Days in Life - 3.2.26 "Oxalis!"

Oxalis, oxalis!
Invading my palace!

Wither in summer

Returning with malice!

    Without poisoning with herbicides, we live plagued with the non-native "Bermuda buttercup" forever. Delicate sunny yellow flowers dancing with the slightest breeze arise from narrow grayish white tubers beneath the soil. They are edible, but their vinegar tang on your palate might be dog pee, so widely does it spread across our yard, ganging up on all else that grows, infiltrating within forests of stems. Oxalis petals close graciously when sunset falls. You can pull them up by their roots, each and every one, and they will grow back with a vengence more thorougly and thickly the next year. For those of us living in Sonoma County, oxalis is our Myth of Sisyphus. We are not the condemned man destined for eternity to roll a stone uphill to find, upon reaching the summit, the stone rolls down, as stones will do, but over and over. We must uproot oxalis until Apollo's cows come home, or let it live and die back, as it will.

    Cows probably enjoy oxalis, and won't mind that seabreeze of vinegar. That's an idea...

Evening Wear

     After my teaching career closed, my teacher outfits hung lonely and unworn in the bedroom closet. Ties, dress shirts, slacks, sportcoats. For years I wore ties. Five years or so before the end, I switched to longsleeve mock turtlenecks, slacks, and sportcoats, inspired by photographs of the late French poststructualist philosopher, Michel Foucault. 

    But working cashier at a supermarket, you wore the uniform: the company T-shirt, pants, and waterproof shoes. Occasionally I'd strut out wearing the dressier fashion, though not often. No church for this wayward soul, and I haven't been lucky enough to attend many funerals. Plus, who can afford dine out?

    In Syria, I learned from my students that the Syrian wives and mothers take their fashion very seriously, but inversely from their Western counterparts. They complain that American women dress beautifully when they leave their homes and wander the outside world, looking gorgeous for strange men, but at home with their husbands they slouch in sweatpants, no makeup, hair tied up for convenience. They dress like models walking the city streets, admired by every cringy creep they pass, but dress like slobs for the men they love? So Syrian women dress their best within the warmth of their own homes.

    Of course, this view of Amerian women choosing their proper attire for the hours of the day is shortsighted and rather unfair, and shows that many women in cultures define and justify large parts of their identity and appearence through the approving or disapproving lens of men. At the workplace, people are expected to dress professionally (though even fashion standards have, what's the word...evolved...?)

    I remember an old friend posting on social media (when I used social media; furthermore, before I closed my Facebook, I had to drop him as a "friend" because he  splattered my feed with memes announcing "Only 237 days till Christmas!" all year long). He once posted that as soon as he's home from work around 5pm, he immediately slips into jammies. This is horrifying to me. I guess I'd like to keep up the illusion that I could be ready to go out like my younger years and not be closed down for the evening, so I remain fully dressed, though in jeans and a T-shirt.

    But I've rethought the Syrian women's approach, and recently, in a way, I've followed suit. After the workday is done, afternoon chores completed, dog walked, even dinner started, I get out of my grubs, and don my professional attire. Some nice pullover sweaters I've rediscovered, button-down shirts (no ties--I don't descend stairways at Downton Abbey), and even slacks, which are very comfortable, unlike jeans which feel heavy. I'm not dressing up for my wife's devoted gaze, even though she cheers the upgrade, but to contribute to the elegant time and space we create for outselves during out evenings together. Sitting in the living room with wine or beer and music drifting lightly in the background, we discuss our day, and finish with candlelit dinners. We make every night a special occasion. And why not: time's running out.

    I'm sure Oscar Wilde nods his approval.  

Golden State Cider Contains Alcohol

    So I work at a market as a check out girl, as Tracy Chapman memorably sang. The local market where I daily toil is in Sonoma County, and there are only four locations: Rincon Valley and Stony Point in Santa Rosa, the original in Cotati, and the newest in Windsor. It's not a Whole Foods national chain. People often ask "Hey, we'd love if you'd open a store in Benicia!" Well, I'm a cashier: I have no say--and no care--whether and how the market expands elsewhere. Your city is 57.2 miles away in another county; rather defeats the purpose of maintaining the profile of local, wouldn't you agree? And anyway, some bright young thing in Benicia should open a cool local market. But I can see the customer's eager hopes: it's a great market.

    Yesterday, a Thursday in late January and we were slammed. No one could figure out the reason for the crowds spreading like oxalis. Was Trump scheduled for crucifixion in Courthouse Square at 6 pm, and folks were loading up on picnic delights to munch in the stands? Early afternoon a middle aged couple, maybe in their late fifties, comes up to the Express checkstand I'm manning. Among their few items purchased was a four-pack of Golden State Cider. This delicious fermented beverage originated at Devoto Orchards in the west Sonoma County town of Sebastopol in 2012. They have many ciders to choose from, including Ginger Lime, Mighty Dry, Jamaica, Brut, Gingergrass, Radical Guava, Sea Otter Savvy, and others.

