Where in the Hell Is Capistrano?

My neighbor said, “They were gathered…a thousand swallows.  Last Wednesday.  Where were you?  You missed it.  Now they’re gone.”  We were sitting on his porch drinking red wine, waiting for the sun to set somewhere north of Taylor Canyon, looking at open space, not empty, but empty of swallows.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and I meant it, even though I thought he was exaggerating the numbers.  It’s one of the things we do:  watch for the day in June when the swallows return, surprising us as they string themselves on the power lines beside the road to Tuscarora.  I'm not usually here in September, when they leave.  “Do you think they really go to Capistrano?” I asked.

"Fuck’d if I know,” he replied, finishing his third glass of wine.  He’s a retired teamster in his eighties with advanced emphysema.  We’ve talked about how sensible it would be for him to move back to northern California near his son and near sea level.  It would be easier to breathe.  “I’m not going anywhere” he told me earlier, as we admired the fall light warming the valley floor.  “It’s goddam beautiful here.  I’m gonna die here.  That’s that.”  He looked right at me, as if I were going to talk him out of moving or dying.  I’m not sure which.

My ninety-six year old mother hates organized religion in general and the Mormon church in particular.  The mention of an afterlife makes her furious.  “Their idea of ‘heaven,’” she says, her arthritic fingers making quotation marks in the air, “is stupid.”  She is glad my father’s ashes are scattered in the Ruby Mountains and she has repeatedly said, “It doesn’t matter to me.  Funerals are for the living,” when I ask her what her wishes are.  "You don't 'go' anywhere when you die," she informs me, again making that fluttering motion with her fingers.

And yet.  Last week I took her for a drive up Lamoille Canyon.  The view from the top of the mountain gave us the lay of the land and an infinity of Nevada sky.  “A sky like that makes you think there might be a heaven,” I heard her say to herself.

Rat Terriers vs. Wood Rat

I pulled away the cardboard I had tacked over the opening.  Both Linda and I saw something move in the white plastic dishpan where I stored cleaning supplies and a extra roll of paper towels, now half shredded.

"It's still there," I said.  

She called her two rat terriers, "Chewie!  Zeb!  Look!"  She pointed to the dishpan.  "Git 'em!"  The dogs, excited by her voice, sniffed  around the cluttered dishpan.  "They can smell it,"she said.  We stood back and watched, waiting for all hell to break loose, but the dogs kept getting distracted  by our voices or by something going on outside.  "Well, I'm going to have to get the big guns, " Linda said, referring to the other two rat terriers still in her rig.

What followed was both exciting and frightening, seeing the pack instinct at work.  When Linda came back in the house with all four of her rat terriers and pointed under the sink, the dogs crowded together and pounced.  Within thirty seconds, the pack rat was dead and half eaten on my kitchen floor.  Linda snatched the rat away from the dogs, held it by the furry tail and said, "Where do you want me to put it?"

After dispensing with the bloody pack rat and helping Linda call her dogs so she could get back to the ranch, I thanked her again.  "I hate to admit it," I said, "but I enjoyed that."

No Aha! Moment

Sometimes during my two-mile walk, I find that certain troublesome moments in my life come to mind.  I say to myself, “Oh, it’s that story again,” run it through, and then return to the August morning, noticing the haze of a forest fire somewhere north and hearing the distant yip of a coyote.  One such fragment is simply a question,  “What was I supposed to know?”  He’s dead now, so it’s not like I could call him and ask.

He was my therapist during and after an unwanted pregnancy, being deserted by my young—and crazy—husband, and choosing to give up the baby for adoption.  I was barely twenty-three and I needed  help.  By the way, this took place in Reno, Nevada in 1964 and 1965.

 It’s like remembering an anxiety dream:  if I could crack the code; if I could  have  one revelatory moment, no matter how awful it might be, I would say,  “Aha!  That’s why I did those things. That’s where everything I don’t like about myself comes from.   At least that’s the way I remember our last few sessions.

   

I relied on him.  Told him everything.  Learned how difficult that is—telling everything--especially talking about sex.  Now, when this moment comes up on my walk, I am angry with him, a slightly balding, forty-year old married man who chewed a single piece of Dentyne gum.  

At our last session, he asked me if I wanted to go for a drive on Saturday, maybe up Mt. Rose Highway.  Just to talk.  I said "Sure," but I never showed up.  I never saw him again.  I was dating a young geologist.  He wore plaid shirts and had a slide rule on his belt, loved hiking in the mountains, seemed to be in love with me.

What was the therapist trying to get me to understand?  Something about  my father?  My mother?  Why I had gotten myself into the mess I was getting myself out of?  Maybe nothing.  Nothing at all. 

Bambi, Anna Karenina, and Dramatic Irony

Bambi, Anna Karenina and Dramatic Irony 

When I was five years old, so the family story goes, my mother took me to see Walt Disney’s Bambi.  She must have read the Little Golden Book to me enough times that I knew the plot by heart.  The tension mounts.  Bambi’s  mother is killed by hunters.   The animals of the forest flee from the raging conflagration.   At that point in the movie, my mother recounts, I left my seat, walked down the aisle toward the flicker and crackle of the animated fire, saying, “Don’t worry, Bambi, your father will save you.”

I remember the story, not the experience, but something similar happened to me on my second reading of Anna Karenina.  While re-reading chapters XXI-XXVI and the intense sequence of scenes, I wanted to leave the safety of my armchair, step into the novel and warn Anna, “Don’t!” 

