes
the color of sun-bleached sand dollars.

Oh, Look! a fox head
stained dark in the pumpkin wall.
And there, carved high in gray stone,
a dog crouches stalking some small prey.
And the eagle! Yes, I see!
etched in oyster stone to soar forever.

Yet all will pass as the Great Artist
reveals and ultimately conceals Her work.


Lee Darling
May 18, 2014

Becoming Visible/Seeing Clearly

A little over a year ago, an astrologer shook her head in wonder. She was looking at my chart and said, “I just don’t see this kind of thing. Not for someone who’s turning 70. It looks like you’re going to become visible.” She paused and looked up at me. “You know you were born invisible, don’t you?”

I nodded and laughed. Twenty-five years ago she had told me I could take off my carrot costume. In response to my puzzled look, she had said, “You don’t have to be how other people see you.”

Now she was saying that other people would see the real me.

She also validated my then-pending move from Oregon to California. I’m now comfortably settled in a small apartment complex in San Luis Obispo.

One tiny step at a time, I am becoming visible in my new community. I’m hooked into a group of people who would normally not mix, but accept each other with love and humor. I feel as though I have a whole new set of littermates. We’re like eager puppies happily bounding up to greet each other.

And I’ve gotten involved with groups of writers and poets. I’ve read some of my poetry at open mic. My submission to the State of the Bay Haiku contest won the adult division last month and will be published in the report from the Morro Bay National Estuary Program. Dark trails ebb and flow/through cracks in seaweed cushion:/rusty brown on blue.

My most recent poem – Invisible Connection - is based on an incident on one of my morning walks. The poem says, in part:

I trudge along the fence-lined path, lean forward and begin the climb.
From near the crest he ambles down, limbs and torso bare and brown.

We met last week and briefly spoke of wind sprints, distance, time,
his manner easy, a runner in his prime.

Today, dark eyes capture me, smile welcome into mine.
I ask his schedule, nodding to ‘not every’ and ‘sometimes.’

His speech gives hint of distant lands, his youth sharp contrast to my years.
Yet he says, “I think we have . . . an invisible connection here.”

I’ve submitted the whole poem to a contest sponsored by The Tribune. And I’ll read it at the next meeting of Poets on the Edge in April.

But now I’m struggling to see clearly. Before leaving Eugene, I filled a new prescription for glasses. They never felt quite right, but returning to Eugene for adjustment wasn’t an option.

In January, I found an eye clinic here and scheduled an exam. The doctor said the Eugene prescription was wrong and gave me a new one. I didn’t fill it for a month, waiting for my eye/dental insurance to kick in.

When my new glasses came in, I was almost giddy with anticipation. I slid them on, expecting the world to become bright and sharp.

Not so! The left eye particularly was out of focus, a problem for me because that’s my dominant eye. The optician suggested I try them for a day or so to be sure my eyes wouldn’t adjust.

Stubborn little orbs, they just refused! Back to the optician. After a test with a small lens, she agreed the prescription was off and ‘bounced’ me back to the doctor.

Two days later, the doctor and his assistant struggled to find the right lens setting. He said he didn’t see how the slight change was worth re-doing the glasses, but it was my decision. Was he saying I was old and simply needed to accept bad vision? Not yet!

Now, I wait and hope when I slide this next pair on that I will burst into song: “I can see clearly now, the blur is gone.”

My Virtual Sex Change . . .

Six weeks before moving to California, the same weekend I listed my house, I attended a Writer’s conference on the Oregon Coast. The conference produces a booklet each year with submissions from attendees.

Shortly after arriving in California, I submitted a poem titled Little Black Dress along with a couple others. As requested, I included a short bio. I must have used first person rather than ‘she’ to describe myself.

Sometime in the summer, an email notified me that Little Black Dress had been selected for inclusion in the 2013 booklet. In October, I received a request for my mailing address so they could send a complimentary copy of the booklet.

The booklet arrived while I was away for Thanksgiving. I opened the package with anticipation. There it was, on page 25. Nice! I turned to the bio section. Oops! Sex change! I’m described as ‘he’ four times. It notes that ‘he’ moved to California to be closer to ‘his’ family.

I fumed. Everyone would picture a man, not me, a fairly feminine older woman! How unfair! How rude! How ignorant!

I waited for my heart to stop pounding before sending this to the publisher:

I just received the 2013 Rogue River Echoes. I'm attaching a photo of me to prove that, though my name and former occupation do not 'announce' my gender, I am and always have been female. My poem, Little Black Dress, should have made that clear, but in the biography section I'm described throughout as male. I don't know what can be done to correct that now.

The next morning I woke with a chuckle. The poem laments my lack of cleavage. I would find an artist to do a pen-and-ink drawing of a burly man in my little black dress, send it to the publisher and ask that it be included as a bookmark. That took some of the pain out of my virtual sex change operation!

Meantime, I’m still waiting on a reply.

A Mission of Love

The other day, thinking about my friend Dave, a Neil Diamond song played in my head.

