Monday, March 16, 2020

Recreational V





I'm trying to get my photo library to load, but I am getting error messages and I care far too little to try to fix it, at least for now. I just tried to drag and drop them into the library from the camera's memory card and now I am getting a permission's error there, also. 


Yesterday, as we walked along the beach north of Santa Barbara, we found a small river that made its way out from the hills to the Pacific. The boy hiked up it a short way, eager to enter any body of water available. There were freight and passenger trains passing along the bridge above the river. We could see people wave at us and we would wave back, the location being that novel. 

We talked for a few minutes about the land and the fresh water that had made its way here and from how far away. That now we are seeing it become part of the great vastness in front of us. There being something funereal and slow and graceful about it. Something simple. 


Today we will drive into Joshua Tree National Park. We may rent a car to do so, as we do not want to burden ourselves with the RV and all the work that is required to move the behemoth. We are parked in a private club made just for such vehicles. I have never seen anything like it before in my life, and I could walk from site to site and just chat with people all afternoon and evening. They are suspiciously nice and generous. 
I will bring some 35mm film cameras out into the desert and pretend to be Anton Corbijn. The boy will need to be Bono, for this photo shoot, but they share a similar moral intensity. Both seem to feel with equal certainty that there are many more cookies in the cookie jar than the world is admitting. 

I will attempt to capture that look of righteous indignation that hangs like a scowling mask upon the self. 

I know it well. 




We have all started to get along a bit better, which is nice. We went swimming yesterday in the campsite's pool. Yes, we are RV camping and not tent camping,. so there are amenities. The two types of camping are very different things, barely resembling the other at all. We seem suspicious here because we are neither retired nor are we golfers, and we brought a youth. When we went swimming in the pool yesterday we had the entire area, including the hot tub, to ourselves. Thousands of retirees had stayed away. 

CS is wondering what he should do next and I stumbled upon his answer almost by accident. The documentary to watch is About Schmidt with Jack Nicholson. It will give you the premonition of yet another kind of story that can be told. Grand mistakes are not just for the kids, any more. 


More and more, in pictures, my son has started to look like my brother. And mommy, well... for the first time since I have known her she has stopped wearing bikinis when we go to the beach or pool. But she still looks just like mommy.






where water comes together with other water 

I love creeks and the music they make.
And rills, in glades and meadows, before
they have a chance to become creeks.
I may even love them best of all
for their secrecy. I almost forgot
to say something about the source!
Can anything be more wonderful than a spring?
But the big streams have my heart too.
And the places streams flow into rivers.
The open mouths of rivers where they join the sea.
The places where water comes together
with other water. Those places stand out
in my mind like holy places.
But these coastal rivers!
I love them the way some men love horses
or glamorous women. I have a thing
for this cold swift water.
Just looking at it makes my blood run
and my skin tingle. I could sit
and watch these rivers for hours.
Not one of them like any other.
I’m 45 years old today.
Would anyone believe it if I said
I was once 35?
My heart empty and sere at 35!
Five more years had to pass
before it began to flow again.
I’ll take all the time I please this afternoon
before leaving my place alongside this river.
It pleases me, loving rivers.
Loving them all the way back
to their source.
Loving everything that increases me.


- Raymond Carver

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