Planet Earth: My Backyard

Last night, my friends and I went to the Hollywood Bowl, featuring clips from the series "Planet Earth" against the sounds of George Fenton's Live theme music. For me such amazing nature tales are evidence of the existence of God. My mind kept repeating a portion of a biblical line, in those portions of the documentaries in which one animal chased and killed another, "And the Lion shall lie down with the Lamb", this of course, at the end of time, in Paradise. For those of us who make it there. . . .well THAT's another entry.

I realized that what played out on the screen plays out in my urban backyard every day. I woke up to one this morning. Mother Jay squawking frantically. I got up and went outside. A crow. Of course, a crow. From about April on, it is the season of baby birds and crows love to cop the unhatched eggs as well as the helpless newborns in the nests that surround us. There is one in the foliage between my apartment building and the one next to me. No doubt mama bird was keeping the crow at bay, and as in one of the features last night, not entirely successfully. My arrival was the thing that scared him off. Me and mama bird, protectors of her little ones.

Over the years I have come to know there is little to be done. Some new birds will survive. Many will not. It makes me cry, watching a screen or seeing it in real time.

There are also the squirrels. They walk across the electric wires fairly high above the two story buildings. I saw one fall once onto the top of my garage roof. I could only hope he wasn't hurt. But I had no ladder to look. And I was on the way to work.

The possums come out at night to eat the cat food. I like to watch their long noses in the cat dish. But that's as close as I am going to get. Once I got a good close up camera shot of a baby possum on top of our little outside gazebo like thing.

A favorite is the hummingbird. I never saw one until I moved to California. My backyard is full of them. I know their sound now. Wings whirling and an odd chirp unlike any other bird back here. One once actually stopped on a branch above where I was lying on a bench and watched me, watch him. A long time. We seemed to enjoy each other equally.

And then, of course, there is Elwood. A cat. The cat. Orange tabby, all bowed legs these days, somewhere around 17 years of age he is. He used to live inside, but decided it was too lonely there, with my neighbor. So he went outside, where all this is going on. The jay thinks he's a danger to her young, but Elwood is too old be chasing birds. And he's afraid of her dive bombing anyway. He just wants his food, his water, and a pet, from time to time, extra on the weekends when I am around. My little piece of the planet earth.

Watching Them, Watching Me

I get into the elevator in the building in which I work. I press my floor. And then I am captivated. I mean it. Captivated. By the Captivate Network, a screen for which has been placed in every conveyance going to every floor in our massive building.

I hate it. But I cannot avert my eyes. Snippets of news. Stock prices, over and over, and over. Quizzes. I am particularly seduced by the word of the day. I have a new one in my verbal quivver, "Snolleygoster". Yep, a real word said the shrewd man, or in this case woman. Well, that's a good thing, right? I got a new word out of my travels from Starbucks to my desk.

They have recently changed the format and the logo. Or had I not noticed it before? It is a modern art version of an eye

Oh Oh. Didn't the book and movie of 1984 feature flat screens in every room that could not be avoided or shut off?

There is a cognitive dissonance in knowing that your society, the one you must remain in until you die, is going down an obvious, terrifying road, and being unable to do anything other than stare at the screen."I am NOT a number, I am a free man!" So saith the "Prisoner" circa 1968. TV again.

Yeah, right. Freedom. Slipping like a flat noodle through our grasping fingers.

Soon, that little elevator television will be talking to me, lulling me into a hypnotic trance from which I will not awake. Hello, Big Brother. Watch out for Rover.

Hoping for a happy ending to this entry? Ain't got one. I am probably one of the cowards and not one of the resistance. How about you?

"Be seeing you."

One Woman's Saturday Morning

You may recall the saga of the piano a few entries back. In my effort to recreate my space, a one bedroom apartment in which I have lived more than half my life, I had painted, tossed or stored some of the old accumulated "stuff" much of it beloved, but not particularly useful. And I decided to have the piano, scratched and pocked and worn, restored. When it returned, and was in the second stage of tuning, it became clear that the pinblocks needed to be replaced as well as some strings. Since it had not been an expected problem for a variety of reasons, Simon, my piano technician, agreed to have the pinblock replaced without charge for his time. And the piano was removed a second time to a workshop far far away (the Valley).

All that remained tangible to remind me of its absence was the bench. For now, nearly two or more months, the bench, repository for my landline, has gathered dust. I left town for vacation. I returned. Work became extremely busy as a new boss is coming aboard in a week or two. Friends and family had crises which distracted me from my dreams of rediscovering the raw musical talents of childhood. Occasionally, my uncle, who mostly orchestrated the apartment renovation would ask, "When is the piano coming back?"

Today.

As I write, there is the annoying/lovely sound of tuning. Given the number of strings, it may be a while. And so I have been trying to act as I would on any Saturday, with a cacophonous background accompanying. I removed clothes for dry cleaning to my car. I washed my white cat's eye with a solution of diluted boric acid so that he does not again have an infection requiring an always expensive visit to the vet.

And then, I sat down to read, coffee in hand, a short short distillation of Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica. Or short short short, because, although Thomas may have meant his work for the so-called "beginner", a beginner in his time apparently was a genius compared to a beginner in these days. Me, my college and graduate education are poor matches for the disputations of St. Thomas, Articles (Questions), Objections, Sed Contras (On the Contrary) and conclusions of Thomas himself on the issue.

I had to laugh at myself, sitting on my couch trying to consume lines from the Summa while Simon pounds at the piano. Who else in the world would be doing this just now? Pretention!? Idiocy?!

A snapshot of the Djinn's peculiar life in Los Angeles!