Doves

Some doves roosting in our patio last month, now flown who knows where.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Doves

Bodega Bay Inn

More intense colors at Bodega Bay Inn—artistic sanctuary, an eclectic assortment of rooms with everything from pianos to wooden jungle cats, hacienda-like dens with enclosed patios to upper-story “lighthouse” rooms with floor to ceiling windows.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Colors

Jenner

The ocean at Jenner, a coast from my far past.  At River’s End, with its amazing views, we ate a most soul-satisfying dinner of all local produce—spice-rubbed pork tenderloins served with local apples accompanied by israeli couscous and cranberries, and a vegetable napoleon combining layers of the season’s freshest vegetables with overnight tomatoes, fresh basil, feta cheese, and asian marinated tofu finished with micro greens.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Coast

In the Rain

The rain on Sunday brought out intense colors—this one of the loveliest.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Blooms

The Birds

Hitchcock filmed the scariest parts of The Birds at Bodega, a mile or two inland, rather than Bodega Bay.  Here’s a photo essay on the bird activity there now . . .


image:  Christie B. Cochrell, "The Birds"

St. Crispin's Day

Happy St. Crispin's Day!

How much of the famous speech can you quote?

Per Wikipedia, Saints Crispin and Crispinian are the Christian patron saints of cobblers, tanners, leather workers and, since it came into being, of the leather subculture.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Reflections on Mills College Chapel

Light-Gathering

The beautiful canals of Annecy, where I wish I was (though Bodega Bay is fun and watery too).

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Annecy, France

Light Gathering

To gather light, a poem and a picture.

Reading An Anthology Of Chinese Poems Of The Sung Dynasty, I Pause To Admire The Length And Clarity Of Their Titles

It seems these poets have nothing
up their ample sleeves
they turn over so many cards so early,
telling us before the first line
whether it is wet or dry,
night or day, the season the man is standing in,
even how much he has had to drink.

Maybe it is autumn and he is looking at a sparrow.
Maybe it is snowing on a town with a beautiful name.

"Viewing Peonies at the Temple of Good Fortune
on a Cloudy Afternoon" is one of Sun Tung Po's.
"Dipping Water from the River and Simmering Tea"
is another one, or just
"On a Boat, Awake at Night."

And Lu Yu takes the simple rice cake with
"In a Boat on a Summer Evening
I Heard the Cry of a Waterbird.
It Was Very Sad and Seemed To Be Saying
My Woman Is Cruel--Moved, I Wrote This Poem."

There is no iron turnstile to push against here
as with headings like "Vortex on a String,"
"The Horn of Neurosis," or whatever.
No confusingly inscribed welcome mat to puzzle over.

Instead, "I Walk Out on a Summer Morning
to the Sound of Birds and a Waterfall"
is a beaded curtain brushing over my shoulders.

And "Ten Days of Spring Rain Have Kept Me Indoors"
is a servant who shows me into the room
where a poet with a thin beard
is sitting on a mat with a jug of wine
whispering something about clouds and cold wind,
about sickness and the loss of friends.

How easy he has made it for me to enter here,
to sit down in a corner,
cross my legs like his, and listen.

     —Billy Collins

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Leaves 2

More Color for a Rainy Day

Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways.
     —Oscar Wilde


image:  Pierre Bonnard, L'Atelier au Mimosa, Le Cannet—even more amazing in the flesh (or in the oil and canvas, rather).  As my character Isabel experienced it, in my Bonnard novel Nude Against the Light:

For Isabel it became suddenly bright again.  At the Centre Pompidou there was among the others a Bonnard beyond telling—colors in absolutely perfect combination, a red worth having lived for.  Studio with Mimosa, lost in reproduction.  She sat and bathed in its radiance, marvelling.  The others were good too, very good indeed, but this was perhaps the best of all, ever.  Not a wrong note.  As she sat lost in the colors, she was saddened to see people come into the room and leave again almost immediately, not realizing what a transformative experience they might have had, if they had only paused, looked closer.  She felt sorry for them.  She repeated the artist’s words, “And it’s because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.”

Spicing It Up

Happy birthday, Christopher Wren, architect of cathedrals and observatories.

I’m wearing white and beige today, without any dash of turquoise or other vibrant color, and feel unbearably drab.

It’s the time of year that demands sensual extravagance, intensity of stimuli on every hand—like the Scarlet Ibis, above (no, it's not a wren!), which I would like to see perched grandly on the thin wall of my cubicle.

Instead, I have primrose and lavender shampoo, strong mocha java in my Cretan cup, spicy green chili in a breakfast burrito, a silver bangle cold on my wrist, a little Oregon blackberry jam, Rossini overtures.

For tomorrow I’m planning a menu of
Bruschetta with Fontina and Greens
Cauliflower Crostini with Fennel Seed
Slow-roasted Cherry Tomato Bruschetta
Wild Mushroom Bruschetta with Thyme
Shrimp Bruschetta with Limoncello
Bruschetta with Ricotta and Orange Marmalade
Chocolate Bruschetta with Sea Salt and Orange Rind

image:  Scarlet Ibis Eudocimus ruber at the Cotswold Wildlife Park, Oxfordshire, England, photographed by Adrian Pingstone

Crossing Guard

The crossing guard stands ready, to earnestly and enthusiastically perform his job—unassuming god of the path, without the mischievous inclinations of his godly namesake Hermes.  Who wouldn’t love his job, leading children to safety?  Guarding the sacred way?

image:  Boundary marker delineating the limits of the Sacred Way in Athens, ca. 520 BC.   Marsyas

Patience

Tibetan astronomical Thangka, painted 1684. The movement of the zodiacal signs and the planets.

