They’re having a bbq next door. It’s barely noon on a blustery Sunday, presumably after the service led by the pastor neighbor in the white tents next to the house. The family spent the waning light before sunset cutting the grass, brushing their horses, and cleaning the grill. I can see everything from this second […]
The evening before I left for the mountains, I headed down to the makeshift house to say goodbye. More for me than them, of course. But I’d been watching their eyes gain light and feathers develop from tiny fibrous stubs ever since their eggs appeared, one by one, under the since-departed horse trailer. I wanted […]
I dragged an empty barrel next to the trailer, where I set up a shelter with a few pavers and an arched concrete roof tile. Using a spatula and a towel, I covered and lifted the nest from the underside of the trailer to the makeshift casa, hoping the mama bird would somehow find her […]
Today is Mother’s Day. I’m not one. I’m apparently surrounded by them, though. There are signs of new life everywhere, from baby turtles around the pond to tiny killdeer in the pasture, to eggs in the nest under the horse trailer. I found the little egg on Easter Sunday, picking it up as gingerly as […]
I asked him if the ocean was glowing like this the last time we surfed together at night, and he said, “Thankfully, no.” Probably because I was naked then, and he was grateful for as little illumination as possible. I’d been at his house for a 4th of July BBQ around the turn of the […]
The coast probably hasn’t looked like this in hundreds of years. No one walking, no one sitting, no one swimming, no one surfing. And it’s not a Christmas-morning ‘no one,’ when there’s ‘no one’ but me at the store picking up last-minute bacon. This ‘no one’ is desolate. Beautiful waves pass through unridden and, having […]
I’m often reminded of a story in Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, where a boy seeks advice on happiness from a wise man, who lives in a magnificent castle. The wise man gives a spoon with two drops of oil to the boy, and tells him to walk through the castle without spilling any. The boy […]
I was kind of grumpy when I first heard about the surfer getting arrested in Malibu. We’re all doing our part, right? Sheltering-in-place, wearing whatever paper-towel-elastic face contraptions they’re handing out at supermarket entrances, and doing inventory on non-essential cloth items in the laundry room, just in case the toilet paper really does run out. […]
“This is nice,” said Earth. “What?! This isn’t f’ing nice,” said Person, “I can’t drive to work, my kids can’t go to school, our savings are almost gone, and I can’t breathe.” “I can, finally,” said Earth.
Aaron Elster was 9 years old when a reluctant neighbor hid him in her attic and started slipping him food and water once a day. When asked what he remembered about that 2 year isolation during the Holocaust, he said, ”Oh, there’s so many things that I remember, the hunger, the fear, the absolute, total […]
My drummer walked me out to his VW Beetle a few minutes after I’d tucked my guitar away for the night. He’d come to see me play a solo show in West Hollywood, and the handful of people who’d actually paid to get in had long since filed out of the club. He said he […]
There, on the ledge under the horse trailer. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never There, on the ledge under the horse trailer. If you didn’t know where to look, you’d never see the tightly wound dry grass, branches and stems. Or what’s hidden inside, resting only a few inches below the aluminum […]