** NB: This will be my final entry on THE STREET. Tomorrow, on the first day of 2013, I intend to make my first entry on a new blog IN BEAUTY.  I need a new beginning. We all do.

'Nothing to see but streets, streets, streets. Nothing to breathe but streets, streets, streets.'
                                                                             -So said Dickens long long ago, really not so long ago . . .

                                                                                                                                                                            ***
 _______

I live in a curious (and beautiful) region where the signs of change are continuous and variable, as I suppose change must be, but still it is sometimes confusing when signs of winter's onset appear simultaneously with signs of birthing spring and the demise of summer.

The last leaves are dropping from the Ginko trees and at the same time, the tree branches are prickling with buds. For these trees, winter is a silly inessential comma shoved between summer and spring. Beneath their temporarily barren branches, green green grass is frosty white in early morning hours, but spring bulbs ignore the cues of winter's entry and take advantage of increased sunlight to proclaim the arrival of spring. The first hyacinth is in full bloom, and its sweet perfume tangles with that of dozens narcissus flowers opening; indeed, some of the earliest spring flowers are already nodding, their bloom finished.

What to make of this signatory confusion? That the signs we read, those we recognize as measures of certain 'truths,' i.e. the reality of seasons, are not concrete markers but flickering shades, anchored not to any concrete reality but tied  loosely to shifting context?

I dunno.

'Thinking'  may help me  reorganize this confusion of seasons into a new sort of normalcy, but who knows. There is an argument to be made for recognizing and reading signs, but what happens when the inherent meaning of the signs changes? There are times when signs advertise a spent reality or are written in an archaic language. What then?

I tend to think that we might try abandoning our notions of knowing and instead dive into what surrounds us, swim in it, feel it, breathe it, swallow it, live it. Of course, there are things we need to know, we need to consider, to manage, if we are going to create useful joyful  communities focused on the future, but we also need to dive into dream, even if the sign reads STEEP DROP.  In this past year, we have all come to the edge of one cliff after another, fiscal or otherwise, and, at times, ignoring the warning signs,  stepped over the edge. We haven't crashed yet.

As I write this, I hear my neighbor's wire-wheeled high-polished purple hot-rod fly by at super-speed. I look from my window and see him flash by and note that he ignores the red light on the corner and the one by the school and the one beneath the BART tracks. No one follows. This is not a good 'sign,' I think; it does not suggest peacein the New Year . . .

But is it a sign and if this is a sign, what kind of sign is it?  One easily ignored or one arriving with as much vigor and determination as the fragile pink of the hyacinth beneath the leafless still-blooming rose? Is it sign of continued decay, rising anger? A sign of dismay or simple youthful recklessness? Or one of bizarre hope, the extreme hope to get from here to there at speed without crashing?

I suppose it's all in how we read it.

The pink heart above covers a hastily spray-painted swastika, a sign emblazoned on two phone poles at the opposite ends of one block by some misdirected (or angry) individual. Some days later, another more concerned and thoughtful resident (or passer by), stenciled pink hearts over the swastikas, imposing a beauty and grace over disorder and suggested mayhem. The signs shifted and the social environment of the block shifted. Anger was translated into peace.

How do we discover harmonious solutions to complicated life puzzles? By ignoring signs, or by recognizing signs and then re-imagining them, re-purposing them? By translating the negative to the positive? By learning a new language, unearthing a vocabulary of justice, discovering the grammar of love?

I dunno.

Maybe the only solution is to open our arms to life, to wake, to rise, to sleep, to be.

I suppose it's all in how we sing it.

And dance it.

Welcome 2013.

Another storm has swept across the bay  -- this one even more ferocious than the last, leaving behind flooded streets, sagging hillsides and skies bluer than they would be without all that grey to prop them up. After the roaring rains Christmas day and the tropical deluge of Christmas night, the parks on Boxer's Day were empty but sparkling, and my little dog and I enjoyed walking alone along the shore.

Well, we weren't entirely alone.

Ducks paddled happily about on the newly formed ponds covering the green expanse of the ball field. Not much chance for Christmas touch football games here, but the mallards with the shimmering green heads and neat white collars are happy indeed.

If only we humans could adapt as easily as do the ducks, if only we might paddle as peaceably in new pools of thought as these pairs of ducks in their new fresh water pools. We might discover that we, too, could find new paths, new ways of being, dive like ducks, happily pulling grasses, finding new solace in old places. But we don't.

We just go on, determined to maintain our ferocious belief in our old stodgy ways of 'progress', believing that bigger is better, more is necessary, but that 'new and improved' attitude as a foundation for living is destroying both the present and the future. It is clear now that if we don't adapt, if we don't scale back, find simpler ways of being, we will destroy the planet.

