My mother used to talk a lot about things that she wants to do, but has never done. If I had a dollar for every time she said “I’m gonna…” well, let’s just say I’d live in a castle. A pretty one in the Scottish highlands. She doesn’t say it so much anymore. In some ways she’s given up.

2011 was a breakthrough year for me in terms of learning a valuable lesson. I learned that when I give people advice about what I think they should be doing with their lives, I should turn the lens on myself instead. That’s really how it is, we criticize when we are stuck or unhappy. It can be subtle, or it comes out in a sea of tears.

I had several of my animals get sick and die this year, and it was very emotionally draining on me. I lost my dear cockatiel, Beetlejuice, to old age and liver disease. Then I lost five budgies to what my vet and I think was either food poisoning or a bad case of genetics (budgerigars are now prone to shorter lives because of avian breeders breeding them for looks instead of health). Then my dog was diagnosed with a mast cell tumor that he had to have removed for a hefty sum; it’s hard to see a gorgeous Greyhound all wacked out on pain meds and then he won’t look you in the eye for days. The level of tumor was so small, I half-wondered if it could have been dealt with in another, less invasive way. They always say that they don’t know what causes these tumors, but strangely I have an idea of what causes all tumors.

These are the tumors that lie beneath the surface that you cannot see. They sit on the top of your stomach, and they keep you from standing up. These tumors make everyone sick. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: “I’m going to hold on to something someone ‘did to me’ many years ago.”  Or, the famous “I’m going to make myself busy with everything else that doesn’t matter, because I’m afraid of getting down to my real work.” When Tori Amos sung that there are so many dreams on the shelf, she was singing to us all.

I now believe that your attitude and your inability to move forward makes you stagnate in a sea of dead birds. And their disease pollutes the lake and becomes your drinking water. Because you’re comfortable remaining sick. Because you think that if you get happy or get well, something will blindside you. But I have news for you…something always will. But you should try to get happy and well anyway, because you can’t race in the rain if you aren’t present, you’ll crash. I kind of thought that my state of mind was causing all of this stress and unhappy circumstances to come to me, and maybe in some ways it did. Whether you do the needful with a heavy heart or a hopeful one can affect the choices you make, and affect the outcomes.

I struggled to keep going with my nature blog because I was so afraid of not saying the perfect thing every time. I was so constrained and my mind was tormented. I was limiting myself. I can’t say I have it all figured out, though I wish every time I had an epiphany that I did. Instead, I’m just happy that I wrote this, and now I’m going outside to look at the stars and kick the leaves around.

My mind has been unfocused, scattered, assaulted. I’ve been spending way too much time looking into the mirrors and minds of others and less into my own. I won’t even give it a name, it doesn’t deserve it. Turn it off.

I read somewhere or someone told me (does it really matter?) that the problems of the world take a focused mind, an attention to one thing at a time, a meditative finger on what you love most.

That attention may be uncomfortable, like a staring match, and you may blink or laugh, and look away. You might not like what or who looks back at you, or what you see.

But you have to come back to it, because it’s beautiful, that tree, that creature standing before you. Like a Raven’s voice, the natural world is complex and deserves observation.

- Glenn Lazore (Mohawk)

Outside the wind is waiting just outside the fall. It dances around late September, and by December it will be here in full force. I watch with patience as the landscape changes; the leaves begin to wilt on the Catalpa, the songbirds are fewer, and we all move forward into darker hours.

My hair is long now, and I have to wear it back in a ponytail when it’s so windy. Even then, strands of my red hair at the temple are pulled away by the gusts and enter my eyes, nose, and mouth. As I walk, the wind is at my back and pushes me forward. The wind in the trees, especially the Eucalyptus up near San Andreas lake, sounds like a rushing river. I am always surprised to look up and not find water, only a gigantic tree, and the intoxicating scent of its bark.

I think of the little wild birds, late at night, sleeping and holding on for dear life to swaying branches. This is much like what I do as I rest, my wings (arms) tucked up around my head and neck like a bat, my only protection from my dreams. The other night I dreamt that there were men in a car, parked in my backyard, and my aviary was on fire. I don’t have an aviary. I am out of control.

