8/19/10 The Life and Times of the Star-Nosed Mole
One year, I was taking nature walks every morning to clear my head, at the creek a half-block away. Every now and then, I’d see little dead critters—mice, voles, even small birds-- apparently abandoned by their predators, as if a cat or a hawk had been leaving gifts. One morning, a perfect, dark kidney bean shape, about 4 inches long, appeared by the side of the gravel path. I bent to look at it, saw the bright pink weird nose, and knew at once what it must be.

It was like seeing something of legends, that I never thought I’d see in person—like the first time I saw the Eiffel Tower when I was in France, or if I ever have the luck to see Mount Everest in person, or a sasquatch, even more rare. Had heard about the mole, knew the name, but seeing it in person came as a shock. to see one revealed so unceremoniously, dead with a few talon punctures in its little hide. This thing had a nose that was a little pink starburst! A star nose!

I did what any decent person would do, which was to see that it had a proper burial. I wrapped the creature up in a tissue from my pocket (I think it was actually still a little warm), looked up to whisper a thank-you to my winged benefactor, and took the thing home for a fitting burial. I interred the mole in the woods in back of the house a few minutes later.

Star-nosed moles are amazing though. Their noses have 21 little appendages that are a cross between fingers and tentacles. They are nearly blind, so they use these nose appendages to feel their way around and to locate food. The tentacles have such a high density of sensory cells that they are 6 times more sensitive than human hands. They are in the Guinness book of world records as the world’s fastest forager. Because the mole also spends time in the water, and eats small waterborne insects, it has to be very fast & efficient at sensing a particle, deciding whether or not it’s edible, then scarfing it down. It is also thought that the star-nosed mole can detect faint electrical impulses from its underwater prey by using its nose appendages. If so, it is one of only two known animals in the world that can do that (the other is the platypus). (that is, if you don’t consider people to be animals, and if you are a scientist and haven’t explored intuitive energy work). It is also thought that the star-nosed mole might be a colony-dwelling animal, more so than other moles, but this theory requires more research. This mole is also the farthest-north–dwelling mole in North American. So many unique qualities.

Phenomenal creature, like Gloucester on the moors in Shakespeare’s King Lear: “I see feelingly.” Or like Miranda in The Tempest: “O brave, new world, that has such creatures in it.”

Why ecstasy? The mole’s nose is an amazing functional pink starburst. A supernova sniffer. A very specialized adaptation. Each mole has its own star. A star as its birthright. A star to follow, to use, to touch the world with. What if we were adorned with tentacled stars for each of the things that makes us unique? We’d have stars around our ears, our eyes, our bellies, our hands. We’d be palpating our plate of eggs in the morning, palpating the closet as we get dressed, palpating one another with dozens of pink starbursts as we met one another, palpating our way to work, where we’d palpate stuff all day, including putting all our papers in Braille, then we’d palpate sandwiches during our lunch hours, detect a few electrical impulses, and palpate all the way home again.

To look different but be completely competent, to see feelingly throughout life, to use one’s blindness in one way to develop amazing skills in another area, to be immediately recognized for your appearance, to live in the abundant, squishy earth, to swim so well, to have little nests for your home, to be so sleek and furry, to have such giant, practical, shovel-like forepaws, to be such a standout, so unique, such a star (yet underground and seldom seen), to be such a paradox.

8/17/10

Flocks of birds: I once rescued this little sparrow-like bird from the cat next door. The cat was luckily still at the clawless, fangless phase of pouncing & batting. The bird was grayish with black & white streaks on its head. I pulled the cat away, and the bird flew about 20 feet, to rest in the grass for a couple minutes, then flew off into the woods of the vacant lot. Next day, there were three little birds with identical markings waiting on my front steps. (which never happens—my front steps are flanked by a gravel patch and the front driveway. Hot & stark) The birds flew up and circled my front steps a few times, then they flew around me about 3 times, kind of like a Disney film only heartfelt, and then flew off. I took it as a thank you for my efforts on behalf of their sister the day before.

One summer when people began arriving to this family camp that we go to, a flock of a dozen or so white pelicans circled the campus, a couple hundred feet overhead. They have a huge wingspan, pelicans, and these critters used it to advantage, seeming to turn around a central axis like a whirligig, or in an s-formation like the division of the yin-yang symbol. White birds, with black trailers on their wingtips. Circling, forming & reforming patterns overhead, which we took as a welcome to camp.

