notes from the kelp

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A busy and sometimes abyss-mal schedule.

Ok, in the four years of this bloglet’s humble history, I don’t think I’ve ever gone quite this long without offering a new post. But then again, in the years of my business travel, rarely have I been gone from home for 12 days. Sandwiched between daunting deadlines that included finishing a double quintet for an imminent delivery, writing a speech, filling several publishing orders from distributors here and in Europe, responding to online students, preparing materials for an upcoming workshop I’m doing, and scooping kitty litter (there’s always a deadline on that one, lemme tell ya), I was amazed to actually get out the door and fling myself to the east coast once again. And, back, at least for two weeks until I leave for Philadelphia. Details of this past jaunt abound on my website, for the curious. Teaser: one of the highlights was testifying on an FCC panel hearing in Washington, D.C. No, I did not use a dirty word in one of my choral works…

I’m lucky that the two airports I spend a lot of time at on the west coast are really quite terrific (I cannot say the same for the particular terminal I usually end up in at JFK, which looks like the inhuman, dilapidated set from an outtake of Blade Runner). SeaTac, with its glass-intensive terminal, offers some good food and drink and a human scale on which to enjoy it. And adorable Friday Harbor airport is a delight, as one hops out of one’s car and hops right into the flying version of one: a waiting puddle jumper. I always have a camera in my hand on those flights over the islands, never knowing what fascinating vision I’ll capture. But this last departure surprised me with a photographic fluke: as we lifted into the air above the tarmac, I pointed my iPhone out the window (didn’t bring my real camera on this particular trip), and just randomly… snapped. One photo. When I downloaded the pic later, I was amazed: it was perfectly level (even though I was not) and, perfectly, symmetrically cropped. I did absolutely nothing to manipulate or edit the top photo you see here. Freaky! In a good way. Like life itself, much of the time.

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Find out…

This is the view of Friday Harbor from the top deck of a favorite outdoor restaurant. Clue: they serve a lot of crab, shellfish, and other incredibly fresh critters that used to swim freely in the sea until extremely recently. As summer starts to wind down and the last gasp of friendly tourists comes to visit us friendly natives, I realize that pretty soon it’ll be a little brisk to sit here in my T-shirt and shades, sucking down a San Juan Island Ice Tea (aka, Wrong Island Ice Tea) and munching on sea protein. I haven’t eaten meat or birds for almost twenty, count ’em, twenty years. My motto is that if it can look me in the eye and walk away on all fours, it’s safe.

Fish can’t walk. Yet.

I admit to being a full-fledged pescaterian: I enjoy fish. A lot of it. I live in the right place, that’s for sure. We get our fish, quite literally, off the dock. My body and feeble little brain just need that kind of protein. And I hear that high doses of mercury are just great for beating wrinkles.

I can go on and on about my views on vegetarianism, and I won’t bore you with them all here. Ok, maybe a few of them. Suffice it to say that like many of you reading this, I’m highly opposed to obscene-scale factory farming, to the drugs and awful things that are given to cows and chickens to eat to grow conveniently fat, to the manner in which these creatures are treated, and to the damage done to the land and the earth in the pursuit of the trillionth quarter-pounder. I have, however, no objection to raising and killing the food for a family or small community to consume. Humans are carnivores. We have these teeth for a reason. It’s not a sin to eat meat. It’s a sin to abuse the land and the animals the way we’ve come to.

Mega-scale commercial fishing is no better, believe me, I am well aware. This is my sin, supporting that industry through some (not all) of my fish purchases. This is my hypocrisy. But some action is better than no action, and even for those who choose to eat meat, the important thing is sharing information that could bring about change. We must divulge the truths that have become the ugliness of a once-acceptable business. Whether you or I purchase an eerily shrink-wrapped chunk of hormone-laden, unidentifiable flesh in our local grocery store on a Thursday afternoon is not going to do much to turn the tide of the farming industry. I’ve noticed that it seems to be doing just fine without my contributions. But what is significant is educating people about where that animal product came from and how it came to be. I did interviews last year for both the Vegetarian Times and the VegNews, and in both I made it clear to the writers that I eat like a native Pacific Northwesterner/Native American, but that the message of awareness and responsibility is what I want to spread.

