Trees that tell tales
Morning scents. Lindens. A lake reappears.
Check in
Reaching
Three words
Intuitive connections, three at a time.
Attention Retention Regression
Attention
Attention is appropriate to our August resolution: Remember to see. Northing is more central to our spiritual development than paying attention.
Pay attention: Be alive to detail, pattern, colors, sounds and smells.
This week, at the farmers market, the scents of dill and dust and brewing coffee. Sounds: conversations, squeaky wagons, a man with an accordion. Shifting colors: red wagons, purple onions, shoppers in blue and green wearing floppy hats.
At the same time you hold the reins of detail, rear back and take in the whole scene. Notice everyone in the library or on the street. On the bus, reacquaint yourself with the familiar fixtures, the bars, buttons, seats, stairs, doors. And the passengers: active, listless, bored, zoned out with headphones. Or balancing a huge plastic sack of cans on the way to the recycling station.
Take time, when you are feeling reflective or your mind wanders, to move from the present to memory and intuition. This is uncharted territory, so exciting to explore.
Listening to music, dream about every conductor who raises a baton.
Watching the Mariners or the Mets, consider all the ball possibilities, from golf to baskets to T-ball to pickle.
The world is so full of a number of things. Look around, marvel.
Pay attention!
Retention
The older we get, the harder it is to make things stick. We want to remember, but sometimes it seems impossible.
Here’s a secret: don’t try.
With age comes acceptance. We begin to understand that we can’t change everything, that not everything will go our way.
So I’m asking you to accept that you won’t retain everything you want to remember.
And that’s okay, because there is always another impression, another detail to fascinate you, another vista around the bend.
Your best strategy is to be in the moment. Cherish it. Then let it go.
The Universe will always provide another moment. And another.
And some moments you will retain. Those are memories that matter.
Regression
Looping back. Looking back. Remembering who you were, who you are. Knowing, discovering, who you are becoming.
Was the earlier you a simpler you, or just less developed? You, who were once a seed, then a sprout, are now grown into the fullness of life. What do you make of it?
We remember
Remember who you are The one who matters The one who loves Who breathes, Who remembers. The book of life, Pages singed with memory, Flowers pressed between them. Words that matter: Love, care, purpose. Remember to do this: Keep your heart safe In the locket Of your memory.
Trees that tell tales
As we befriend trees, they sometimes share secrets.
What happened here?
My daughter Maggie Gardner encountered a tree with a recent wound and several pieces of mangled metal scattered about. What scenario would you construct from this image?
Lovers
The enlaced entwined trunks of a tree I pass in my daily wanderings bears a sinuous resemblance to any twosome you can imagine.
Faces
The swollen boles on trees often look like faces, as if the tree were regarding the scene around it with benign, benevolent or bemused regard.
Fairy fodder
The mysterious opening at the bottom of this tree could accommodate any manner of occupants. Fairies, yes, but (more likely) rodents, from tiny shrews to pudgy opossums.
I would bet there are trees you encounter daily that gladly share their stories. I have more in store for a later edition. Perhaps you have photos to share.
Morning scents
On an early morning walk I discern a scent that I think is eucalyptus. Eventually, I recognize that it is resin, from the pines and cedars lining this quiet road. The warming sunlight unlocks that fragrance, mingled with the sharp tang of bark dust.
The underlying odor of dust will intensify as the day heats toward 90, and then the scents, unlocked by dew and early sunlight, will dissipate.
Eucalyptus high
I love the scent of eucalyptus, dating to my days at Berkeley. In the hills above the campus grew tangled groves of eucalyptus, a non-native tree imported from Australia that loved the dry summers of California and naturalized like crazy.
Even in the 70s, when I was at school there, doomsayers were predicting that the eucalyptus in the hills above Oakland, Berkeley and Albany was a fire hazard.
And that proved to be the case. In October 1991, a devastating fire, fueled by high winds, wood shingles, bark dust—and tinder-dry eucalyptus—destroyed a huge swath of Oakland and Berkeley.
Twenty-five people died in the Tunnel Fire, also know as the Oakland Hills firestorm. Some 2,843 single-family dwellings and 437 apartment and condominium units were destroyed. Damage was estimated at $1.5 billion ($3.4 billion in 2023 dollars).
Other scented foliage
Besides eucalyptus, I remember the intoxicating scent of the linden trees that lined the entrance to the Berkeley campus near Sather Gate.
Lindens, also known as lime trees or basswood, lined the main drag in Tulare, Calif., where I attended the last two years of high school. They spread their scent near Tulare Union, the more upscale of the two high schools in the city then.*
*Tulare has grown a bit since 1968. I can’t find the historical data, but I remember its population was about 8,000. It now has nearly 69,000 residents, and five high schools.