The living cyclone of chimney swift flocks falling into chimneys at dusk, emerging at dawn.

A mass of starlings on the wires, lifting in unison and moving as waves, as one thought, as a giant picture of a bird.

A startle of pigeons, whistling and whirring out from under the overpass, flashing mauve and periwinkle and mother-of-pearl in the afternoon light.

Geese in that iconic delta.

To understand the spaces between wingtips, the spaces between beating hearts. To understand the magnetism in the mind, finding the right place after months, a year, another life. To fly because you have to, and have it be ordinary, not miraculous.

8/15/10 (a day late) Waltzing matildas:
When I was in high school, I made friends for a year with this girl where I was new in town & then moved. She and I went to the beaches north of Boston a few times: Ipswich, Newburyport, and Hampton Beach. I think we went by ourselves a few times, or maybe with others. But somehow, she/we started calling the giant waves “Matilda.” It was nonsensical and thrilling. Leslie pointed out to me that every third wave was larger than the others, and we managed to be at the beach on a few windy days when the tide was dropping or climbing steeply. So you could stand knee or waist deep in bone-numbing cold ocean water and have waves come crashing over your head and sweep in to shore, while shouting, “Matilda” at the top of your lungs, and no one could hear you. Matilda, not the voice heard round the world, but the bone-cracking pulse of the icy water. Matilda! You had to stay in the water for at least 20 minutes to get used to it. Then, you knew your legs were numb from the cold, but it didn’t bother you anymore. Matilda! We would wade out and try to scope out which Matilda would be the best and then try to swim to the breaking point. No body surfing, just letting the water crash. It was like being hit with thousands of soft ice cubes all at the same time, and having them break to rubble at your knees, and all around you for miles up and down the beach, and the little pieces of water would try to pull you around, in to shore, out to sea, wherever. Matilda!!!!!!

8/16/10 Stone
Help! I have rocks in my head!
I want dive into stone, to be inside that patient, secure, slow-moving mass. Would I feel its heart? The heart of the earth, which they say is made of iron? Lots of iron in the stone around here.
I want to dive into stone, to move my arms around, like I’m choosing the position I will be fossilized in. Not an accident, not Pompeii, not cavewoman fossil Lucy or anyone else, but a dance in stone that will take an eternity, but only when I’m ready.
When I was a kid, we’d borrow a hammer from the junk drawer, and go out side. We’d take gravel from the driveway, and pound each stone to pieces on the pocked sidewalk, experimenting with which type of stone makes the best chalk, the glassiest-inside sharp-edged gem.
What would it be like to be made of stone? Heart of stone, stoned, turned to stone by medusa, by Vesuvius or another means. Born in flame, cooled by water & air. They say that the molecules in stone move—but slowly. Patience, strength, versatility, reliability. What would it be like to crumble from the side of a mountain, to ride on someone’s back & be fitted to the wall of a house, to bake in a fire & then provide heat, steam, sweat, to warm in a little oven oiled & then be set on someone’s back for massage? Would I love being the stone warmer as much as the massagee loves the feeling of warm stone?
When I was in college, some friends and I used to go to this beach that had lots of small, marble & finger-sized, glacially & wave-rounded stones that would bake warm in the sun. We would just pick them up & lay them on our bodies, absorbing the heat & smoothness, long before hot stone massage was a trend.

