Indian summer heat

Right about now I begin to idealize real autumn and winter. Thank goodness for a hefty fan to blow warm air out one window in the evening and draw cooler air in the other. Thank goodness for perfectly airy summer blankets my father-in-law brought back from Israel. 

We have a new kitten (!) - not pictured. My wife found her hiding in a storage cranny at a school, and we caught her together. She is a glorious happy-go-lucky little tabby. We've named her Matilda. We are currently spending...quite a lot of time on tasks related to her. Please cross your fingers with us that at the conclusion of our feline diplomacy program/introduction protocols, she and our adult cat will have a beautiful friendship.

I'm listening to two songs from Erin today:

"I Could Have Been" - Fire Swimmer

"effortlessly, i feel everything" - The Man The Myth The Meatslab ("so reminiscent of 'Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl' and making me nostalgic but also like a sequel to it" she said)

Read in August 2025 (part one of two)

 1. Every Peach is a Story, by David Mas Masumoto and Nikiko Masumoto, illustrated by Lauren Tamaki (2025)

Sweet picture book about interdependence and farming, from the father and daughter who grow some of the most legendary peaches and nectarines in California. 

 2. Molly Saves the Day: A Summer Story, by Valerie Tripp (1986)

Yes, I got suddenly nostalgic for these books after reading another World War II-era middle-grade novel, and read the whole box set. (By the way, my library only had a partial set, what the heck? Thank goodness for inter-library loans.) I have such strong memories of the lovely, vivid, realistic illustrations in these books, as well as the mini illustrations that are sprinkled directly into the text.

3. So Gay for You: Friendship, Found Family, and the Show that Started It All, by Leisha Hailey and Kate Moennig (2025) 

I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes insights and anecdotes from The L Word, which I have watched four or five times through in the last twelve years and am currently re-watching with my wife. It was very much a celebrity memoir. Some parts I read just to get to the interesting parts. 

4. Molly's Surprise: A Christmas Story, by Valerie Tripp (1986)

See above! 

5. Into the Water, by Paula Hawkins (2017) 

Hmm! I wanted a page-turner and trusted that this author would deliver, and she did. I truly enjoy how well she builds an atmosphere and how hard she makes each word choice work for her. Most (or all?) of the narrators were so unwell that I felt rather unwell and stressed reading this, but no regrets. 

6. Why Me? The Unfair Reason You Get Cavities and What to Do About It, by V. Kim Kutsch (2020)

My dentist gave this to me for free and it was quite informative! 

7. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab (2020)

My  feelings about this really shifted throughout the course of the novel. Fascinating premise: a woman who lives forever but cannot be remembered once an interaction ends. Our introduction to Addie in 2014 New York City was executed so well. I wish it had been a short story - it would have been an amazing one.

The 2014 parts felt more successful than the many, many historical flashbacks. I love historical fiction, but I have high standards for it (thanks, Kate Forsyth!). I want a certain depth of research and richness of detail and a level of unfamiliarity if the setting is a foreign country hundreds of years ago. The historical narrative also felt like a slog, because immortality is a slog for Addie - her curse means she can't have relationships of any kind, hold a job, successfully rent or own property, it's a lot - so I kind of respect that but still didn't enjoy it. The 2014 narrative began to feel like 500 Days of Summer. Lots of manic pixie NYC adventures. The ending didn't really spark for me.

She sells

I thought I had collected sea shells etc. selectively, but over the years it still ended up being far too many. (More than pictured!) Mostly from two points on the edge of two oceans: Laguna Beach, California, and Mandurah, Western Australia. (Though I grew up on the coast, the surf at my home beach is cold and rough, spitting out broken sand dollar fragments and little else.)

 In my 30s I learned that the accumulated effects of tourists removing seashells from beaches are measurable and detrimental to the beach's ecology - did you know? So these days you'll catch me treasuring the ones I have, and enjoying the rest where I find them. 

Muir Woods again, Stinson Beach all burned up

January 2025. My then-fiancée, now-wife and I showed Muir Woods to two transplant friends who hadn't seen it before, followed by a jaunt up the winding cliffside part of Highway 1 to Stinson Beach. I opened the back of my camera at some point in error. Light licks at the edges of some images, nearly obliterates others. Sometimes when the tourists are in the way of the photo, it means they are the photo, you know?

Last August, farewells

On a foggy late-summer day, farewell to a house I lived in for a long time but hadn't lived in for a long time. It looked more beautiful than usual that day, nearly empty, filled with diffuse light, recently repainted with the floors refinished (and more) to get ready for sale.

A farewell that didn't turn out to have been a farewell after all, after my father changed his mind and moved back into the only house we ever all lived in.

A farewell to my mother, moving several states away after 40+ years in San Francisco. 