In a second reading, seated at the right hand of the omniscient author, I know what the scenes mean:  in the garden, when Vronsky watches radiant and pregnant Anna, I know the love child will not be loved;  during the steeplechase, when Anna watches Vronsky  take  the reins, causing the  mare to stumble and break her back, I know his  desire for control will  destroy what he loves most;  when overwrought Anna rides in  the carriage with her mechanical husband, I witness her reveal her deepest truth, “I hate you.  I love him,” and I know no good will come of it. Damn Tolstoy!  On a second reading I see he creates a world where I, at least, have to agree with Anna’s inevitable choice in chapter XXXI—throw yourself before an oncoming train.  

It’s human nature to want to know what the gods won’t tell us.  In a second reading, literature gives us what life does not.  My emotional experience is deepened precisely because I know how the novel  will “turn out.”

Lately, I find I am worrying too much about how things are going to “turn out.”  I suppose it’s my age. The worry has not translated into a “seize the day” attitude as much as an incipient fatalism, a belief that the script has been written.  I’m close to the end of the book, no matter what I do, or don’t do.

I (Heart) Fernet

I (Heart) Fernet

I asked the bartender, “What’s the name of that aperitif made from artichokes?”

 My husband and I had walked down past the Pikes Street market, along the Seattle waterfront,  enjoying the summer evening after a pleasant but early dinner at a restaurant five or six blocks away.  When my husband   suggested a nightcap, I said “Sure.”

The bartender must have sensed that I really didn’t want anything to drink. He was busy, in no mood to play guessing games, and clearly pleased with my husband, who knew what he wanted.    When he came back with my husband’s draft beer in one hand and a liquor bottle in the other, he said,  “Is this what you’re talking about?”

I liked the look of the label, cream-colored and dense with black print.  I studied the bottle.  “Fernet… I think that’s it.”  I wasn’t at all sure, but the bartender was giving me a “drink it or wear it look,” so I quickly said,  “Yes.  That’s the one.”

“Ugh!” he said.  “You want that on the rocks?”

“Of course,” I replied, as if everyone knows that’s how one drinks Fernet.

My drink, dark as molasses, tasted the way horse liniment smells and a little minty.  Someone on Wikipedia  describes the taste of Fernet as   “black licorice and Listerine.”

When my husband signaled to the bartender that he was ready to pay the tab, the guy said, “I’m not charging her for that,” glancing at my empty glass.  He didn’t say  “…that vile concoction” but I could read his look.

I laughed, leaned toward him, looked him in the eye and said, “I’m going to tell you a secret.  I really liked it.”

I did.   I  like Fernet.  Of course, I had confused Fernet with Cynar, made of artichokes and with a picture of an artichoke on the label.  Both are referred to as a“digestif” not an “apartif.”  Fernet is made with everything but artichokes and the kitchen sink.  Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

           Fernet is made from a number of herbs and spices which vary according to the brand, but usually              
           include myrrh, rhubarb, chamomile, cardamom, aloe, and especially saffron,[1] with a base of              
           grape distilled spirits, and coloured with caramel colouring. Ingredients rumored to be in fernet i          

           include codeine, mushrooms, fermented beets, coca leaf, gentian, rhubarb, wormwood, zedoary,          

           cinchona, bay leaves, absinthe, orange peel, calumba, echinacea, quinine, ginseng, St. John's  

           wort, sage, and peppermint oil.[1]

 Who likes Fernet, besides me? Well, pretty much everyone in Argentina, where they mix it with Coca Cola.  It’s popular in San Francisco  and is considered to have  medicinal value, “treating menstrual and gastrointestinal discomfort, hangovers, baby colic, and (formerly) cholera.”

Who do I hope likes Fernet?  I would be pleased if Sting, Helen Mirren, and Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth shared my newly-discovered taste, but I’m skeptical.  I brought up the subject last night at a dinner party and one of the guests said, “Oh, _____________ loves Fernet.  Or used to love Fernet.”    He’s a recovering alcoholic and, I have to say, a very disagreeable person.

Tuscarora Sunrise: June 21, 2011

Tuscarora Sunrise

June 21, 2011

The phone rang.  "Go look out your window."  I recognized Linda's voice.

"What time is it?" I said, fumbling with the curtain, then opening the french door onto the deck.

"Is the sun up yet?"

"Well, it's pretty bright out.  I'm going to have to go out in the yard to get a good look."  I knew what she was talking about.  I kicked on some shoes, hurried out the door into the yard, and saw the sun entirely up and over the Independence Mountains, over Milt's trailer.  "Damn!" I told her.  "It's completely up."

"Not here.  Not yet," she said.  Linda lives four miles away, down on the valley floor.  "I'm going outside to take a picture.  Goodbye."

"Hey, thanks for calling," I said as I heard the phone click.  So, thanks to my childhood friend, there I was at 5:30, standing in the yard in my pajamas, surrounded by a glorious morning.   The lilacs, the sagebrush, the noxious whitetop in full bloom, all glazed by golden light and the promise of summer.

Hallelujah!

Crossing Over, Looking Down

Crossing Over,  Looking Down

"In me thou seest the twilight of such day/ As after sunset fadeth in the west"

Wm. Shakespeare Sonnet 73 

Every time we drive across Big River Bridge my ninety-five year old mother looks out the window, down at the beach, glances seaward, and says, "I'm always surprised how small people look."  She pauses and then continues, "It really puts things in perspective."  She smiles at me, acknowledging the double entendre.

Usually, I nod and say, "Yes it does."  If I'm tired and cranky, I say, "You've already told me that."  It doesn't faze her.  Whether we're coming back from errands in Fort Bragg or lunch in Mendocino, she makes the same remarks.  She is trying to tell me something about old age and  death.  I haven't been listening.

It is the diminishment of her self that she sees in the tiny figures walking on the sand.  Old age is doing that to her, making her feel small.  When she alludes to perspective, to a human being set against sea and sky, she is telling me she knows she is close to the vanishing point and that it is okay.