Out of the Fog
The last few days have been foggy on this little hilltop, I like fog in the morning, it gives me the sense that there is less to worry about with my plants that I want to thrive. Out here, the sun beats so relentlessly down most of the day that I like to make sure everything has sufficient water to make it through the day. When it is foggy in the morning I start off thinking all will be well for my plants for the day since they have had the respite we all need in the fog and mist of life. I am not enough of a horticulturalist to know for sure how much moisture plants can absorb from fog or mist, as opposed to a solid soaking from the hose, but I feel good about my sense that succulents especially know how to turn a mist into satisfaction of all their needs. There is something about that word succulent that seems to say they are very good at taking in whatever is made available to them.
I guess that makes me a succulent of sorts. Thank God for good brain chemistry. It allows me to take whatever is in the mist and fog of life as I know it and absorb the things I need to feel good. Why do I sit here on a Sunday morning and think about counting my blessings? I have no idea, but if you asked me how I feel in the moment I would tell you that life is good. I do not have to explain the obvious that there is much in the world, both my personal world and the world, as they say, writ large, that I could ponder in peril about. I feel that my personal flow of feel good always starts high in the morning and then runs out in the later part of the day until I am drained and down to a calm base of sedimentary layering that has accumulated from years of optimism. This brain chemistry, whether it is serotonin or something else has coated my brain over the years with the patina of exuberance. It has smoothed out the rough edges of my character so that I can be relatively calm about most things that others might get flustered about and find cause to wring their hands over. It has been a mellowing agent of the greatest order.
I think it must run in my family. As I remember my mother, I remember someone who took everything in stride and only did more so as she aged. What started as wonderful restlessness in youth, that energy that compels one to strive for the stars, was a positive force. She was not driven by fear or greed, she was driven by wonder and awe. It drove her to take up what in her day were extreme sports like skiing and it drove her to seek adventure in the mountains of Venezuela and beyond. Hers was a life of embracing the world and never ever thinking about the mud that she was standing in or the mess it was making of her shoes. Shoes were meant to be worn and muddied. As Nancy Sinatra said, “these boots are made for walkin’, and that’s just what they’ll do”. But that is where she would stop. She would never continue down the path Nancy describes where “one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.” She knew when to take off her boots and leave them at the door so they didn’t walk all over anyone.
My sisters both got their own version of this feel good, but it played out differently for each of them, probably due to their differing base compositions. Kathy, the older sister, was built to be self-possessed and confident. She chose solitary skills and developed them into artistry that was both solid and reinforcing as bedrock. I would never have called her optimistic and yet looking back, what she allowed this flow to forge was as solid as granite, with a confidence that was nothing short of impressive and impervious. I always thought of her dressmaking and sewing skills as the emblem of that talent and base layer. While her profession is architecture and the creation of precise things of scale, she was and is a champion seamstress and that will always be how I view her persona. Just yesterday she told me that she went over to stay with and care for her young granddaughter, a girl with Cystic Fibrosis who has more energy and verve than any sense of affliction. But COVID isolation was driving her to distraction. Kathy went over and showed her how to make a dress pattern for herself and how to go through the process of making her own clothes and in so doing, soothed the troubled breast of the child. That is how my mother’s legacy of feel-good translated down three generations.
My other sister Barbara lives in the arid and sizzling heat of Las Vegas, where she has been for over forty years. It is as though she chose her surroundings to manage her natural instincts. She was the wild child among us, the one that regularly exploded with emotion and individualism. Her brain composition was different and more sensitive to the ups and downs of everyday experiences. When I think of her I think of this wonderful watercolor she painted early on of a blossoming tree. She titled the painting, “Time Blossom” as though to shout to the world that she could do things and order life any way she damn well pleased. She spent her first twenty plus years testing the limits in every way imaginable. If there was a path, she would avoid it and make her own. But once she had exorcised her demons she too enjoyed the benefit of our mother’s brain chemistry flow. She used it to forge a life that was truly like that of the desert rose. It could and did withstand all the hardships that life has to offer and sailed through to raise two children who have now had their own children. Her manner is still intense, but her motivations and drive are always, in her own unique way, in search of everlasting time blossoms.
An hour has now passed and the fog and mist are still with me but there is the faintest sense that it will slowly lift to reveal the sunshine of the day. After writing these lines of prose, randomly generated and totally stream of consciousness, with no direction and purpose other than expression and thoughtfulness, I appreciate what chemistry I have inherited and how it flows through me. If it is possible to gauge the feel good flow in one’s own mind, I would declare that what started an hour ago as a high level of sense of well-being has somehow become a greater surge of pleasure that all is even better in the world this Sunday morning in San Diego. My lovely, beautiful and loving wife is asleep in the other room with her blind, aged and somewhat confused dog that she cares for with great compassion and dedication. I am well-rested and now well-expressed through this writing and ready for another day on the hilltop. I will begin by going out on a motorcycle ride because the world is once again my oyster and I must go forth and succulent from out of the fog all that it has to offer me.