Static

It has been so long since I’ve posted! I usually don’t feel like posting when I’m on vacation because it feels so outside of ordinary life, which is the focus of this blog.

After a lovely week with my sister near Seattle, I’m in Long Beach, California, now. I lived here from 2002-2005, before I moved to Minnesota. I’m surprised how long ago that was, and that I still have so many friends here. I’m here for almost two weeks, staying with my good friend, former teaching colleague and travel companion, Doug Eisner. His place is three blocks from where I lived when I was here.

The first day I went for a walk to see what things were still intact. I would have placed a bet that Broadway Video, a fantastic neighborhood video store, would be no more. But no, there it was, seeming the same as when I left. And two doors down from there, my real destination, my former massage therapist Donna Castillejo. Though she’s not available for a massage until the day I leave (this is more like physical therapy, actually, for my frozen shoulder), she referred me to someone else who is quite good.

blooming lavender

Long Beach looks so much the same to me. And this morning it occurred to me that I always thought Southern California had a very static quality to it. Despite the traffic and noise– helicopters still patrolling the beach, people and gardeners and cars– the houses and yards and plants– the environment– feels still. I’m not sure I can explain it. I remember visiting friends in LA a long time ago, friends who had all sorts of objects outside, including a somewhat trashed Eames chair they’d found in the alley. I kept wanting to bring things inside, for protection. And the windows had no screens (there were no bugs). But there in LA things could stay where they were for a long time. Even the slight rains evaporated quickly and didn’t leave anything soggy or mildewed.

This winter there have been torrential rains, and a friend pointed out the six-year-olds have not experienced rain in their lives, due to the drought. Not pouring rain. Not a night of rain.

Standing on the beach you can look at a backdrop of snow-covered mountains. They are very impressive. They are also flat as paper dolls. I mean, even the line of trees behind our house, which I’ve been contemplating this winter, have texture those mountain peaks lack.

There’s nothing really like the grand stillness of a row of palm trees.

There is nothing like the static quality of a bird of paradise. I am sure they were closed before I got here, but were they? They seem to always be in bloom down here. They are exactly as I remember them.

All of that is reassuring. It is so easy here to walk through space. I went out in the evening, though I was very tired, to the grocery store for a few things. I walked back with the things in my backpack. There was no weather, and there isn’t even a sense of temperature– hot in the sun, yes, but not oppressively so (thank you ocean). And there is plenty– rosemary hedges in bloom! (Bees buzz around the flowers but don’t fly in anyone’s screenless windows.)

Everything is beautiful and stays beautiful.

It is a lovely place to visit. And filled with lovely people who have complicated lives and are very friendly. I am having a very good time.

Today I had a couple disappointments– a poetry prize I was really hoping to at least be a finalist for did not come through. And in a very basic “restorative” yoga class I was so discouraged by all I could not do and how challenging it was (dang shoulder, dang feet). At that massage yesterday the therapist talked about pooling emotions or the difficulty of “working trauma” out of the body. My emotions do feel stopped up and in many ways buried in my body. I can’t seem to will myself into anger or grief or any strong emotion. I can’t will my shoulder to release or open. As she said: “so many bundles and clusters of nerves so very, very angry at me.”

I breathe and direct my energy into letting go, into release, even into “a curious quality” as I explore what things feel like in my body without effort. I lie there over the blanket or bolster opening my heart. I lie there with my right forefinger touching thumb, my left ring finger touching thumb, waiting to feel energy in my joints. I pull my breath to the outside of my ribs, expel it down and out through my feet, draw it into the belly and expel it up into the crown of my head.

And yet I feel static, even in all the chaos. I feel pain when I try to move even in simple ways: lifting my arms over my head, interlacing my hands and twisting.  There is stillness and there is stillness. I don’t want to be a groomed palm or a mountain backdrop. I can’t figure out exactly what I want to be.