Better Than Dead

Long ago in a lifetime far, far away…Okay, when I was in my twenties, my friend and I liked to drive up Calabasas way and visit Tapia Park—part of the larger Malibu Creek State Park. They used to film M*A*S*H and other TV shows in Malibu Creek Park (still do film up there) and some parts of Planet of the Apes and other films. In fact, much of the land was owned by 20^th Century Fox for location filming until the state acquired it for park land. Before that it was a country club. Before that it was taken over by Spanish and Yankee squatters. Before that, it belonged to the Chumash tribe for centuries.

The smaller area of Tapia Park has hiking and biking and equestrian trails but the part we visited mostly just had lots of majestic oak trees and less majestic picnic tables. The big attraction for us was Malibu Creek itself, which ran along the western edge. (I think it was the western edge. Pardon me if I’ve gotten the direction wrong.) To me, this area always had a presence, a kind of watching-waiting, sometimes benevolent if you caught it in the right mood and there weren’t a lot of people around, sometimes—well, if not hostile, then reluctant to have company, if you know what I mean. I never felt anything sinister there but sometimes it just was not in the mood.

What we liked to do was pack a lunch, take our shoes off, and go wading down the creek. In the rainy season (usually October to April here in SoCal) it was prone to flood. In the latter months of the summer, it was greatly diminished. But there was a sweet spot in late spring and early summer when the creek flowed freely and was really delightful. Chapparal grew all around and every year there was a different growing arrangement along the creek. If you’ve been in the SoCal hills on a hot day, you’ll know chaparral has a distinctive scent: wild fennel, barley, sage, manzanita, and other plants give it the baking aroma of some exotic bread. It’s a unique scent I’ve never smelled anywhere else I’ve been in the world and it always says to me: home. The creek had rock pools and small waterfall cascades over the big rocks. The flow was never so much to threaten to knock you off your feet, but some of those pools were deceptively deep and it wasn’t unusual to take a step and wind up with a soaked crotch. But it didn’t matter. I loved it so much. It lifted my heart and spirit.

One year we went on a particularly long wade down the creek and spotted a stone pillar standing on a slight rise in the creek bed. It was about three feet in diameter and about four feet high and it was composed of shale—lovely streaks of salmon and gold and caramel and flecks of black and white. It felt like a natural altar to me. It stood all alone, maybe fifteen to twenty feet from the cliff behind it. Shale is very flinty and flakes off easily, so it’s entirely possible this had once been part of the cliff behind it—perhaps an arch or some such geological formation that got washed away by eons of floods. It had a presence, though, a sense of self-containment, even as the water washed by it, and a sense of wonder. There were a bunch of loose shale pieces on top of it. I picked up a piece that beckoned to me, put it in my pocket, and took it home.

No, this is not one of those stories like you hear from Hawaii or California ghost towns where if you take something your luck turns terrible and you have to ship the rock or whatever back to the park it came from to save yourself. I had that piece of shale for years with no ill effect, proudly displayed with other rocks I’d collected here and there. (It’s probably still around here somewhere but I’ve no idea where. That seems to be the theme of my life these days.) But sometime after I’d collected that rock I couldn’t remember if I’d thanked the altar for it. I thanked it in absentia but somehow felt the needed for an in person visit—because I felt so drawn to it. It took me a while to get back there—the next year, in fact. My friend and I waded down the stream but never found the altar even though we knew we’d waded farther than the year before (using a bridge over the creek as a marker). Where had it disappeared to? Who hid it from our view?

I don’t really think it somehow mystically, magically disappeared. Perhaps the chapparal grew thicker around it that year and hid it from view. But…perhaps the park and the altar were just not in the mood for my nonsense. I only know that I’ve always wanted to find it again, but it’s been a very long time since I visited Tapia Park, and I’m no longer physically capable of hiking down that creek. It’s disappearance, however, has kept it playing through my mind and heart ever since. Probably no enchantment involved. Probably nothing magical about it. Except, perhaps, the enchantment of a heart always willing to believe in the possibility of magic.

But it could be magic, right?

Random quote of the day:

“When we are in a place where the manmade constructs of the world seem as though they have crumbled, or time feels like it no longer exists, that feeling of separation fades away. We are reminded, in the deepest, rawest parts of our being that we are nature. It is in and of us. We are not superior or inferior, separate or removed; our breathing, breaking, ageing, bleeding, making and dying are the things of this earth. We are made up of the materials we see in the places around us, and we cannot undo the blood and bone that forms us.”

—Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Thin Places

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.”

—Li Po (China, 701-762) (tr. Sam Hamill)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.”

— Richard P. Feynman, The Value of Science

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“She had thought, in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn’t been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.

—Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The presence of God.
In a tunnel of birdsong
a locked gate opens.

—Tomas Tranströmer, “Haikudikter”
(tr. Michael McGriff and Mikaela Grassl)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“Projecting our civilized feelings onto the antelope torn apart by lions, we see mere horror: nature red in tooth and claw. But animals aren’t victims, and don’t feel sorry for themselves. The lioness springs without malice; the torn antelope suffers and lets go; each plays its role in the sacred game.”

