Brace yourself

I feel an attack of bathos coming on.

Home

I've always wanted to live at the end of a dead-end road named Whittle. And now I do.

Vintage Puck

Even with Puck's many achievements—his ongoing work on the Theory of Everything; his celebrated participation in the Oslo Accords; and most recently, his role in exposing the subprime mortgage crisis—I still think of him as a baby.

Ode to a sun

I don't get attached to many objects, but I truly loved this suncatcher, which shattered during our move. I know there are other suncatchers out there, but I've never seen one with such a pensive expression, fiery sunbeams and rich amber color. I kept one of the shards and placed it in a pot of aloe, where every now and then it catches a fugitive ray of light.

Looking at elephants

Every inch of an elephant tells a story. Take this elephant I met at the Oakland Zoo two years ago; you can read the history of an ancient continent along the edge of her ear.

The order of things

I saw a Steller's jay eating the cat food on the patio and a cat eating the birdseed on the ledge. Either things are getting out of hand or they're finally starting to fall into place.

Vindication

Aerophant could have told you this a long time ago, but science has recently made the belated discovery that daydreaming is the brain's preferred state.

Little homecomings

Whenever I start to feel estranged from myself I stand in front of my bookshelf and read the titles of my books—all those dear old friends. More than anything, they bring me back.

Comfort poem

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
—Sara Teasdale

I feel owlful

My friend J. has owls, in a manner of speaking. They reside in an enormous valley oak in front of his house. "Every evening, if you're out there," J writes, "you can hear him call his little lady owl in from the almond orchard. She softly answers him back and then flies into his secret hideaway."

Lacking owls, I like to think about J's owls. On summer evenings I even imagine I can hear the soft sounds of the owl couple murmuring secrets to each other from within the loving embrace of mother oak.

Sad dog

Well, no wonder. The sign on the shop window said, "Dog Glooming."

Traveling

When words are not enough and imagination falters, there is always the body to take you from one world into the next.

Mysteries of New York

For years I've wondered: what are Bronx?

Shapeshifting

I can't decide if I should become a constellation or a sand dune.

Extended family

Any fool can see that we're more alike than we are different.

Farewell to Michael

The old Chinese man who sells newspapers at the train station had a little shrine set up this morning: a burning candle, a vase of lucky bamboo, and a ceramic panda propped up against the front page of today's New York Times.

Space exploration

I'm growing a beanstalk that's going to reach all the way to the moon.

Rites of summer

The last thing I do every night before I go to bed is look out the window at the Matilija poppies glowing like tiny moons on the hillside.

Hide-a-Puck

Follow the spot...

...to the secret spot.

Don't hide your light under a bushel

I've been advised by an authority I trust to fan the flames a little. It struck me as such good advice I decided to pass it on. Don't start a major conflagration; just throw some sparks, stand back, and see what happens.

Crime alert

Sometime between 8:21am and 6:47pm on Thursday an unknown suspect ate the heads off four sunflowers, leaving only the bent and broken stalks. There were no witnesses. At this time we have no clues to the identity of the assailant, although a suspicious peanut shell was found near the scene of the crime. Suspect may be a flight risk.

Want ad

Wanted: BLUE. Hues of azure, cobalt, sapphire, or indigo. Must be deeply pigmented. Pastels need not apply.

Right this minute

Birdsong filling my ears, sunlight filtering through branches, glimpse of deer, canopy of green leaves; I'd give a million dollars for an hour alone in the forest.

The butterfly alphabet

Every creature, from the blue whale to the gnat, needs a way to express itself. Butterflies just happen to do it with more panache.

What I think of me

Even when no one else has anything to say, I can always count on hearing an opinion from the little person who lives inside my forehead.

Destination

Aerophant is aloft. I'll be circling this city for two weeks...will post when possible.

Overheard in a dream

Every day the miracles hurt a little more.

Hard candy

Birthday parties in my neighborhood always featured piñatas. They were utterly lawless, these parties: a baseball bat; an avalanche of candy; a mobocracy of kids. Recipe for disaster! Sure enough, one day when we were crowding around the piñata, shoving and pushing to get as close to the impending shower of candy as we could, the boy swinging the bat whacked me in the skull. I caught the full backswing. Prone on the grass, I saw shimmering, sparkling stars flutter down around me. Then I realized they weren't stars; they were Jolly Ranchers. Either way, it was one of the most beautiful sights I'd ever seen.

Sightings

In the Little Panoche Valley, a remote, beautiful place in the foothills of the San Joaquin Valley, I saw long-eared owls, jack rabbits, and shooting stars.

I also saw an increasingly endangered species—a huddle of wild shadows, lengthening into the golden light of late afternoon.

Puckaloft

Once again, Puck signals his approval of Friday and all that it stands for.

Windfall

The wild parrots of Telegraph Hill flew by my office window today. I felt as if I'd just won the lottery.

The possibility of opossum

I've been on the lookout for the baby opossum who visited us last week. He was tiny (at first we thought he was a rat) and he had recently met with some misfortune for he had only half a tail, poor fellow. People keep trying to convince me that opossums are vermin, but as I watched him perch on the edge of the bowl and eat kibble delicately, one by one, all I could see was his good side.