    Two hours or so after I moved from Express to another checkstand, as I waiting to set up my till, the man who'd bought the Golden State Cider materializes behind me. In one hand he holds a single open can of cider, and in the other the remaining pack of three still snug in their plastic rings (I'm sure recyclable rings, hippie Sebastopol). 

    "Hi," he stutters, "you remember me, I went through your Express lane." As I stare blankly, he declares, "We bought this, but my wife didn't know there was alcohol in it." He smiles unconfortably, and I'm at a loss.

    Two questions immediately sprang to mind: 1) The fuck? and 2) Have you and your wife been in solitary confinement in a dusty wind blasted plains prison outside of Bismark, North Dakota for the last twenty-odd years? Did you see the aisle where you bought the cider? All the beers? Was the four-pack of Golden State tightly hugged on either side by cases of La Croix and bubly? Or the hard stuff?

    Haley, a manager, came to help, explaining that California law prohibits the market offering returns for alcohol, but said she'd call the wine department to see what could be done (they suggested offering them a gift card for the amount they paid, which they accepted--it was either that or no compensation at all). 

    He ended his dealing with me with a weirdly apologetic complaint. "It didn't really taste good at all." Yes it did, and does! Golden State is wildly popular with good reason. I love the Gingergrass...any of them. What boggles me: you mean you drove your sorry ass all the way back to the market to try to "return" something you mistakenly thought was alcohol-free? You do know you can read and shop at the same time, yes? How far away do you live? How much gas money did you burn? Why didn't you just lodge the last three cans in the door of the fridge? Have gatherings much? I guarantee, someone would love them.

    I feel like popping one open myself...

    

    

Still Lifes, Weathered: At Rest

     Semiconscious, flat out on his back on the brown rug in the middle of the living room in the winter of 1988, my father slurs his welcome as my mother and I enter the lighted gloom of a Friday night to—half-shocked, really—discover him. I swerved first to the kinder memory: a minor tradition I began taking my mother happily along meeting friends downtown Sacramento for long table drinking and chatter. The college friends all liked my mother, quiet but interested, gracious but working class demure, and she was easy to lounge with, except when the bar band’s wailing rose too loud and reduced her to a stoic wince.

    I’m glad, now, we spent a few evenings together appreciating the unvarnished neon of 18th and Capitol, or a faux Irish and dark-wooded pub along the railroad tracks of N street, weathered brick, stalwart Victorians, valley oak and silver maple, undrunken, a rebirth for my mother getting a chance to feel the camaraderie of young people, hot-blooded and desirous of laughter, sarcasm, and romance, for you can always turn over the soil.

    Yes, the man on the rug: a concerned rush to raise him unsteady to his feet, supporting under the arm as he slides the opposite leaning shoulder down the hallway’s wall—whoop, both arms supported to bypass the open bathroom door!—to deposit him sleepily into bed. Too many times did we replay this sad performance, my brother, mother, and I alternating, such that remembering now confers a normality to those nights. Skeletons don’t hide in closets but slump in gloomy yellow lighted living rooms staring blankly amused at All in the Family and M*A*S*H reruns. Yet many of those colder nights of boyhood years long gone saw my father throwing football passes through the mist to the gathered kids in our neighborhood running through a November Tule fog. A whispering football twirl, the only sound the rising darkness knows. Or Dad driving three hours uncomplainingly 159 miles from Sacramento to Redding to deliver a few dollars for car repair when my hatchback broke down when visiting my old friend, Tom. Decades before credit cards and ATMs. Three hours.

    Take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.

Still Lifes, Weathered: Wine

     Wine gloriously poisons. Gin poisons, yes it does: jagged claws scraping the soft and seething lining. But wine as well, wine as well, wine as well...

Still Lifes, Weathered: Dream

     Dream flash, February 1989, weeks after my father’s death at sixty-nine: our backyard in Sacramento, the astringent floral of cut grass permeating the summer air, under a sprawling valley sky whose blue air breathed like a Vermeer still life, our German Shepherd circling the pussy willow, our Siamese cat cushioned on an aromatic cedar window seat, and my mother, young, curious, sliding open the screen door to call us in for lunch. In the dream I am low to the Spring earth, a toddler, gazing upward at my father, my hand reaching up to his, and in my knowing mind I think to him You have to go away now, don’t you. He had been gazing at nothing across the backyard, mournfully, yet attentive of me, but at my voice he turned his head gently, gazing farther away as if facing a summons, and there is discomfort, apprehension, a tired foreboding in his whispered reply Yes.

    As often from these dreams I awake startled and vaguely sad, for it was only a dream. I knew he had to go, and he knew he had to go, and for this visit I was cast as a toddler with insight, but in the dream my father was a young husband with a toddler, as perhaps deeply in dusty memory I’ve seen him, or caressed timeless photographs of us, a young family standing before a pine sapling newly planted in our fresh suburb, awaiting fulfillment of all the promises. 