8/14/10 Ancestors:
I just read a piece today (a quote from the African shaman and teacher Malidoma Some’) that suggested that failing to honor one’s ancestors can be a cause of mental illness. If that’s so, then many aspects of our society are off their tree. (family tree, that is). The good news is, if you have children, or even nieces and nephews, or if you feel parental or aunt-ish toward another human being, you are already an ancestor. Most of us qualify, and don’t we all want to be honored and respected by those who come after us?
The great news is, that about a bazillion people have striven, sweated, worked, played, gardened, danced, avoided danger, loved, made connections, had parties with their neighbors, helped their villages, communicated effectively, and made love so that you could be here today. My mom, who is a brainiac, in a good way, sometimes points out the arithmetic progression of numbers of people are involved in bringing us here. Go back three generations, and it’s already 8 people, and that’s only if there have been no deaths, divorces or remarriages. Then 16, 32, 64, the whole power of two thing. If you go back 10 generations, (about 200 years) that’s over 1,000 people. 20 generations (about 400 years) is over a million. And that doesn’t even include aunts, uncles and cousins. Go back enough generations, and every person on earth is your ancestor. Yeah, we are all related.
You are the result of thousands of years of a certain kind of success—survival! Give your ancestors credit, cut them a break. They (and you) brought you to this moment . Sit quietly for a moment, and listen to the exultant buzz of your gene pool. The whole lot of them, the good, the bad, the despotic, the angelic, the plain, the gorgeous, the genius, the not-so-smart, the important, the insignificant…They are humming, murmuring in your bloodstream. They are sitting in the sun, swimming in the sea, washing their clothes and bedding one another, to produce you! And this world we have now. We have made it this far, humans.
Thank the ancestors. Acknowledge their efforts. Most of them had it a lot harder than we have. They had to work harder physically, and they had difficult mental and spiritual tasks as well. Thank them, and figure out a way to honor them. Pour a little of your tea on the ground before you drink, as some do in Africa and Ireland. Put out rice or sweets on their shrine (or flowers on the grave) as they do in Japan and around the world. Thank them at the very least for surviving, for giving you life. And vow not to waste this chance, this life and heritage that they’ve given you. We are each and all the culmination of a lineage. It is a joy and an honor to be the result of that much effort. It is an ecstasy.

8/13/10 Thunderstorms

An even black swath advances across the sky like the sash of a grief-stricken protest movement. The curtain clouds run the middle of the swath, evanescent fangs that coil, evaporate, re-form. Behind, as if a terrible earth being gouged out by a harrow, as if a bee’s nest being poked, comes the upset, the storm, the ruin. Warm winds, warm rains of August, and the calm as the ruin approaches, questions forming in everything. Strobe and drubbing water, ice, noise and fury--there once were songs to appease the beast’s rage, some living still sing them.

My feeling heart rises with streaks in the air, throttles these with the wind—twigs, fences, plots, artifices, stolidities. Limbs we scarcely suspected crumble to sawdust, elm crowns twist off like jelly lids, twigs litter the empty places, and someone is still at peace. Across the city a supposed power goes out. But, the real power is this—accepting with grace the assault, bending as if you were born to it, born to its beam, its loops. It’s as if the wind is writing a story in cursive across every street, every park, every stronghold, and like us, it knows how to weep.

8/12/10
Rebellion--the sweet contrary.

Apparently, I felt so enamored of this day’s theme, that I rebelled against the task I had set myself, and am now writing it a day late.

The night before this post, though, I dreamed I was two people: the chaser and the chased, both orbs of light surrounded by limbed (limned?) bodies. We, the chaser and the chased, were in an old fashioned structure, a cross between my grandparents’ old barn, and the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris—huge vaulted ceiling, grey careworn walls, and multiple stories to run back and forth on. As the rebel, the chased, I reveled in the game of escape, the adrenaline of taking chances. I taunted my pursuer by letting her almost catch up, then darting through an impossibly obstacled passage. As the chaser, I was resolute that the whippersnapper must be caught and made to obey, and satisfied that sooner or later I would bring her to her senses, to a stop. Yin and yang of rebellion, an ongoing dance of satisfaction and delight.

Many of us have moments in our lives where we are forced to make decisions that seem like, or actually are, a lose-lose situation, and in order to survive, we need to turn off the fear of the unknown, that attention to social convention, and just strike out, make a move. Some of us make a lifetime habit of it. Some of us (erhem) make such a habit of rebelling that we can barely endure conventional situations. It is to you, to us, that I dedicate this entry.

Love your imagination, your lighted orb, your spark. Love your willingness to survive, to get up and dance when nobody else is brave enough. Love your art, your colors, your friends who understand you, your friends who don’t. Love your brain with its lovely infoldings and crenellations, its sparking ideas, the thresholds it likes to approach. Love your gut, the strength of your feelings, your certainties, your fears. Love your inner structure-lover, as well as your inner structure-hater. After all, even creativity takes a lot of practice, a lot of repetition in your originality. Storm the ramparts of those old castles you’ve made, and be prepared to find another version of yourself inside, ready to bolt.