I rummaged through my CDs, found Three Chord Opera and selected A Mission of Love. It’s jazzy, happy, and heartfelt. I know it’s about losing a relationship, but the words rang true for the Caring Bridge set up for Dave: “We got a friend in a hole/we got to help get him out/this is a glorious day/we’re on a mission of love.”

Then I got online and went to the Neil Diamond site. Somehow I found the YouTube video list of his performances and watched a few. The duet with Barbra Streisand, though out of synch with the music, mesmerized me. The connection between them was so electric, so sexy, so palpable it filled me with yearning. I could watch it only once.

It brought up memories, good and otherwise.

In 1980, on a run from Oregon to Maine and back, I memorized the 12 Greatest Hits album. It was a dark time in my life and that tape along with a couple others probably saved my life.

A year or so later, a coworker and I talked about our favorite musicians. I claimed Neil Diamond and Paul Simon.

“I don’t get either of them,” my coworker had sniffed.

I wrote her a poem.

DIAMOND/SIMON
She said she didn’t understand
Neil Diamond/Paul Simon -
the words don’t rhyme,
make sense to your mind,
fit into the party line.

I said you must sip, savor,
then swallow them whole –
musical soup for the soul.
Your heart understands
when your head lets go.

I wrote some other poems using words and song titles from Neil Diamond albums, but most are lost to me now.

For me, Neil, Paul and others (the Beatles come to mind) – somehow condense experience into lyric poems set to music, the words as wonderful as the tunes. For me, they have captured the changing essence and the essence of change through the last fifty years. I often catch myself singing one or another of their songs because the lyrics are perfect for the spot I’m in.

But Dave’s situation reminds me that, healthy as I am, I do have an expiration date. Like kids who participate in Make a Wish programs, my wish – rather than go somewhere exotic or do something crazy – would be to meet Neil Diamond in person, to thank him for saving and enriching my life. And then faint dead away!

At the store yesterday I found another Neil Diamond CD, his duet with Streisand included.

Neil – you always bring me flowers!

Rainy Day, Dave Ashleigh

Rain yesterday. Thick, misty, silent except for the sizzle of tires on wet pavement. Heavy, yet not cold.

It matched my mood, gray and grumbly.

On Friday, I woke with my friend’s name in my head. Six-thirty. Far too early to call, so I wrote Call Dave & Marty on a sticky note and began my daily routine.

I made the call before eleven. Marty answered.

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m fine, but Dave . . .”

NOOO! My head screamed while I listened to Marty explain that Dave was diagnosed with an aggressive leukemia last week and was now undergoing chemo at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica. She urged me to call his cell number.

Dave was my buddy throughout high school.

We dated just once when we were freshmen. We barely spoke that night and he seemed to avoid me at the party we attended. I wondered why he seemed so different from the wry, sparkly guy I knew – and got into trouble with – in Spanish class.

A few years ago, I learned the truth. That evening, he had a horrible case of gas. “You’ve been a family legend,” he told me. “Everyone knows the story of my date with Becky Darling* – cutest girl in the freshman class.” (*my given name)

Our classroom fun didn’t end, though, often earning us stern looks from teachers.

He dated a girl from another high school; I had a series of steady boyfriends. We graduated and went on to college – me to Oregon, Dave to junior college then UCLA with a scholarship in water polo and swimming.

My mother tried to arrange for him to meet my plane at Christmas my senior year, the one time my flight was diverted to Burbank. He visited me in Oregon later that year, when UCLA swam against Oregon. I think he met Marty about that same time.

He went on to participate in Olympic water polo, not once but twice.

We lost contact until our 45th reunion – a small picnic I helped coordinate. That’s when I met Marty. That’s when I was reminded what a gem he is, how blessed I am to know him. And, now, how pissed I am that he’s ill.

So, the rain yesterday gave me an excuse to be grumpy. It allowed me to be the negative voice at my book discussion group. It gave me time to understand why I had hacked up the vines by the back fence two days before. It washed the world shiny, freshened the air.

I pray that the chemicals they’re feeding Dave will wash him clean and well.

Rainy Day, Dave Ashleigh. But the sun's gonna shine soon.

Light and landscape

“All our actions take their hue from the complexion of the heart, as landscapes their variety from light.” –Francis Bacon

My 70th birthday fell on Labor Day this year, so I’m more than a month into my eighth decade. I live in a two-story apartment, running up and downstairs many times a day, yet I feel better than just a year ago: the ache in my right hip is gone and I’m lighter in spirit if not on the scales.

After more than fifty years of Oregon winters with gray in fifty shades, California’s abundant sunshine makes my world happier. And, as the quote from Francis Bacon implies, landscapes change with each shift of light. At midday, distant hills and canyons hang from a dusty sky, flattened by mirage of heat and slant of sun. In the landscape of my mind, I sprawl on the floor in front of our old black and white TV and watch my cowboy heroes ride:

Cisco gallops after bandidos. Pancho bounces along behind, sombrero flapping. The Masked Man sits secure as Silver rears and paws the air, then thunders down the narrow trail. Dum ta da dum ta da dum dum dum. Scout and Tonto slide up in a cloud of dust. From a hillock, Hopalong Cassidy watches, reins held loose. He smiles and pulls his hat low. Topper picks the way down the trail, tail sweeping graceful side to side.

