'Tis Later

I said pictures later, so here we go. I went out to capture bits and pieces of what I love on camera, failed miserably, but who can capture the essence of a moment in words or on camera?


The colors were magnificent as the sun melted into a soft neon pink: melting baker's chocolate in butter as the colors spread across the ocean, rippling and running up the sand. It moved with a swift calmness and grace, not lingering with the applause as it begged for an encore, no matter the waves of standing ovations, but bowing out in humble radiance.

Pictures Later

Today . . . today, today, today. This week. Hmm.

First ah-ha moment. Moreover, first, I-told-you-so moment. I went with a friend out for coffee and conversation. We headed out to Westside Coffee, which led us to West Cliff Drive, where we found a bench and sat and chatted and oohed and ahhed over the ocean and the sky. The sky was filled with varying clouds, cracking open occassionally to stream light down onto a silvery, choppy ocean that would glow golden with the peaking sun. The rain from which we received respite that day had lit the cliff tops and slopes electric shades of green and cleaned the air--we could see the towers at Moss Landing and the hills rising up behind Salinas and Castroville. We interrupted ourselves and eachother with oohs and moments of necessary basking and blathering as the sun broke through over our bench and commentaries on the beauty and oh look! a dolphin! and we ran further out onto the cliff to stand and point and become ever so much more excited each time the dolphin or its playmates resurfaced. Driving away from West Cliff, there ahead rose the Santa Cruz mountains, dripping, absolutely dripping with deep green trees. Not slopes, not inclines, but mountains. Not Shasta or the Sierra Nevada Range, but mountains. And then descending into the valley, down Graham Hill Road, with trees leaning, light streaming, a road cut in between descending hills . . . I was not wrong to feel helpless in attempting to convey a piece of this to my classmates in CAS 101, it is not comparable to anything anywhere I have ever seen, I was not idealizing it, painting it rosy in my mind to stab my heart. No. It is that beautiful, indescribable, irreplaceable.

Second ah-ha. The sky. Today was an all day in San Jose day. San Joe-zee. (I'm kidding if you, reader deary, don't speak Spanish or are not native to this area--'tis San Ho-say.) And a long while at the car dealership, where I plopped down on a strip of grass, layed on my back, and stared at the sky. Wow. Yup, wow.

It is not that the sky is a place of infrequent visual perusal, but rather that its importance just registered. It was so still. It was blue and puffed with clouds but still. Later, it acquired cloud streaks of a drying brush and feathered clouds and soon a river of watermarked clouds flowed through the center of my field of vision, behind the original sedentary clouds. The sky is like the ocean. It is always there, but it is always different. It is changeable, unreliable in form, but reliable in existance. It would be heart breaking, it is heart breaking, to see it polluted and unhealthy. And I rely on its existance. The sky does not replace the ocean for me; the ocean has branded a lodging for itself upon my heart where only it will ever fit. So I live with its absence in Grand Rapids. But in Grand Rapids, the sky took hold in a way it never had. Here the sky is big. Here it can blend with the ocean, expand into the ocean, be sawed by trees or mountains. Here it is dark at night, lit by its own stars. In Grand Rapids the stars are not so available, but the sky moves. The clouds are more and more variable. The sunrises and sunsets have a dynamism unlike those here--for while they set along flat horizons and softer, rounder, smaller trees, they set with an expansiveness that shrinks one down to the reality of one's smallness the way the ocean can. They set in a dancing, painted sky of immense proportions. The sky, the sky is necessary.

Third ah-ha. Driving back from San Jose, over 17 by myself in the van. KRTY playing, as I swung up and down the curves through the mountains, George Strait's "I Saw God Today." Maybe it is a cheesy song. Maybe I am "cute-sy" as a roommate stated this semester.
"Just walked down the street to the coffee shop, I had to take a break, I'd been by her side for 18 hours straight. Saw a flower growing in the middle of the side walk, pushing up through the concrete, like it was planted right there for me to see. The flashing lights, the honking horns all seemed to fade away, in the shadow of that hospital, at 5:08, I saw God today. I've been to Church, I've read the book, I know he's here but I don't look near as often as I should. His fingerprints are everywhere, I just slowed down to stop and stare, opened my eyes and man I swear, I saw God today."
I haven't read the book, I won't comment any further on my unorthodox status of haves and have not's and do's and do not's, but I will say this much: those moments of finding a flower in the sidewalk are the most overwhelming moments of ah-ha. How else would the sky be noted in San Jose and Grand Rapids and be found to be so compelling?

Sweet Potato Love and Home Grown Granola

Yes, yes, it is known: Annie loves sweet potatoes. And Granola. It might be a sin not to like the latter, being a rooted Californian from Santa Cruz to top it. Rooted: we have no clue when Grandma Joy's side of the family (Dake-Phares-Biggs) showed up in California (they popped out of the ground--like daisies!!)--and Grandma was the fishing, farming, composting, green-type. Grandpa Rex and the Williams-Kelly klan came over when he was in his teens from Wisconsin. Wisconsin is not remembered warmly. (Haha.) The Murray family is Texan. The Murray-Cheek-Ferrero-Rodgers side is Texan (isn't there some southern connection with Sweet Potatoes?). But Mom was born and raised in SoCal. And Mom and Dad (Mr. Arcata/Eureka) went to school at Humboldt (Big Trees and Hippies) and ate granola and yogurt. Then we were born. We being the siblings and I. Two down south, two up here in Santa Cruz. Granola and hippyish tendencies are in my blood. I can't help it. Potatoes. Hmm. I don't know where this obsession came from but they are tasty and cheap. So what happens when you take thrifty meal food (potatoes) and mix them with thoroughly ingrained tendencies (granola-making)?