This in honor of the Dalai Lama’s visit to Stanford, where I found Tibetan monks quietly, patiently enrapt in ceremonies at lunchtime, something to do with quintessential colors in small bowls.

When we develop patience, we find that we develop a reserve of calm and tranquility. We tend to be less antagonistic and more pleasant to associate with. This creates a positive atmosphere around us and it is easy for others to relate to us. Better grounded emotionally through patience, we become stronger mentally and spiritually, and tend to be healthier physically.
     —Dalai Lama

And a related quote, thanks for a day of grace, a patient autumn day—

The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts. The voice of the earth is my voice. All that belongs to the earth belongs to me. All that surrounds the earth surrounds me. It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.
     —Navajo song

image: Thangka, Wikimedia Commons

Places I Would Rather Be

I'd love to be staying for a week of wandering and beachcombing and castle climbing here on misty Lindisfarne, and after a day afoot, supping Lindisfarne Mead, fragrant with honey and herbs.  (Here's a lovely illuminated label.)

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Hotel, Lindisfarne

Gray Horses

A horse show at Stanford’s red barn yesterday, reminding me of my childhood in Santa Fe and horse shows there.  I love to watch the jumping, like Pegasus in flight, already halfway to becoming constellation. 

For some reason I love gray horses above all—though gray is not a color in and of itself, but a process, the silvering in aging of a darker coat.  I love the dappling, the way I love patina on a European wall, the whorls in weathered wood.

I’m also intrigued by this book by Hope Larson named Gray Horses.


image: image: Gray Horse in Field, Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

Imagine

Happy 70th birthday, John Lennon.

image:  Strawberry Fields mosaic, Central Park, Ponio160 

Stairs

This staircase on Ibiza lures me.  What is at the top, and down the little alleyway beside?

I am writing a mystery story set on Mallorca, with a detective who comes from a hilltown in Ibiza and writes ghazals (see this interview with poet Robert Bly for a discussion of the form).

One of Bly's ghazals takes us into far, wild places—

Some love to watch the sea bushes appearing at dawn,

To see night fall from the goose's wings, and to hear
The conversations the night sea has with the dawn.

If we can't find Heaven, there are always bluejays.
Now you know why I spent my twenties crying.
Cries are required from those who wake disturbed at dawn.

Adam was called in to name the Red-Winged
Blackbirds, the Diamond Rattlers, and the Ring-Tailed
Raccoons washing God in the streams at dawn.

Centuries later, the Mesopotamian gods,
All curls and ears, showed up; behind them the Generals
With their blue-coated sons who will die at dawn.

Those grasshopper-eating hermits were so good
To stay all day in the cave; but it is also sweet
To see the fenceposts gradually appear at dawn.

People in love with the setting stars are right
To adore the baby who smells of the stable, but we know
That even the setting stars will disappear at dawn.  

image:  Staircase in Elvissa, Hans Bernhard

Orangerie

I would love to cover our unused bathtub with a slab of terra cotta tiles or some light wood polished with beeswax, and set an ornamental orange tree on it to grace the space over the winter, with a neatly-folded mound of green and orange Egyptian cotton bath towels to match, in greens and oranges patterned like a Bonnard.

image:  greenfingers

Junipero Serra

Mission San Carlos Borroméo, Carmel, California

I turn onto Junipero Serra, leaving campus after Thursday evening Pilates at the red barn they have painted white.  The tree-lined road with the name of the priest (reminiscent of pungent blue juniper berries) who came to California from Mallorca and built all our Spanish missions.  I have always loved the mission architecture—the inner gardens, the cool, thick walls, the shady arched arcades, the corrugated roofs of red clay tiles.  And in Palma, across the world, I found by accident the church he started from, its gorgeous cloister with orange trees drawing me in.  There is that journey in this road as well, the name taking me back in memory, all the way from Carmel, Santa Barbara, San Diego to the Convent de Sant Francesc.  And that whiff of juniper, or maybe incense in the dim side aisles of the church.

Convent de Sant Francesc, Palma de Mallorca

images:  Christie B. Cochrell

embers

September is, somehow, already gone, the embers still glowing but soon graying and cool.  I heard the first golden-crowned sparrow of the fall this morning, somewhere in the far-off trees.

But welcome October, month of quieter, mature pleasures.

Three quotes for the month—

All things on earth point home in old October; sailors to sea, travellers to walls and fences, hunters to field and hollow and the long voice of the hounds, the lover to the love he has forsaken.
—Thomas Wolfe

October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.
—Thomas Merton

October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again.
—Hal Borland (who lived on a farm in northwestern Connecticut, the site of an old Indian village, and wrote "outdoor editorials," essays following the seasons through the year)

image:  A Golden-crowned Sparrow on Reifel Island, Vancouver, tgreyfox