Strange and scary world

   Two days ago, I took a drive from my hotel in Arcata, California to Fern Canyon, located about an hour away in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park. Most of the drive was on the easy-to-maneuver and beautiful Redwood Highway. The last six miles, however, consisted of a slow, winding descent on a rough and dark unpaved road.
   Being a person that enjoys the mornings and relishes a world that is quiet, I left my hotel early, arriving at Davison Road (the road leading to the canyon) when it was still a bit dark and overcast. Most of the available light seemed to be blocked by the Redwoods nearby, and the dust kicked up by my tires created an environment that I found eerie and difficult to apprehend.
   Although I generally don't think much about the headlights on my car (other than whether I need them on or not), there have been occasions when they have revealed things in especially beautiful ways.. They do not seem to do this for illuminating especially well, but for what they hint at as they fade at the peripheries.
   I recall vividly the feeling of driving one night on Highway 62 in the California desert, and became disoriented by the plants just slightly visible to me on the side of the road. I felt nearly weightless, frightened, and dizzy as I barreled down that road. I didn't feel comfortable pulling over to the side, because the shoulder, if there was one, was equally difficult to decipher. The only instance when I can recall feeling unsettled in that way was when I had used LSD.
   I had a somewhat similar sensation as I drove slowly down to the canyon, the sound of loose rocks under my tires. The dirt obscured my view and covered the ferns on both sides of me. As I turned the wheel to navigate the sometimes winding road, my headlights would shine on those plants in a way that made them unrecognizable to me as things I knew existed.
   It is one thing to have had no previous exposure to a thing; another to lack the sense of it being possible.
   I feel the need to add here, after thinking more about this experience for the past two days, that my fear of getting a flat tire on those rocks, and lacking the confidence to change it correctly, must have certainly colored how I observed the environment that day. Knowing that I had no cellular service most certainly heightened it.
   After having reached my destination, I maneuvered my body around the canyon floor a while, then started the drive back up. By this time, there was more light, and the powdery coating on the ferns just looked like dust covering plants. I could see them for what they were now, and they were recognizable as such. Less easy was to understand how they could have appeared so alien to me just an hour earlier.

Chance?

   I saw this feather, exactly as you see it below, while I was walking in the park a few days ago. When I first passed it, I imagined that someone had placed it in the ground upright, quite intentionally, as a kind of marker. I thought that perhaps it was there indicating the grave site of a pigeon or squirrel, but after inspecting it closely, I noticed that there were other feathers nearby, strewn about in a way that appeared haphazard. This information forced me to reconsider my original reading.

   I realized that how I now viewed the scene, based on different, perhaps only more information, altered my previous reading a lot. I began to think a bit more about my convictions on the whole, and how much weight I should be giving them at any particular time. It became apparent that I would never have enough information about anything to really judge it correctly. This seemed to include my own life.

   Although that feather's placement in the grass and earth had seemed too intentional to have come from pure chance, perhaps it is my own sense of what is probable should be examined more closely.

What are the chances?

Threat of interest?

   A few days ago during my morning walk I saw a group of animals in the distance that I don't normally see in such close proximity. There were two Canada geese, their goslings, and three adult Muscovy ducks, apparently huddled together in harmony. I soon understood that there was not the peaceful coexistence that I had envisioned.
   Drawing closer, I saw that one of the ducks was in fact very close to one of the goslings, upsetting one of the adult geese greatly. The goose hissed loudly and repeatedly, but did not intervene in a more direct, physical way. Still, the duck kept approaching, seemingly unfazed, uncaring or unaware of what I assume was one of the parent's distress.
   I was standing perhaps ten to fifteen feet from the commotion when I saw what I thought was the duck touching the young animal with its' beak. I figured at that moment that it would kill it for sure.
   I feel it is important to add here that although I found the scene upsetting to witness, I never once thought about interfering. I still find something wonderful and beautiful in even these emotionally charged and potentially sad animal interactions.
   Anyway, with all that honking and shrieking accompanying, the duck made contact with the gosling, but then started to walk away. Of course, it is possible that it had wanted to attack it, but had for some reason decided otherwise, but to me it seemed that it must have just been inquisitive. Perhaps it wanted a closer look.
   Although the entire happening was quite short and had unfolded in a somewhat deliberate way (these Muscovy ducks move quite slowly when walking, waddling from side-to-side as they do), there was nothing that would have suggested to me that it would come to the ending that it had.
   As I continued walking, I thought about what I had seen, and how I had been so wrong in how I had foreseen it ending. I imagined then, as I do now, that there must be so many things that I must also think about in ways that don't account for the seemingly endless viewpoints and particulars that I know nothing about.