Our climate is changing with a speed not predicted, and that change is our fault. We have suffered through more extreme climate events than ever this year, but still few are making the necessary changes in their lives that might slow the change, ensure a healthy future for future generations on the planet. Everyone thinks change is someone else's responsibility, and so storms grow ever more ferocious. And we go on,  merrily consuming, consuming, consuming, demanding more oil to meet the needs of this increased consumption, this greedy scraping all there is to scrape from the bones of our Mother earth.

The future destruction of the planet is preventable, but I fear we lack the willpower to change. We are not as adaptable as ducks. Humans want their wars, their things, their luxuries.

If only more people could understand that the luxury they crave is beauty, and that beauty already surrounds them, then perhaps we could protect that beauty, save our planet.

The finest
luxury is the planet itself,
the sky wide above the willing land below, white waves on
blue blue
seas, light  after the storm, oxalis in yellow bloom, dry grasses suddenly green, small critters scampering from rock to rock, iridescent plumage of wild ducks, an unexpected shadow, a bright flash of color. The air we breathe.

Why can't we change, understand less as more, be content to enjoy the small moments.

Inside those small moments is a vastness that can fill our hearts and erase the boundaries of our minds.

These last few days, as I walked about the Street, watching my feet, avoiding the bits of trash, squashed cigarette cartons, empty juice boxes, discarded one-shot liquor bottles, I found myself amazed at a delicate beauty newly arrived. As I stepped past the decaying disposable diaper box that has been three days now in front of the corner house, caught a blowing newspaper with my free hand, I looked down and thought -- perhaps incongruously, perhaps miraculously -- of winter gardens.

I know it won't last, but I'm enjoying it for now.

As every crack has filled with velvet moss, broken sidewalks transform to road maps of imagined realms, vibrant exuberant magical places. Wild rivers are marked out in green, some with islands and some with spreading deltas caving into invisible seas.

 marking close distances that are still too far to see, jungles crashed to deserts, mountains reaching past a flattened grey-smoke into mica-star skies.

Who wouldn't want to pause momentarily, decide which path to take, maybe climb those mountains?

I stop, one foot on the crossroads, and watch my neighbor lift a cut tree from the top of his car, its limbs bond tight against its trunk. Another drapes ropes of entwined pine over and through his chain-link fence. Someone else has nailed a wreath of rosemary on their entry door. They are all following the tradition of bringing green when all outside fades to gray, but I wonder if they take the time to look down and discover this 'other' green -- this brighter, fresher, sudden green --  in gutters, on sidewalks, against fences, beneath their feet. 

I love winter wreaths alive with holly berries, but I want to dive into those mossy rivers of green.

 . . . and so it went, but those weeks of rain -- when I was absent from this blog, slogged under the weight of grey clouds and relentless rain -- washed away Peralta Junction weeks before its scheduled end. The junction packed up at the last of November, but I include here a few last pictures of that miraculous event posted with the hopes that the organizers might consider returning to the street when winter rains have fled to summer mountains, leaving the coast once again cold and clear.

Not many words. Just thanks and thanks. Thanks again (and again) for your great gift.

Jean Paul Marcelo enjoys painting the Bay Area landscape under sunny skies, and spent many days painting some sensitive portraits of the junction. You can see more of his plein-air  paintings at his website: jpmarcelo.com

On stage, the unicycle antics of Donna Wood and Co.  . . . Stayin' Alive, wump wup wup Stayin' Alive.

So, keep up the music, keep making art, keep laughing, and loving, and being Real.

It's that time of year again -- jingle bells and cheery Christmas elves urging  everyone to spend, spend, spend, and then there are those theatre and dance troupes who stage seasonal classics, reminding us that this is a season of love not consumerism. KT Nelson and ODC/Dance stage the Velveteen Rabbit annually at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and this year's performance is as emotionally and imaginatively satisfying as always.

For those who don't know (or can't recall) the Margery Williams'  story of the Velveteen Rabbit,  it is an imaginative (and very real) tale that gently reminds us of the power of love, how love can make one real and once real, never ugly, except to those who do not understand. It is the Skin Horse, an ancient denizen of the nursery, who shares this magic with the Velveteen Rabbit, a floppy stuffed toy thta appears first in the Boy's Christmas stocking, finds his way first to the bottom of the toy cupboard and eventually into the Boy's arms where he does -- finally -- become 'rea'l before he hops away, with the help of a woodland fairy  as a full-fledged flesh and blood furry bunny.