Sweet Potato Granola!!
6 cups Oats of sorts
½ a large sweet potato, diced
2 cups almonds
½ cup sunflower seeds
¼ cup sesame seeds
¼ cup wheat germ
2 T cinnamon
1 T ginger
¼ cup olive oil
¼ cup applesauce
1 cup honey


325º For decreasing intervals of time (10, 8, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5, until it is done) , stirring/flipping the granola in between. 
I'd advise mixing the dry ingredients first. Measure the oil a liquid measuring cup large enough to accommodate close to a cup of honey on top of the oil. The oil can be swished around so that honey doesn't stick--which makes cleaning less of a hastle. Just plop the the applesauce directly onto the dry mixture. I'd err on the side of less in the spice department and more in the sweet potato--these are all estimations (I didn't measure the spices or the potato or the applesauce, I just threw it in). But it is so tasty. The applesauce makes for a chewier granola, so if you want more crisp, I'd cut down on it, or maybe just cook it longer. Mmmmmm . . . 

Vague Philosophical Musings on Fall Semester 2010

Post finals, post packing and traveling, sitting at the kitchen table in a slower paced section of lifestyles it is easy to gloss the semester into “a learning experience” and move on without actually learning anything. What was demonstrable, if anything, in the last semester, that should be carried foward for furture reference? 

1.   One will mess up, and one will make the same mistakes multiple times: No, that is not my excuse for habitual burnout. But, I do think it is necessary that we give ourselves some grace in the penance department. That was a lot of religious rhetoric in one sentence and it is probably in misuse; someone can chew me out for that later. The mistakes are, in essence, the same, but there are leaves of difference that can be found, and those are often signs of growth, of change.

2.   Let’s break that down a bit more—one will mess up. Hi, me llamo Not Perfect. Cannot be, will never be anything but a human being. Call it Total Depravity or Human Stupidity Syndrome or What Makes Life Interesting, it is an inevitable reality.

3.   The Reaction is What Matters. It has been established: we mess up. Now what? Or is it messing up? Everything comes down to a choice of movement. Rewriting past choices is not an option but moving is.

I think this, moving, is the most important bit of knowledge that has become more and more a reality to me in the last several years. I will never know what is next. I have already made the mistake of staking x, y, and z on these carefully laid, intricate, unattainable goals and plans, and now I’m in a state of dizzy confusion, blurry minded, now what?! Move. Quit sitting, wallowing, frazzling, just move. Forward or backward, up or down are quasi-irrelevant terms at this point. “Quasi” because sometimes there are informative tidbits called past-experience and because sometimes our perceptions of direction are completely skewed, but usually both. And, yes, it stinks now: I’ve messed up and all I can see are consequences. And looking back one can say: that was a horrid decision. But was it? All strings attached are somehow attached to the present, and would change that one mistake for the sake of retrospect? Most likely not. The mistake has been made and the options are to move or not to move. Move. 

Exam Week Edibles

I am firmly against the readily spewed rhetoric asserting that one eats crud during exams. Sorry.
Okay, so last night I did. And I regretted it after one piece of pizza.

But tonight was not gross. Exam week is end of the semester, so it does mean some creative mixing to use the why-did-I-buy-this and make last as long as possible the favorites, seeing as the purchasing period has passed until next semester, or in my case, next fall. That means use everything that cannot sit in storage over the next semester and summer.

Yeah, the photo quality stinks, I'll need to fix that before I go to Spain. Peas! Except, I'm not that excited about them. I bought them to ice my foot, and now I'm eating them. Yum. But yum when mixed with carrots (which I always, always have), brown rice, red onion, garlic, curry powder, and ginger powder in a skillet with water and oil (or butter, whatever is available). Delicioso! Of course potatoes would have been a lovely addition, but I can keep that in mind for next year.

The Persuasion of Lyme

[Working on an essay for The British Novel and reached a point regarding possibly one of my favorite paragraphs in Persuasion. Thought I'd share just for kicks.]
“. . . with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of town . . . [the] scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation . . .” (89)
[My thoughts]: Lyme presents novelty to almost all involved, and it is a striking novelty, as evidenced by Austen’s attention to its description. The assertion that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see the charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better” (89) is enough to suggest that the scenery persuades one to forget and lose oneself in the greater surrounding picture. Anne is persuaded.
[If anyone actually reads this and has read the book, favorite descriptions?]

The Big Brownie

Okay, so Grand Rapids is not as palatable as chocolate, or at least no with such frequency. But brownies and today have something in common.


Today we are getting are first sticking snow, our first real snow of the season, and I love it! I love the first snow because of the smell, the crispness of the air, and the likeness to the shaking of powdered sugar over brownies: when it is done gently and evenly, the brownie gradually disappears under a blanket of sugar (well, one typically stops before that). The first snow is so similar, and I can't help but get so excited.


Walking to class this morning, it was all I could do not to drop my back pack and go skuttling around in circles with my mouth open, tongue out, grinning like there's no tomorrow. I do miss California winters, the wet season, the lulling crisp and cleansing rains but in exchange for standing out in the first rain, bare-foot and silly, I stand out in the first sticking snow, just as delighted, as the shimmering flakes swirl and dance.