Blurred flowers

   There is something that I often find very special about the tree pictured below. Although not always remarkable for me when I pass it, at times the flowers on it seem blurred, shifting my sense of vision for a moment. I like this feeling, as it reminds me that I have a choice in suspending a lot of how I organize the world. This is always a good thing.

   I think that this blurred quality is visible in the picture that I took of it, which I was sure to be very still when taking. Afterwards, I thought that perhaps I should have been moving when I took it to better illustrate the quality I am trying to describe, but as I look at it now, I think that it is there anyway.
   I remember studying the artist Paul Cezanne in art school, and it was told to us students in one class that he, and others from the time, used to drink absinthe, which was said to have hallucinogenic qualities. I recall the teacher explaining that this may have contributed to Cezanne painting trees in the way that he did, which I find similar to the flowers on the tree I have described. Below is Cezanne's example.
 

Cezanne's "Large Trees at Jas de Bouffan"

   Years ago, I believe a short time after those art school years, I remember spending time with some fellow artists, walking around Central Park in New York after having taken acid. We noticed that many of the trees in the park reminded us of Cezanne paintings. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art later in the day and saw some of his work. It all made sense to us.

   In my current middle-aged years, I have had some naturally occuring, near- hallucinogenic experiences, some like the ones I am describing here. I find them all the more beautiful that they have happened without the use of any mind-altering substances.

   It seems to me that the ability to experience the natural world in different ways points to an openness to engage with a less restricted mind and eyes, and perhaps most importantly, to experience things how they exist. When I am able to see the world in this way, I feel like a completely included participant, even if only for that very moment.

                                       

Untangled

   I took this picture yesterday after I decided to slightly stray from where I usually walk in the morning. Interestingly to me, I pass this place almost every day in my car, reiterating to myself my belief that it is never possible to see closely while moving in a car in a car. This is even more true when I am the one driving.
   As I walked by the place seen below, the mass of thick trunks and branches immediately captured my attention. The shaded and protected area they provided looked like a wonderful place to lay down. I've always liked secluded spots in nature where I can relax and listen to the sounds around me. I especially enjoy it when I cannot tell where the sounds are coming from.
   Although I have certainly thought that my interest in these kind of spaces could easily be seen as a desire to return to a womb-like environment, I don't know that this idea is particularly alluring to me, as the one I occupied previously did not help me to feel secure outside of it.
   So, I think that rather than having a wish to return to some place, what I would like to find is a state where I can venture from from truthfully and in confidence.

Secretive

   During the past month or so I've noticed that the Mallards who live around Stow Lake have been spending time in places that I don't recall having seen them. I surmise that it must be about the time when their chicks will soon be born, but I don't recall from previous years them behaving in a way that appears secretive.

   Of course, I  may just be noticing things a bit more closely now. I  may also be viewing their behavior through my my own paranoia.