The other day, I volunteered at Yerba Buena on a morning when the theatre crowded with hundreds of schoolchildren, and it occurred to me that most of these fresh-faced children, so familiar with iPads and computer games, may have never seen a "skin horse," which is no longer a common toy in these times of plastic, polyester, and plush. Indeed, most of their parents may have never seen a "skin horse," and many may think the naming of such a creature merely lyrical and imaginative, but certainly not 'REAL.'

And so, I thought I might post here a photo of a real-live skin horse who like the Skin Horse of the Velveteen Rabbit was once so loved by a small boy that his mane thinned, his tail disappeared, and his broad flanks cracked. The boy loved his skin horse, and the skin horse became real. The boy never abandoned his skin horse but kept him close for decades. After the boy became a man and had a family, the skin horse watched over his daughters, and when those daughters became women, the skin horse moved with one of them to far places. Now in 2012, that skin horse, more than 100 years old and still as real, stands quietly atop an old writing desk that belonged to the girl, me, who is now the mother of boys grown to men.

As real as it gets.

From The Velveteen Rabbit, Margery Williams:

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The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to those who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.

But the Skin Horse only smiled.

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Okay. It's been a while, and my most faithful readers (you know who you are ;-) have been chiding me, gently probing to discover the cause of the 'blog jam.' Would it help to admit that following the demise of summer I am in mourning for the dying sun?

Probably not, but no matter.

Here I am back to offer some last impressions of that season of light. Here in the Bay, we don't have those stunning displays of brilliant reds and oranges covering entire mountains such as exist back East, but there are days, like the recent afternoon pictured below, when trees blush pink and sidewalks are painted gold with fallen leaves, days that make me smile, grateful for the ghost of  the sun lying at my feet.

All this yellow made me laugh.

Tripping down this sidewalk, my trusty dog Earnest AKA Toto-in-disguise at my side, I felt certain  I would soon see the Wizard or at least stumble over the Scarecrow.

Of course, I didn't.

Unless the tiny  woman with the huge bag of recyclables balanced on her back could be counted as a wizard. Who knows? She did give me a big smile and would have waved had she not needed both hands to hang onto the bag and its magical contents of convertible currency, aluminum to nickels. As she moved sturdily across the street, her back bent but her spine stretched long, wizard-like indeed.

It's a prickly time of year, magical and desperate. Spines seem to burst forth with as much vigor as blossoms in the spring. Passers-by look skeletal, wet with rain, hair and clothing plastered close, umbrellas inside out, metal innards quite exposed. Trees stripped of leaves are naked bones,  stark and steely gray but still a fragile bulwark against the inevitable winds of winter, fingers reaching to catch the leaving of the light.  Such magnificence -- these edges -- I should feel grateful for this sudden beauty, but I mourn the dying of the light, miss the rustle of the leaves. The sound of branches  scraping the sky is lost on me.

But that's okay, too. 

Autumn skies have enough music to carry me through dark December days. Plenty of strong chords, howling winds, and always the grace notes of geese honking their way further south.

Trees pressed against flooded blue and leaves pressed to rain damp concrete. Both leave lasting impressions.

I came upon these sidewalk leaf prints pictured below while walking recently in Emeryville. The leaves of young sycamore trees had blown down during the last raging rain storm. After the 'river of rain' -- the 'pineapple express' -- had glued the leaves to the sidewalk, tannins leached onto the white concrete, and when the next blustering wind came howling off the bay, it blew away the spines of the fallen leaves, and the shadow of summer remained printed on the sidewalk.

A perfect ghost.

Meanwhile, I've been working, printing books and painting.

Sometimes Sleeping with its imperfect ghosts, standing guard.

The mosaics reclaimed Maxwell Park as a place for play and happiness, banishing the darker days of dissipated decay.  Apparently, as I learned, this project, four years in the making, is not over yet. Neighborhood residents promise  the walls inside the bathrooms will soon be covered with equally cheerful mosaics. Like the contagious joy of the Peralta Junction Creative Commons, this neighborhood art project brought positive energy, expansive hope, and joy to a struggling community.

Art is magic; it has the power to transform the dingiest landscape, the most mundane yet necessary objects of everyday life, like the trash cans pictured below -- also covered with lively mosaics -- located some miles away from Maxwell Parl along Grand Ave near Lake Merritt, standing like sober sentinels, motionless but still breathing happiness onto city streets.

Transforming trash, and using trash to transform.

Recycle, reuse and be reborn.

