Every now and then, my whole shrinks...

This is a water meter, one of two at our place. This one registers the consumption of water for outdoor use, an amount that regularly gets subtracted from the main register on a monthly basis. Imagine all this happening here on the coast in Oregon, where it rains 70-80 inches a year and ducks and beavers are our sports mascots.  Even in Oregon, we parse water consumption. Our vegetable gardening and all our pots are on drip irrigation. Our tiny lawn  goes dormant in the summer, most summers. We live on a lake; but the lake water cannot be used for irrigation because fish and other aquatic lives need a certain level of purity and a certain level of flow for their well being.

What if our well being was metered? What if we carried a device that told us exactly how well we felt all the time? What if human lives at all levels, regardless of position or function or wealth, what if each human was guaranteed a basic level of sustenance and protection from harm, from injury, both physical and emotional?

The last few weeks have brought me face to face with a strange feeling I get every now and then. The feeling that I don't belong to this land the way the natives do. As an immigrant, my sense of belonging is right under the surface, exposed now and then whenever the politics of the day question my status, my origin, my accent-tinged way of speaking.

Perhaps too many of us have skated around this problem, this sense of not quite deserving to be in this land, this sense of unease with all the rhetoric bantered about, and never quite finding the words to address the problem. I can only imagine how big the uneasiness for those Americans who were born here, and for no other reason than their color, their economic status, their ethnicity or their religion, their sexual orientation have been relegated to a life of less importance, a life that needs constant adaptation and metering, adding this or that to belong to the bigger society.

I can vouch in a tiny way for what it feels like to have that second meter with you all the time. It tells you, that no matter how much you succeed, how important you may feel certain days, you better remember that you are being monitored for your worthiness, watched for any careless display of your "otherness" among the bigger society. You are, after all, not the real thing.

Islands.

 (Picture from the web-some interior decorator blog. I have  forgotten its provenance, but have loved it and kept in my dream file. Please forgive me for not knowing to whom this belongs!)


In interior places as in this lavatory, we peek at the outdoor world, the ever-changing environment that surrounds us and demands our attention now and then.  We are entities to ourselves, our needs primary and basic, our survival high on our list. We forget that we are part of a larger environment.

I'm thinking of how we shut ourselves from the world in our dream houses. We forget hunger, cold, extreme heat, thirst, wind. We see the world trough windows we create, and we manage, sliding our drapes over a bad view, turning our heaters on cold days.  We don't know hunger any more, and we don't understand anyone who might be hungry.

Surrounded by features we install, mirrors to show off our best features, we are in caves all day long, year in and year out.

It's too easy to become islands.

The Days of Summer.

In summer, when the sky is clear and breezes cool the air,  tourists gawk around our town and ride horses everywhere, especially on the beaches.I have not seen tourists or anybody ride horses on the beach at any other time.

My grandchild and friends who visit  in the summer enjoy riding miles and miles on the shore.  It feels as though they are in a movie, John Wayne at the head of the posse, as they make their ways through canyons and caves and river beds looking for outlaws, the Billy-the-Kid types who'd surely are waiting behind those outcrops. 

Yes, temperatures in the low 70's; sun  shining; sand  warming our toes; horses and riders enjoying the outdoors.

If you only visit in summer, you have just missed the most important lesson in life: things are never just what they appear!

These shores take a beating in the winter months. Hurricane-force winds beat the shore with such violence and force that nobody, not a single animal will survive out there. Pelicans and sea-gulls and other shore bird are scattered in town, finding themselves in somebody's wood pile.  Winter is bitter cold and violent. Many roofs are destroyed by flying debris.

It rains over 80 inches a year.
It rains for seven months.
Most people must take vitamin D supplements.
When we dream, we dream of sunshine and bare legs.

Very few people live here.

Even in Paradise it's lonely!

We look forward to summers, when the rains stop and visitors make their way to us.  They marvel at the vistas, the cool summer temperatures, the isolation, the tranquillity.

We tell them that without their visit, this place is lonely.
They can't imagine that.

Yes, we say, there is just so much Paradise one can enjoy. Company is what we need. Please, return, stay as long as you can.  Tell us about the world we left behind.

This week, my youngest son is up with us, with his pup and his girlfriend.  The house is now filled with sound and movement and activities.  The pup, a lab, loves to swim in the lake, loves to chase birds in the garden.

Each guest/visitor brings a new vibe, a new rhythm, a new note to the symphony.  Some visitors, actually compose new music while up here; or paint a new picture; or write a new story.  This place inspires.

But, without company, it is empty.

Palavers

Too many blogs, too little time to think and even less time to write. This is really a conundrum of sorts. We enjoy the feedback, the compliments, and the encouragement of sweet, supportive people. But what are we doing?

When I was young, girls knew that boys worked really hard at seduction. And we consciously ignored them at first, or as long as we could. Eventually, as words and deeds kept on coming,they produced the desired results. Those of us who had brothers,and saw how crass and rowdy they were, should have been better prepared for the machinations.

Through pictures, stories, games, awards, ( now, hang on. I do appreciate all of these things.) we are snared into the circle of blogger tribal behavior,read, respond,write, read, respond. Repeat.

For a year, I wrote quietly, in isolation. In January, just before my birthday, I hungered for companionship. I began to look at "Blogs of Note". And that's how it started. Have I changed my modus operandi? Yes. I made some gains, and I have some losses. I believe what is happening to me is a seduction of sort. I love following a dozen blogs regularly, breaking up my day of leisure with more leisure.

Is all this distracting? Is this just a fad? Like the yogurt bars of the early nineties?