The randomness of the wind makes me feel safe. It wraps its tender or strong air in a cold embrace around me, and sometimes sings me a quiet lullaby in the early morning hours, before it dies down at dawn.

~ Lewis Carroll

I felt a sense of joy today, twice even. The first time was early morning, but I forgot where I was. Even though not all is right with the world, I felt a swelling of happiness inside.

The second time I was sitting in front of a coffee shop, staring up over the buildings and in to the adjacent mountains, feeling truly alive and acutely aware of the wind and cold. I watched crows playing on that wind, letting it orchestrate their dance.

It was a day of senses, and I knew it was a special day as the first thing I smelled were some week-old flowers in my office, not rotting but fragrant. As I walked inside from my lunchtime stroll the scent of stems in water and wilting lilies rose up to greet me.

Then, there was the sound of asparagus being broken and hitting a stainless pan, a light ping-ping-ping.

And my little bird Willie, endlessly calling. I finally realized, after all this time, he wasn’t calling for me, but to the Black Phoebe, Sayornis nigricans, hunting for the last of his sunset meal on my lawn.

Washing dishes sounds like rain. I didn’t rush through that tonight.

…

And there’s no map
and a compass
wouldn’t help at all

- Bjork – “Human Behavior”

I have found with human interaction, as in nature, the rawness of life can be difficult to engage with a straight face. I feel like we wear different filters, or layers, to protect ourselves from the inputs or our interpretation of them. For those that feel deeply, what they take in can almost be overwhelming. We are labeled as too sensitive, but I’d like to call it over-connected, really, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

- Al Pacino in “Angels in America”

I have a love/hate relationship with the winter and December. But there is a beauty in the bareness that only animals with great noses are lucky to know; like the whiff of both orange trees that grow in the winter in my neighbors’ yards, and the smell of eucalyptus that wafts up on the wings of crows and ravens chasing away a hawk. If you look up waft, “to cause to move or go lightly by or as if by the impulse of wind or waves,” I think it’s very unlike the dictionary to have such a poet’s definition, and I am pleased.

My backyard, in all its commonness, is a place of ever-changing weather and an attack on the senses. The shapes and dreams from my childhood still live in the clouds – the bunnies, big hands, sweet pink cumulus, and the smells; coldness, wetness, darkness, sadness, and the thoughts the sun-smell brings. I’m reminded of the taste of carrots and vinegar, tomatoes and salt, all on the porch of a sunny day.

I spent time with my dying family this season. My sister, the caregiver, and my mother, having less and less to look forward to. The bitterness of the unthoughtful gift from my brother, and the brief visit that consummated in the long nap during the car ride home while my mate navigated his way with the company of 70s on 7.

Unlike letting mother nature move us and do its thing, we as humans are expected to navigate our human landscapes by how we want to live our lives as individuals. I had the sudden realization that, when there is a break in the rain, you have to seize the opportunity for another kind of life, happiness, and interpretation within the clouds around you.

- Pema Chödrön

I used to throw things away that reminded me of lost loves, drawings and journal entries that weren’t perfect, relevant, thoughtful. Some say that it’s healthy to go to the fire, to purge that which you think won’t let you move on. I think that’s why so many people go to Burning Man, to say goodbye to that which they couldn’t control, the thing that didn’t go their way. I believe we should do the exact opposite.

I keep some of these little relics, like the cheap necklace I was given by a young, handsome, crazy stalker, the garden gnome from linda-who-smoked and would give angel readings to those who believed, the poems from loves and not-so-loved, and the little glass bird my former co-worker brought me from Italy, given with insincere thanks for watching her bird for almost a month.

I keep these odd little gifts, because they remind me that the unwanted, and sometimes wanted, emotions we experience over time make up who we are, and our part of our collective experience. I like the grays of life, for example, would Jane really care if my sink was dirty, and if she did, could we still be friends. Or that snake slowly killing that mouse down in the wildflowers; how sad for the mouse but the snake had to eat. I have to stay with the randomness to keep the extremes at bay.

Today I was at the pet store and I got to watch the “store cat” try to jump up on one of the new soft dog crates, only for it to topple over on it. We were there to catch the crate, while the cat ran away looking pissed and embarrassed. We got a good laugh.