The other day, I was walking with a friend and our dogs on the far fringes of West Oakland and came upon the lively mural pictured here. My friend, who has long been busily restoring buildings in the neighborhood, brick by brick, board by board, told me that these murals shield what remains of a lively museum that was once on this site -- the dream of his friend Marcel who has since relocated to New Orleans. The only actual building on-site, an ancient little one-story one-room house slipped between two panels of the imagined street of bustling shops, he tells me, was moved from the opposite side of the street when it was threatened with oblivion. This building, perhaps the oldest building in West Oakland, was once abandoned but now survives as we all survive . . . protected by memory and dreams, grounded but ready to fly.

On that morning of the long walk through recent West Oakland history, I returned home and then sat very still for quite some time, elbows on my drawing table, fingers stretched across eyes, thinking of  what is created and left behind, what crumbles, what remains . . . the through-lines describing the limits of birth and death . . . and all that expands between. I thought about the great generosity of these paintings -- and all street art -- offered so freely to those who pass.  I thought about all the hope that breathes in West Oakland -- the gardens, the art, the cheerful hellos -- in spite of struggle.

What we give, what we keep, what we leave behind.

Once upon a time, I came close to abandoning a decade's worth of my own paintings stashed for an even longer time in a tin-roofed desert warehouse, but then rallied and retrieved them, damaged but more or less intact. Decades earlier, I did abandon all my sculptures. Too much weight. Maybe some survive -- who knows -- those I gave away might still be available to eyes and hearts. Often that which we give to others, lives; that which we stash away and hide, dies.

As I sat at my drawing table, listening to John Coltrane with my thumbs pressed to my eyes, I thought of all the stories and poems of my own that remain trapped in files, uncollected and unpublished . . . and what that means . . . if anything. I recalled a small number of poems written during a rather difficult time in my life when I had been forced to deal with some intense internet 'bullying' that both affected my ability to work, to earn money, to be in the world.  Even as that cowardly bullying cut my 'worldly' ties, I held fast to my creative heart and wrote.

I decided to paste a few of those poems into this blog -- as odd as they might be. When I wrote them, the very foundation of my world had cracked, and I was feeling quite alone, no longer sure whom I might trust. Nonetheless, I determined to remain close to beauty, to grace, to kindness. I didn't want to descend into the dark howling desperation clawing at the fringes of my life and did my best to ignore the miserable virtual nastiness of  behind-the-scenes bullies. I set out instead to find an affordable home, putting one foot in front of the other, listening to the city, talking to trees, watching the sky. And while I searched, I wrote down words pushed through the open windows in my heart.

I have include these poems here not as commentary on the remarkable murals discovered on my recent walk and pictured here and not because I think they are 'gems,' but because of their obstinacy, a reminder to myself that that art creates life and that art can be made even in the worst of times . . . we all need to breathe . . . and breathe and breathe. Just breathe.

The poems stand, I hope, quietly respectfully to the side of the images as separate rhythms -- drums, strings or piccolo.

You decide. Or not.

Afternoon Tea with Bees and Bombs

Downstairs, an old woman, gray haired green eyed,
speaks of pastimes, carrots grown in backyards.
The boy nearby smokes clove cigarettes, breathes
symphonies, hardwired to LED lights
taped to his chest. A legless woman, blond,
complains of mud and frogs while clematis
bloom blue and wide on vines attached to drains –
two orange cats curl against an iron pot
awash with moss and forest ferns. Beauty –
soon smoked out by evening fog. I can’t stop
grinding down my teeth. Yesterday, driving
north through thirty-five miles of acrid smoke,
heat eclipsed dry hills, screaming traffic noise.
I melted faster than the grasses burned.
Now, I’m hammered steel, pollen etched, extreme.
Tomorrow, rockets explode stars to clouds –
White gold – what it is to be disbelieved.


                                                                                                                                                              . . . .  Ballantine, 2008

Splendor

A stray dog runs the stairs near waterfalls
with a stride so wide, I hear his hoof beats –
see him shake his mane.

A Buddhist monk comes down at slower speed –
a six-foot scroll painted under redwood trees
rolled beneath her arm.

Below neatly pruned roses bloom, and here
on this waterless slope, dry weeds tango –
red spikes and white rounds.

I’m hanging tight to god’s rope, trapped inside
falling water, rolled flat out to circles,
chained inside the heart.

This absence of doves, such a lack of bees
can’t matter. Living behind barbed wire
is not an option.

                                                                                                                                                                  . . . Ballantine, 2008

An End to War

Morning glories at dawn, cobalt circles
on a flat pink wall. Commotion below.

An ex-Navy seal talks loudly of dolphins
blinking as light curves across sonar screens.