This was the evening after the moving truck came and went, the evening before my mother and her sweet kitty left with my big sister. Zinnia was a bit at loose ends in the nearly unfurnished space, trying to understand it all, I expect.

The movers hadn't been willing to pack some spillable items (cooking oils, hair products, etc.). My mother was fretting slightly about what to do with them. I said I could use some of them. I still laugh remembering my sister pressing the whole box of them into my hands, saying with a smile but a heavy emphasis, "Just. Make them. Go away." We have that mega bottle of vanilla extract in our kitchen still. 

I stood at the back window and remembered the many, many, many times I had looked out at the ocean here, or in the ocean's direction on these foggy days. The five-story building that went up when I was in elementary school, painted a glaring coral color, that filled one of our western windows instead. How we grieved the old view. The breeze coming off the Pacific into my bunk bed on warm nights, the traffic noise that one could almost, with a great deal of effort, mistake for the noise of waves breaking.

When it's clear, you can see the tiny bumps of the the Farallon Islands on the western horizon. On the clearest days of all, not just the southern but the northern Farallones, and Point Reyes to the northwest. The spray of the surf visible from more than a mile away, on wild days.What a wide sash of blue, blue, blue that we climbed the hill behind our house to see better on sunny days.  How it turned a glancing silver in certain lights, or the mysterious streaks of darker gray-green on its surface that I found so enchanting. I think now perhaps it was the shadows of clouds too distant for me to notice. 

"Many of us hate limitations. We rail against them and push into them, HARD. And sometimes to great effect...."

Video portrait of the blogger finally starting to hit a skill that took 2.5+ years of off-and-on work....both soft work and "smashing into the rocks" work.

 "There is a skill you will never do. It may require more strength than you will build, more flexibility than your body can manage, a specific kind of coordination, timing, or momentum that is outside of what you'll develop. We like to think of ourselves as limitless. But this is a mistake. We will always be able to continue to grow, but we grow like oaks, up and out and down and sideways, in accordance with our environment, our genetics, and our experience with previous growth. We don't grow infinitely in all directions at once.

"Many of us hate limitations. We rail against them and push into them, HARD. And sometimes to great effect.

"And sometimes, we put so much of our energy into railing against a limitation, pursuing a skill or a trick or a goal -- that we fail to grow into the soft places where we can have more success.

"I'll be the last to tell you to take the path of least resistance. But I'll be the first to tell you that what sets you apart as a performer, and as a human, is the beautiful variety of what comes naturally to you. Lean into what works, what feels good, what you do that no one else does. Strive for excellence AND don't smash yourself against the rocks of a skill that isn't coming.

"It's a hard balance to strike, it's even hard to explain. But if you needed permission to work on something different, or to soften your intensity where it's only frustrating you, or to spend time playing with that sill arm movement you like to do. This is it!"

- Janelle Peters / @cirque_psych 

I keep returning to these thoughts. I'm not a performer, just someone who likes to move and, both separately and relatedly, keeps needing to learn not to rail against limitations.

I hadn't experienced that in such a physical way until I started recreational circus. Aerials are physically strenuous enough that I found I could quickly ruin my whole evening if I didn't know when to quit trying, when to leave a skill alone that just wasn't happening for me. I'd get more and more tired and more and more frustrated (which is hardly a combination that leads to breakthroughs, huh)...

Anyway, I was grateful for this perspective and copied these words down into my aerials notebook. Circus specifics aside, maybe they'll resonate with you too.

Scottish highlands and islands

May 2024.

Edinburgh - first days in Scotland

 

I didn't know what to expect from Edinburgh and I loved it so much. It enchanted me. The architecture, the walkability, the many delicious vegan food options, the bookstores, the artsy vibe, the history, the Harry Potter Easter eggs - like Victoria Street (above), said to be the street Diagon Alley was based on. I just loved it. My only regret is not having longer there, and not getting a vegan afternoon tea.

 

The weather was gloriously clear and mild. (Our cab driver from the airport reported that until a few days before our arrival, it had been raining for about five months straight.) The sun was up until after nine o'clock.

 

So many fellow tourists. So, so many. I heard so much French, German, and American English.

 

Erin had told me, "King Arthur's Seat is worth the climb, even if (especially if?) it's foggy." That's the hill pictured above, peaking at 822 feet high. Funny story, but as an adult steep hillsides and cliff edges make me irrationally uncomfortable; they feel like they have a force to them that will yank me/my car over the edge if I get close enough. I ended up taking two long breaks on the hillside to wrestle with my urge to come back down. BUT I did manage to make it to the very top, and dashed off a postcard to Erin as I sat there.   

 

 May 2024.

The West of Ireland - the Aran Islands

May 2024.