Down by the lakeside
One final note about a place I only lived in for three years (high school and a year at College of the Sequoias in nearby Visalia). And that is that Tulare Lake, once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi but drained over time as the rivers leading to it were dammed or diverted to agriculture, has reappeared, thanks to the torrential rains in that quarter. The LA Times reports that “Once 120,000 acres [in spring], roughly the size of Lake Tahoe, Tulare Lake had receded to 61,000 acres as of early August. At its highest, the lake’s depth averaged between 5 and 7 feet.” It’s to the west of the city, in King County. Tulare is in Tulare County.
More lindens
In Portland, there’s a grove of lindens (species Tilia, if you care) in Laurelhurst Park. They have heart-shaped leaves.
Gustav Mahler composed a lieder about those trees. “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft!” (“I breathed a gentle fragrance”) is one of a cycle called Five Rückert Songs, music set to poems by Friedrich Rückert.
This clip from YouTube features the Swedish soprano Anna Larsson with the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel in Brussels in 2009. Dudamel is now the music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic.
And finally, a photo by Penny Mayes of an ancient lime, or linden, growing at Chilston Park, a massive country house in Boughton Malherbe, Kent, England. The oldest parts of the house, now operated as a hotel, date from the 15th century.
Thunder poem
August is thunderstorm weather in the Midwest. Thunderstorms are rare, however, in Oregon.
After the Thunder
The grumbling passes. Flashes of unsight, Smells of ozone. More thunder, from a passing jet. Jetliner. Ocean liner. Drawer liner. How we line our lives, Little pieces of fluff in the corners. Beads of memory, Dry tears. Metals, ribbons, certificates, Maybe even a watch. Cards from the children, Reindeer made from clothespins, Their eyes too close together. Let the lightning limn The boxes of your memory. Dark storage Cobwebbed with emotion. T-ball practice. A meeting gone wrong. The sweater you wish You had never begun. You have a box of shells, too, Memories of the beach. You never could get all the sand out It kept creeping out the crevices. Broken sand dollars And rocks eroded in strange ways where Water found the weak spots And took them. The sand your dollars weep now Comes from where the rocks failed And the ocean levied its due While the thunder rumbled.
Check out
From time to time, I get notices in my email about writing classes or workshops. Often they involve strategies for getting through writer’s block.
Thing is, I don’t have that problem. I like to write.
[Except when I don’t feel like it.]
It’s easy to write.
[Except when it isn’t.]
Fortunately, salvation is always close at hand. Writer’s block, or writer’s disinclination, is, for me, a paper tiger, and I hold the match.
Usually the application of the seat of my skirt to the seat of the recliner (where I do a fair amount of writing) is sufficient.
Just wind me up, and I’m the Energizer bunny of words.
Well. I wanted to make you feel better about times when you don’t or can’t write and all I did was boast about how easy it is for me.
If it helps at all, know that writing is easy for me because I practice. Daily writing exercises, on and off (mostly on) for several decades, have honed my skills.
If I played violin or piano scales with the same regularity, I’d be able to sight-read complex music without stumbling.
Practice matters
So when I suggest that you write every day, it’s with the knowing that you will find writing easier and easier with time. And not all that long a time, either. You should see progress within a week. Really.
So I urge you, once again, three pages or 20 minutes’ typing. Every day. Usually first thing in the morning.
If nothing else, it will make your day better. There’s nothing like a little creativity in the morning to perk up your day.
Sleep notes
Now, sleep, that I could use help with. I’m getting by with four, four and a half hours a night, yet I don’t feel sleepy or sleep deprived. I seldom nap during the day.
I am in bed for eight hours or more, but for much of it I am laying awake. I know this because of a sleep app that tracks which type of sleep I am in—light, deep or REM—or whether I am awake.
Perhaps the reason I don’t sleep is age, or the multiple sclerosis. It’s not sleep apnea. I’m using a CPAP and it isn’t helping.
It’s not racing thoughts, either. I really do have a placid mind. Worry, guilt and regret are useless emotions, and I can set them aside with some success.
I practice all that other sleep hygiene, like having a constant bedtime, no TV in the bedroom, no screen time or alcohol close to sleep time. I’m committed.
I just don’t sleep very well, and I don’t know why.
So, while I wish for you a good experience for writing and the practice of writing, I wish for myself an uninterrupted night’s sleep. Dreams that I remember.
I had those things, years ago.
I will have them again, I know. When I figure out how.
But for now
Take care of yourself. Get good sleep.
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