He drinks gin at 10 a.m., toasts the girl
with neon pink hair slashed above her eyes –

She answers with tales of roller-blading
on Ecstasy, snorting lines in Home Depot.

The plastic drainpipes (she says) in Plumbing
sang songs as fine as fishnet catching light.

When she tells him a mermaid sat astride
her bass fiddle, mouth agape to sea sounds,
he laughs and clouds of dragonflies rise up.

                                                                                                                                                                . . . .  Ballantine, 2008

Hearing Voices

Yesterday, the washing machine caught fire.
The smoke alarm didn’t sound.
We put the fire out.

Now, a small bird builds a nest
of twigs and dryer lint, tucked
into the morning glory vine –
and at last – a silver-spangled
maple leaf, chemical orange.

Moths singing soprano through the night.

This missile could reach targets
as far away as Jupiter.


                                                                                                                                                              . . . .  Ballantine, 2008

Peralta Junction is now officially open for business.

Today's grand opening was joyous and peaceful, alive with music and smiles.

Pumpkins were carved. Faces were painted, and visitors danced while music played, and I came away with some moderately priced and unique gifts for future occasions neatly tucked in a paper bag.

Last night the fog horns were moaning dolefully out on the Bay, but the early morning fog burned quickly away, leaving stunning blue skies and warm  -- almost too warm -- sun. I walked up to the Junction late morning with my little Earnest trotting beside, discovered the magic of this brand-new creative commons , and then returned mid-afternoon alone so I might explore the booths and speak with the artists. The morning crowd was small, but by mid-afternoon, the parking lot was filling fast  . . . (yes, there is a parking lot -- and a parking lot attendant!)

I can't say I was able to speak with all (I'm too shy) or that I saw all that there was to see (so much!), but what I did see and what I did hear, I thoroughly enjoyed. The Midway was open with its delightful games carefully (and playfully!) crafted from found materials. I think my favorite game is the one that has participants shooting streams of water into suspended oil cans. Fill the cans and a truly magical balloon ship careens into an imagined sky. Cooperation encouraged. :-)

By the way, as a woman, I have mixed feelings about the painted women standing targets, patiently waiting for beanbags to hit their clad bottoms and tops, revealing what hides below. I don't want to throw any kind of object at man or woman, even in play. I understand, of course, that as Baktin suggested, that 'to degrade is to bury, to sow, and to kill simultaneously, in order to bring forth something more and better,' to ask us to confront our habits -- as uncomfortable as that might be.  I just wonder if a similar and equally happy game might be made with a magically painted landscape, clouds hovering above. Hit the clouds and flowers sprout below. Hit the sun and fruit sprouts on the tree. I do, however, appreciate the cheerful carnevalesque painting of the Bucksome Bedy booth. This is carnival, farcical fun. Farceurs have long considered it their responsibility to breathe a little oxygen into the smoldering fires of society’s discontent . . . and  do so while inhaling lyric beauty.

The surrounding shoppes offer hand-made foods -- organic doughnuts, delicious Oaxacan tamales (meat, chicken, or vegetarian; I once enjoyed one of their breakfast pineapple tamales -- exquisite), popcorn, and gorgeous little cupcakes plus all kinds of hand-made  goods and crafts, including  organic body lotions, distinctive hats, wild vests, metal work, hand crocheted baby shoes, jewelry (no bling, just hand-made wondrous stuff), and the unique silk-screened ties, cheerful dresses and skirts of Trinity Cross' inspired Field Day.

Have fun browsing and rummaging. You're sure to find something you like.

And for those who want an unusual souvenir of their day at the Junction, there's even a photo booth where families can have their picture taken against a cheerful red and white background . . .

I don't think it's possible to come to Peralta Junction and leave grumpy. There's just too much to make you smile, too many other people smiling and and laughing, too many horses and monkeys and elephants and strange birds -- and pumpkins -- all grinning madly.

Don't wait until November to come to visit the Peralta Junction Midway and its shoppes. Most vendors now on site will be gone by November. There will be new folk, new wonders, in November, but certainly, you don't want to miss these folk!

See it all!

Come on down and dance a little, smile a little, remind your bones what it is to have fun.

Your heart will thank you.

It is -- as you like it! Peralta Junction Opens!


Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head;
And this our life exempt from public haunt
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones and good in every thing.
I would not change it. ( II.i.)

   
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrance . . . ( II.vii)

And the stage is set!

O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful
wonderful! and yet again wonderful, and after that,
out of all hooping! (III.ii.)

   

Welcome. Set down your venerable burthen,
  And let him feed. ( II.vii)

Peace, ho! (V.iii.)

Indeed.