I could have watched Heather Cox Richardson on dangerous messaging from the far right or dems have lost the plot with Katie Couric but I didn’t. I watched a live feed from BBC Springwatch of a Blackcap mother bird feed her four young and then cover them with her whole body while a soft rain fell. That was a bit of my self care today.
I did just get back from a coffeehouse event with democrats and nothing fulfills me more than being jacked-up on coffee brainstorming and asking and telling what’s on your mind with a room of democrats while in a cozy pocket room in a bookstore! Serious high.
On another calmer evening, a local walked up behind me and said are you looking at the turkeys? I said yes I was. They were way up in the oak tree and gobbling back and forth with another group of turkeys in a nearby fir tree. The person made a call, which she said was the sound of a female turkey and it got an instant response. She told me she grew up on a farm and has always liked turkeys.
This was in my neighborhood. I like where I live because I can walk out of my house and easily find someone to get into a good discussion with. I’ve never seen the turkey caller again.
A few hours before this I shoveled horse manure next to blackberry bushes across the road from trains colliding loudly (on purpose in a train yard) into each other while at the same time trying to have a conversation with another person about the challenges of knowing people, what they say and do or don’t say and do.
On Saturday, I took two people to a bird walk, their first one. We went to Golden Gardens park.
This happened after I helped one out with an art project. She needed hands for paper mache. Enormous amounts. I loved being in the studio. It had high ceilings, plants, sticks, rocks, bits of an old wasp nest, moss, splatters of paint.
We mixed up paper, water, glue, carried it in buckets, put it on a cart and rolled it to the art project outside under cover with low brick walls where birds could fly over. There were nesting starlings and swallows.
I was a good hour or two into helping as we scooped up handfuls of paper mache and pressed it to form a solid interior within the structure when I asked, so what is this?
She said, it is between negotiation and space or some such thing, a passage. Like a transition place, I asked, and she said, yes, like life. Otherwise we didn’t talk that much or listen to music, just filled in the walls of negotiation and space.
By the time of the bird walk, she had disposed of the huge piece of art as it was too big to ship to her next location. It was like practicing dying, she said, and laughed. I watched a sped-up video of the sculpture ending up in the garbage. Well, there it goes. It was a passage.
About 3/4 way through walking around golden gardens, she took a deep breath and said, “it smells like rice, like northern Iran.” Her friend explained, “we have rice fields.” I thought it smelled good. Now I know how northern Iran smells. I wonder what it was here that smelled like rice?
“Argh that’s a bullfrog!” said someone, as one made the bellow, the call, the sound they make. I like the sound and I like them and asked what is wrong with bullfrogs?
“They aren’t native.”
Oh. “How did they get here” someone wanted to know. A boat, I said in my head. I also thought, none of us are native.
Later that afternoon I was gifted bubbles. I tried to blow bubbles and take photos of them, which was hard with a slight breeze. It must have looked weird in the front yard, me chasing bubbles around, but no one seemed to notice.
I cooked rice and vegetables for dinner and thought about the morning walk, the rice smell around the pond with cottonwoods and natives and non-natives all together.
Tonight I’m going to another contradance. I wanted to tell you about the first one but haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe I will soon.