Bee dream

What a long day it's been. If I were a bee I would curl up inside a flower and fall asleep right this minute.

Trance state

I spent most of the weekend floating in a swimming pool gazing at the bands of light shimmering on the bottom of the pool. Truly, I've never been happier.

Backyard bistro

Every day I put a bowl of dry cat food outside on the patio. Some mornings a friendly stray cat we've named Cosmo stops by for his breakfast. During the day blue jays swoop down from the trees to pick up pieces of kibble. At dusk the shy feral cat we call Gumdrop arrives to grab her dinner. When night falls, Bandita the raccoon saunters in and finishes up the leftovers. And last night a baby opossum was seen sampling the fare. No one ever has to wait for a table. The customers don't seem to mind sharing the china or having to eat with their hands. I've never heard a single complaint about the service.

I remember the bug

I spent a lot of my childhood and young adulthood riding around in Volkswagen bugs. Walking by an old bug today I glanced through the window at the dashboard and a million memories came flooding back. Remember fiddling with the heater levers because you were always freezing or sweltering? Remember the mee-meep sound of the horn? Remember the little gas gauge and how far below empty you could go before running out of gas? Remember running out of gas? Oh, how I miss it all.

Ruminating again

I do think it's important to spend a certain amount of time each day grappling with the big questions. Of course, those questions are different for everyone.

Life grows on

While I was at work last week the Matilija poppies on the hillside burst into bloom. You look away for just a moment and everything changes.

The magnificent rock

When I lived in New York I loved going to the Museum of Natural History. One of my favorite exhibits was the Cape York meteorite. The meteorite is four and a half billion years old. That's older than the Earth; older even than the sun. Its surface is pitted, pocked, and scarred; creased, lined, and crumpled. I used to imagine that it contained every ancient face that ever lived and died. And it's dark, the way a moonless night is dark. It's as dark as space.

Imagine touching something that old.

I've touched it.

Buttermilk

When I think of Death Valley I think of buttermilk. I craved buttermilk all the time. The only place you could get buttermilk for miles in any direction was the Furnace Creek cafeteria, which was, coincidentally, where I worked. Every chance I got I'd sneak into the walk-in for a quick drink. I worried that someone would detect the dwindling supply of buttermilk, but no one ever did. Possibly, in the entire history of the human habitation of Death Valley, I was the only person to drink buttermilk.

Disorientation

Today was my first day at the new job. When I looked out the window of my office to check out the view, I was thrilled to discover that I could see the Empire State Building.

Then I remembered that I work in San Francisco.

Jobs I want

Tree ring interpreter.

Laws of planetary motion

If I lived on Mars, I'd only be 25 years old. I wouldn't need reading glasses and I'd never have to wear shoes. I could eat ice cream every single day and never gain a pound.

Adaptations

This lifelong night owl is trying to become an early bird.

Scheduled outage

Aerophant will be temporarily unavailable due to a cognitive insufficiency.

Catastasis

What may look like a cat gazing idly out the window is actually Puck hard at work on his Theory of Everything.

True facts about the letter A

Apes have been playing airplane with their babies for millions of years.

Sun day

The sun has come out for the first time in a week, and the world looks beautiful in a completely different way.

Toast

I once had a boyfriend who made toast every morning. We'd eat the toast in bed and listen to the mockingbird in the jacaranda tree outside the window. It wasn't a great relationship, but for a little while those things—the toast, the jacaranda, the mockingbird—were enough to make me happy.

Brace yourself

Change is imminent.

The secret tree

My best friend and I used to climb the apricot tree and scoot out onto the longest branch, where we'd sit and eat apricots for hours, juice running down our chins, the pits falling into the ivy below. The tree was the locus of our secret world. In this world we were not human children, but magnificent creatures who could gallop as swiftly as gazelles, breath underwater like fish, and fly through the air like ravens. We gave each other secret names and vowed never to reveal them. And I never have.

What if

One spring morning I was on the F train, heading into Manhattan for a job interview in midtown. I didn't particularly want the job, but it looked like I was going to get it. Then I looked down and noticed I had a run in my stocking. Since I could not, would not go to a job interview with a run in my stocking, I got off at the next stop and took the train back to Brooklyn. A couple of months later I left New York and moved back to California. I sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if I had worn pants that day.

From the seeds of doubt

I've been watering this question mark for months, and I still don't have any answers.

The pointy sisters

These chickens cannot bear to be apart even for a moment. If one accidentally gets separated from her sisters she will scurry, wings a'flapping, until she catches up, and then an emotional reunion ensues. Still there is a pecking order, and it must be said that Audrey (at bottom) is at the bottom of it, while Stella and Grace (left and right) behave like Cinderella's haughty stepsisters. The rest of the time they're snuggled up in chicken bliss. Doesn't it remind you of high school?

Plot twists

Yesterday a deer chased the chickens who in turn chased a spotted cat who tried to chase a squirrel who later chased the chickens who were chased by a striped cat who was chased by me.