—Stephen Mitchell, Introduction to The Book of Job

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The senseless destruction of living things and all the sorrows of humanity count for nothing in the great whole.—The death of a sensitive man expiring in the company of his disconsolate friends, and that of a butterfly cut down by the chill morning air inside the calyx of a flower, are similar moments in the course of nature. Man is nothing but a phantom, a shadow, a mist that scatters in the air.”

—Xavier de Maistre, Journey Around My Room (tr. Stephen Sartarelli)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“To be strong does not mean to sprout muscles and flex. It means meeting one’s own numinosity without fleeing, actively living with the wild nature in one’s own way. It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know. It means to stand and live.”

—Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Well, this Musings post is grossly long, and maybe a bit dated, but I started throwing things into the file, then got caught up in the holidays—and God forbid anyone should be deprived of my Musings. [insert barf emoji] At least it has a lot of pictures.

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One of my most profound mystical experiences, or contact with the numinous, was invoked by a dead cat. It changed me from near-atheist to “oh I get it now.” Thank you, Mocha. The Mocha Hierophany.

Mocha, an old soul from the 80s:

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New Year’s Day sunset: Even enhancing the color on this doesn’t come close to the intensity of the light. Nothing ever beats Nature. Thank you, Nature.

The same sky from my friend who lives a few miles from here. This one captures the immensity of the sky better than mine did, how the clouds seemed to go on forever.

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Here’s a question for you: is poetry a purely mammalian response to the world? Is magic? Would intelligent and highly advanced reptiles, for instance, have that sense of wonder and awe and poetry? I don’t want to be Mammalian-Centric.

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I always think of the four of swords as the “rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated” card. (Yes, dad jokes help me remember the meanings.)

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A few days before the new year (December 30th) I found out that I share blood with one of the accused Salem witches (Mary Leach Ireson). We’re descended from the same ancestor (Richard Leech) through the brother (Lawrence Leech) of my direct ancestor (Thomas Leech). Maybe that’s why I’ve always been obsessed with these trials. I particularly like the “maybe you were a witch but didn’t know it” line of questioning. Apparently, the “maybe I’m a witch but didn’t know it” defense worked because she wasn’t executed and lived until 1711.

As I’ve said before, women rarely appear in the historical record unless they’ve suffered some trauma.

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I have so much work to do and a limited amount of time. But time is not my enemy. If I focus on what needs to be done, not allowing myself to be distracted, I will do what I need to do. The only reason I say it isn’t against me is because I will do what I can do. If time runs out, then it does. It will eventually anyway so why so sweat it?

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You know that weird stuff you have to clear from your parents or grandparents’ homes when they pass? When you reach a certain age you can’t be arsed about good taste. Sometimes you just want stuff that makes you giggle or because you know it will chagrin some of the people who inherit it.

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I finally got my Red Book set up so that people can actually see it instead of being hidden away in a room they can’t go in.

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Last month I pulled my novel Venus In Transit out of the trunk. I started working on it in 1999. It was inspired by Patrick Harpur’s Daimonic Reality and later given shape and spin by George P. Hansen’s The Trickster and the Paranormal. Plus all those thousands and thousands of paranormal shows I’ve watched over the years and many another paranormal book. I had the novel in a fairly polished state and was getting ready to start marketing it when my mother had a stroke and my world went all to hell for several years. Then there was the very long and painful writer’s block afterwards.

Things started to loosen up for me artistically after watching season one of Hellier last year—and that’s when I had my Hellier related synchronicity storm. Which let me know I was on the right track creatively. I finished one novel this summer and started working on another. Then Hellier Season 2 came along. It fed my head yet again, and there was something about the discussion in that series of pushing through frustration that reminded me of the artistic process.

Whenever an artist, or at least any artist I know, reaches a point of frustration it’s often the sign of imminent breakthrough to a new way of doing things. Pushing through that frustration is a vital part of the process. So I got out that old paranormal novel with an idea to see if it really was ready to market and I fell into a hole with it for about a week. That edit is done, but when I got to the part in the story where my investigator discovers strange, small, three-toed footprints with dermal ridges, I thought, “No one will ever believe I didn’t get this from Hellier.” But those are the breaks. Hellier2 did encourage me to pull it back out of the trunk and that’s got to be a good thing.

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Hellier is beautifully shot and edited. I remember when the granddaddy of paranormal shows, Ghost Hunters, premiered. They used that cinema vérité style which gave a feel of credibility (and because it was cheap to produce), but imitation is not the sincerest form of flattery. Most of what’s come since has been crap.

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My life is a lot better since I’ve given up trying to find ultimate answers. I’m more content trying to find ultimate questions.

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Well, I got within 100 pages of finishing Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson but my medieval porn book arrived so…sorry Neal.

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Cats exist simultaneously in this time/space and in hyperspace which is why they always seem to take up a vastly greater amount of space than their physical bodies would imply.

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I’ve been to both Disneyland and the “Disneyland of Cemeteries”—Forest Lawn—and I would choose to spend my eternity in neither of them. (Talk about terrifying!)

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Lt. Col. Vindman during the impeachment hearings reading that paragraph to his dad and talking about it? “Don’t worry. This is America. We do what’s right here.” We have to justify his faith in this country. It’s been what was true in the past and we can’t let it fall away. DO THE RIGHT THING, AMERICA. And Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi talking to Vindman about the pride of being an immigrant and being an American? Yep, that’s the essence of what this country it’s always been.