And then we drove home through South SF, enveloped in the smoke of a 4-alarm house fire in downtown. We caught a glimpse of the neighbors balancing themselves on the fence, watching the billows of gray smoke, and perhaps pondering the uncertainties of things.

A long time ago, it seems ages, I fell in love with a bird. He was a long, dark bird, with sun in his feathers and sleepy yellow eyes. He was very different from most birds his kind, and a non-native, a starling (Sturnus vulgaris).

We met one night near the train tracks. I sat alone, waiting for my ride, and he called to me from a power line, “you are so beautiful, may I nestle in your red locks?” I giggled and looked away, and when I looked back he had hopped to the top of a eucalyptus and flown away.

And so it went, these chance meetings, and he would only appear when I was alone. Sitting on a bench near the ferry terminal, he would fly down and peer at me from an empty chair; rattle, whirr, and whistle – fly a little farther away, and do it again.

For a while, starling and I only exchanged fleeting moments like this. One day he dropped a little bookmark at my feet. It looked like a gold paperclip with a small rose engraved at the top. He flew down next to me and watched my expression as I picked it up. I could smell his feathers from where he landed, the heat and the heart underneath them, and I was smitten.

Starlings are relatives of the Myna bird, and like them they have impressive vocal abilities and a gift for mimicry. He learned how to imitate the words “Habibi,” and “maybe,” but I think they might have been the same words, it just depended on which day he said them. I would hang on those words, and depending on which one I thought he said it could make or break me, until we met again.

When we weren’t together, starling would travel with a pack of grackles and blackbirds. I would hear from the house finch “yes, I saw him over on Chestnut, drinking from a gutter and whispering sweet nothings to another.” I did not flinch. I knew that starlings were known for their brood parasitism, and he was only looking for a new, temporary nest. But as I mentioned, he was different from the other starlings, he wasn’t so much interested in proliferation, but the addiction of connection.

Watch while the queen
In one false move
Turns herself into a pawn
Sleepy and shaken
And watching while the blurry night
Turns into a very clear dawn

As the days went on, we became closer and closer. He would abandon his main nest more often, and we would sit together, saying nothing, breathing each other in, learning the other’s own special language. Though he would go back to his home high above the hill the time we spent together was enough to sustain me. I would drive dreamily home, still smelling of the oil from his wings.

I am thinking of your woman
Who is crying in the hall
It’s like drinking gasoline
To quench a thirst
Until there’s nothing there left at all

Alas, it…
Was not meant to be

No clean transition
Wish there was a better ending
The hottest love has the coldest end

Starling
flew
away

Mourning Dove

Shades of red and purple are vibrant at twilight. A lone dandelion rises up where the unsuccessful hydrangea once was, and a succulent moss grows up around the cheap sprinkler I used maybe once. There’s a lot of this in my backyard; a planter box held together only by the old soil within it, a makeshift wire trellis that nothing climbs up, and an odd little gate that leads to a steep fall onto concrete if you don’t watch your step.

I tied up the grape vines today. The mix I planted to attract hummingbirds and butterflies finally started to bloom beneath the mass of the vine’s tendrils; lovely yellow and magenta flowers among the grass and other weeds. So tiny and delicate you want only to cradle them between your fingers; but inches away without touching the fragile petals. I seek to connect with respect, and nature has its own, unspoken, boundaries. This is a peaceful time for me, until the wind or rain chases me inside again, and to my books.

On lazy days like today, I have tasked myself to make my way through some natural classics: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Loren Eisley’s Desert Solitaire, and the idyll that is anything by Gerald Durrell. Most recently I stumbled upon another author I had not heard of, Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980).

This is what happens when you open your heart and keep your eyes open, I said to myself.

According to one review, Teale expressed “the simple enjoyment of universal nature, with no other end in mind” (Wandering Through Winter), and “on this somber day, when winter’s conquest seems so imminent and so conclusive, I am remembering the calm preparations of the insects around me. Nature, in all her acts, reflects her faith in the future.”

Finally, someone just like me, someone with no other end in mind than to enjoy nature and have faith in the future.