    Now I am many years older than my father in the dream. If I was the man I am now embodying the child in the dream, to his gloomy yes I would have soothed, But you’re released…

A Writing Life: Tiggy, Calvin Tompkins, and large rock in parked truck

To begin this series, A Writing Life, I had to wait for our sleeping tortise-shell cat to vacate the cushioned chair beneath the desk that holds my laptop. I've never been one to disturb a sleeping animal; on a day off, I can easily procrastinate busily elsewhere--always a book to open and read. 

We brought Tigre, or Tiggy as we call her, back from Honduras when we lived there as overseas teachers (well, it was over the Gulf of Mexico, and valleys of the Carribbean). Cat ladies thrive in all cultures, and in a single-story brick houses neighborhood we found her as a kitten hiding in the back of an empty wine box (the lady of the house had many other dogs and cats wandering with ease and good tidings from room to room). We brought her back to our rented townhouse in the capital city, Tegucigalpa, overlooking lush green mountains of La Tigre National Park. Hauling her home in her carrier after three years at the American School of Tegucigalpa, through customs, checkpoints, and busy airport waiting rooms and baggage claim, was greatly traumatic for all of us. 

But Tiggy has wandered to another soft landing somewhere in the house. 

A Writing Life title is a bit of cheating, though early January of a new year is a good time. Annie Dillard certainly can lay claim to that prestige, but I cannot. Nevertheless, it was the first sparrow spearing out of the nest, and so it alights. I just need to get words working themselves down. I was inspired by the December 22, 2025 article in The New Yorker by longtime contributer, Calvin Tomkins, "Centenarian", a journal the writer began in his 100th year on Earth, aligning with the 100th anniversary of the magazine's first publication, February 21, 1925. I began reading the article this morning, and find it, not surprisingly, engaging. Tomkins first contributed to the magazine in 1958, and has scored his reputation writing on art and artists. Delightedly, February 21 of this year, 2026, will see me exiting the working world, for I turn 65 a few days later. 

I shared with an aquaintence, Amy Reiswig, who lives on the coast of British Columbia, that in my struggle to find time for thoughts and writing for my current project on poet Robinson Jeffers' Inhumanism, I decided a few months back to shelve it until time opened in the new retirement era. From Ms Reiswig's Master's thesis for the Department of English, McGill University, Montreal, March 2000, titled "Robinson Jeffers, Hermit of Carmel: Recontextualizing Inhumanism", I've discovered insights and direction for my project. She maintains that the poet's seeming misanthropy was rather kinship with the Christian eremetic tradition of leaving the hectic, superficial, and corrupt cities to seek quies, or tranquility in the desert, or what Jeffers would later call the "wild god of the world". When I'd emailed that I was surprised she hadn't blossomed her thesis into a full length book, she regretted not having done so, but time got away from her with other committments intruding, including articles written (I should look these up; wonder why I haven't). I wrote her that instead of remaining unpublished and ignored while busy in my full-time job, why not wait until I have all the time in the world to be unpublished and ignored? Truth is, my essays have been published, three of them, but the last was eight years ago, and one essay was published in an online literary journal, Cargo Literary, which is now defunct, and even Google's AI cannot find the eclipsed link to it (just checked), so the question is: does that essay count as published?

Thoughts of Jeffers' Inhumanism follow me always like a thirsty dog (Nietzche used that simile in a letter). Notes for the proposed essay fill pages of the notebook I carry with me to work daily; not a teacher anymore, but to quote a line from Tracy Chapman's classic song, "now I work in a market as a checkout girl". But one scene I want to include, or fit into the essay. An early memory, misty bluish white in mind or veiling the dawn of the day it occurred in my childhood home in Sacramento, sees my mother and brother and me on the sidewalk along the side of our house and yard. Our Siamese cat appears to be going away, leaving us. She wanders down the street, pausing to meow back to my mother who attempts to follow her. My mother finally turns, distress lining her face, and she tells us our cat is going away to die. I must have believed it, not fully knowing about the reality, but understanding my mother's sadness. I remember to the cat's hesitancy, turning back around, as though unwilling to carry out her instinct's orders, her love for her human family struggling to defy fate. Would she die alone? We never saw her again. My mother died alone in her bed in August 2002. I should have been sitting beside her, and was not. 

Last night, in the rainy dark, I pulled my car out of the driveway to park along the street, so my wife, driving back from Oakland where she gathered with her old book club friends, could pull right into the driveway. Parked streetside the next house over was a small, dingy white pickup truck, with a large rickety fenced bed. Besides some tools, sticking up shadowy gray in the night's rain, stood a huge rough-shaped rock, five or six feet tall and round. Why, truck, haul you the rock? Industrial size, will it find home in a some landscape? And how does the driver propose to hoist the colossus from the truck bed? In the rainy morning the truck was still parked, driverless. Suddenly a light wind rose, and the mud brown rock shimmered gently as a flag. I saw now that solidity was illusion. A rock-colored tarp covered and protected other valuable tools, or perhaps a lawnmover. 

Wind reveals truth.