   Often, when I am rounding a corner of the usual path that I  traverse during my morning walks, I come two or more of them wandering around in the bushes and thickets near the water. If I should stop when I see them, even if only for a moment, they begin to quickly move around and call out. I imagine that there is a nest somewhere near to them, at least at some of these times, but I never see anything there.
   I would think that at least one would stay behind to protect the eggs if one were there, and I am quiet, still and stay from where I spot them. Perhaps these are the very things that they find frightening.
   I'm perplexed that these Mallards should be so concerned that a species and person such as myself should see where their eggs are hidden. It actually saddens me.

   Last year, I saw one of these animals sitting on an abandoned egg on top of a large mound of rubble completely out in the open here. It touched me, as it must have been mourning this cold specimen, but why would that egg have been laid there in the first place, so inconspicuously, while they seem so bent on hiding things now?

   It just seems like they are up to something.
   Although not a gossip, and being a person that very much values a kind of mystery, I wish that those Mallards would trust me to know their secrets, what they're doing there, in those tucked away places.
   It's not that I want to be in on their secrets. It's just to know that they see in me one that appreciates them fully as they are.
  

The perfect Christmas for me

    I really dislike the four weeks or so leading up to Christmas, and although I wish that things were different, they are not. I feel badly for having these sentiments.
   As a non-religious, but proud ethnic Jew, I tend to feel a bit slighted and unseen during December, as the winter festivity of my tradition, Channukah, seems basically invisble to those that do not in some way acknowledge it. Obviously, this is not true for Christmas, which means really nothing to me, yet I feel forced to see it everyday in the days that begin after Thanksgiving, and continue past New Year's. This includes,, unfortunately for me, wonderful Stow Lake, where I go every morning to escape busy San Francisco and focus on my own thoughts.
   During the holidays, someone or some people take it upon themselves to decorate a particular bush there as if it were a Christmas tree, and it irks me. I go there to try to clear my mind, but have found it difficult to do so as I pass those ornaments every time I complete a lap. I have tried for quite a while to find ways to not be bothered by it, but have until recently been unsuccessful.
   Then, last December, something just presented itself to me, and has continued until the present.
   It is dark this time of year when I arrive at the lake, but as I walk, at the roughly halfway point around the north side of the pedestrian path, I am treated to something wonderful; I can see, faintly in the distance, the red, white, yellow and green lights of the cars and traffic lights on busy 19th avenue. From far away, they look to me like holiday lights.
   The quality of those colors remind me of when I squint my eyes to see something in a different way. Sometimes, a lack of visual clarity can help to reorient me differently. It can soften, or rather blur out the things which I find displeasing or unpleasurable.
   Those colors in the darkness, blurred by the distance and my human eyes, are a gift which helps me to see December differently. Unlike Christmas, they will be on display as long as I am willing to venture out into the darkness.

Moon's walk

   I can't remember the last time I began my morning walk in Golden Gate Park when it was light outside. Suffice it to say, it's been a while.

   At this time of year, it usually takes at least forty five minutes before the sun even begins to illuminate this part of the world. Until then, my recognition of the people around me is primarily reliant on experience, but also on the sounds that they make.

   This morning, as I walked the western stretch of Stow Lake for the second time around, I heard the familiar steps of an elderly Asian man that walks there regularly named Moon. I knew for pretty certain that it was him from what must have been sixty or seventy feet away because of his particular gait; he drags his feet as he walks, but manages to do so in a kind of hushed way. In my observations, it is particular to him.

   Continuing on, and passing other walkers for the next few minutes, I soon approached Moon again, and decided to tell him how I had been able to recognize him by his walk earlier. Although he seemed a bit confused as to why I was telling him this information, he didn't appear upset, and even thanked me.
   I don't know why, but I felt a little bad after our encounter, wondering if I had perhaps offended him. I thought about why I had told him what I did, and even though it maybe hadn't been clear to me at the time, I realized later that I told him because I was pleased when I saw him. The sound of his footsteps made me happy.
   I thought for a moment about dogs, and how they become excited when they hear their master approaching the front door after they've been out a while. I realized that in a similar way, hearing Moon made me happy, too.