Though I adored them all, I loved Hoppy most. He was gentle yet had a fierce sense of justice. He didn’t drink, smoke or kiss the girls. My folks indulged me with the entire Hopalong outfit: hat, skirt and vest – even a holster and ‘six-shooter’ cap gun complete with a box of rolled caps. In a photo of me at about seven, my permed hair peeks in frizzy clumps from under the hat, framing my ecstatic grin.

And then the sunlight shifts. The mountains reshape themselves and I’m brought back to now.

Now is October 10, 2013. Yesterday in SLO we had our first rain in weeks – a mere dribble measuring .04 inches. Still, I inhaled the scent of fall and savored the damp coolness during my morning walk.

I recently found a quote that captured my feelings about autumn in Rules of Civility by Amor Towles. The novel is about New York, and though New Yorkers would dispute this, New York has no corner on the seasons. The part that resonated for me: “Come September, despite the waning hours, despite the leaves succumbing to the weight of gray, autumnal rains, there is a certain relief to having the long days of summer behind us, and there’s a paradoxical sense of rejuvenation in the air.”

And I do feel energized, eager for whatever comes next. Of course, what comes next after October is November, and then December. I smile and remember what the teacher in Frazz, a comic strip by Jeff Mallett, said: I never trust a month that ends in ‘BRR.’

The way home

When I left Oregon in April, I was certain Atascadero would become home. I liked the sound of the name; everything had fallen into place—a cat-friendly apartment available the day I needed it, rented month-to-month. I could get acquainted with the area at a leisurely pace. My astrological reading indicated June 5th would be a propitious day; perhaps then I would find my permanent home.

I struggled that first week of June, searching for my ‘forever home.’ It wasn’t until the next week that I realized Atascadero didn’t feel like home. While I love being warm, the heat often governed my day. If I were to jog, I needed to do so early, though I’m not a morning person. My enthusiasm for exercise lags when heat begins to radiate from the pavement shortly after sunrise.

But the deciding factor came that, on Tuesday, June 11th. I planned to attend a 7 p.m. writing-related event in San Luis Obispo (SLO), less than 20 miles away. Plenty of time, I thought, as I got on Hwy 101 just after six, buoyed by the prospect of meeting fellow writers.

Less than a mile later, a sign warned of an accident ahead. At that point, traffic was sparse and still moving at freeway speed.

“Well,” I reasoned, “if they’ve had time to put up the sign, it’ll be clear soon.”

How wrong I was. After I passed the last exit familiar to me, traffic began to pile up. Still, from there to SLO was less than eight miles. I might be a little late.

But between me and my destination loomed the Cuesta Pass, a grade that goes up to 1522 feet, then winds down into SLO at 234 feet. There are no exits in the eight miles between Santa Margarita and SLO. Well, that’s not exactly true. Part of the highway is non-freeway, with side roads providing access to dwellings and wineries but not to other routes over the pass. Turning left across the other lanes seemed dangerous. Besides, I’d gotten stuck in the middle lane of three.

We crept along at less than my own jogging pace to the crest, then slithered down.

Where the hell is this accident, I wondered. I could see nothing but cars, inching around each of the wide curves. Finally, beyond the bottom of the grade, after the road narrowed to two lanes, we cleared the overturned semi.

I arrived at the first exit for SLO at eight-thirty. Though the event was only about six miles further, I got off and turned back to Atascadero. I would have arrived as the event ended. And darkness loomed. I don’t see well at night and searching for a place I had never been seemed pointless now.

I learned later that the truck had overturned at two-thirty in the afternoon. I have no idea what time the rig was actually towed away.

Thus began my search for a place in SLO.

At first, the prospect of living near the vibrant downtown seemed perfect. I scanned Craigslist every day, marking the ‘cats okay’ box. I visited a number of available units, was told of a potential ‘grandma’ house, and submitted an application for a fabulous apartment a few blocks from the center of town. My heart sank when the owner of that beauty said I was her second choice.

Then, on Saturday, June 29th, I visited an expensive, pet-friendly unit so unkempt inside and out, it made me want to run. And I did.

Back in Atascadero, I wrote a list of what I wanted, not only in the apartment itself, but also in quality of life—things like quiet yet not isolated, shopping nearby, feeling safe.

On Craigslist, I dropped the check mark on the ‘cats okay’ box. A unit popped up. Nothing about pets, but I hesitated. The ad was all caps, like someone shouting the glories of the place. And it wasn’t downtown at all!

I called anyway and mentioned my cat, Simone. The owner said we could talk. I could see it anytime. He lives next door.

Oh, dear! Would that be good?

I grabbed my keys and headed to SLO for the second time that day. My GPS guided me to Madonna Road then Oceanaire Drive. I chuckled as I turned onto Atascadero Street, the street that curves into Galleon Way and my new safe harbor, my new and perhaps ‘forever’ home.