Uh, along with the crab dip ;-).

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Reflecting.

My little Smudge has no idea just how perfect his reflection looked in the framed pastel hanging across from my desk. I couldn’t have positioned him like this had I tried.

I’m reflecting, too, on the toll the massive fires are taking in my former home turf of Los Angeles. I’ve been following the reports on the web, and trying to transmit humid, cooler thoughts to the pyro gods above. During the 24 years I lived in southern California I experienced a lot of wildfires, a handful of which came frighteningly close to the physical spaces that contained fragile, temporal proof of my existence. Once you’ve been through it, a visceral reaction is unavoidable. Bravi to the brave: the tireless firefighters, working so hard in these hellish conditions, risking, and sadly sometimes giving, their lives in an effort to protect everyone else’s.

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Elegy for a sea kitty.

I’ve featured Lion’s Mane jellyfish on these enpixelated pages once or twice before, but they’re always so fascinating to me that I can’t help but share this one with you. It’s roughly 18 inches wide, and in the process of ending its life, which spans only about a year. I hope it was a pleasant one filled with everything that a jelly might desire. Did it float around to wonderful places with comfy temperatures? Get enough sex? Eat out at some great spots, enjoying the background music of the passing Orcas’ latest hits? I hope so.

I often see them washed up along the beach here where I walk by the house, and I love to kneel and study them closely. Tempting as it is to touch their soft, gel-like skin, I resist. Even in this weakened state, they can offer quite a zippy sting that is officially referred to as, “seldom fatal.” I don’t care for those two words next to each other.

In life these jellies are magnificent and graceful creatures; in death, they remain beautiful as the sunlight reflects deep oranges and maroons from their weakening bell. Unnaturally upturned edges plead to the sky, as the rocks below coax them gently to the shore with each wave. It’s inspiring to witness a creature that’s as gorgeous in death as it is in life.

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Ahhhh…

Saturday night between 7 and 9:30 p.m., three good friends, Charles, our guide and I kayaked almost silently through the Haro Strait. We were flanked by bald eagles, Dall’s porpoises, small fish that jumped giddily out of the water, rhinoceros auklets, and the memory of a large pod of Orca whales who swam in this same spot just an hour earlier. When twilight surrendered to nighttime, fascinating sparks from bioluminescent life forms lit up in the water with each paddle stroke. Vancouver Island and B.C.’s smaller southern gulf isles met our gaze across the sea, and as the clouds gave way to the sunset which gave way to the stars, I knew I was in my own version of Heaven.

I chose to accompany these pix with a little excerpt from the “Nunc Dimittis” movement of my “Evensong Suite,” since it seemed so fitting. The text refers to how, upon seeing baby Jesus, Simeon declares that he’s seen God’s salvation– something God had promised he would experience before he died. Well, for me, and for a lot of folks just like me, moments like this are my salvation, and the power of the universe in its natural beauty, in its art, and in the kindest interactions with others, are the only saviours that matter. Amen!

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Afloat, in the air.

I was utterly charmed to discover this new cache of multi-legged life above a little aloe plant next to my front door. Suspended in a frozen tumble amid thin web strands, a hundred or more of these tiny, tiny spider babies experienced sunshine and pine trees for the first time. And, the regrettable circumstance of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The previous week I had captured and relocated an unremarkable, pale colored spider who I first inspected under a magnifying glass before helping it change zip codes from atop my kitchen cabinet to beneath my wooded ferns many yards away. I was taken by the significant chevron design on its outer abdomen, and pored over photos in my various arachnids-for-geeks books. It turned out that I had saved the life of a little creature who could have seriously impeded my own. It was a Hobo spider, not uncommon in these parts and who, like the Brown Recluse, makes up in necrotic, flesh-eating, potentially lethal bites what it lacks in fashion sense.

I’ve always loved spiders. An essay I wrote years ago describes just one of my many ongoing co-habitations. And so when I saw these adorable babies, my heart sank. Could they be a burgeoning squadron of Hobo spiders, soon to unintentionally menace those of us living here paying the property taxes? I scoured the internet for proof of their innocence. “Baby Hobo spider photo.” “Hobo arachnid young photo.” “Pictures of newborn spiders.” Nothing. Crestfallen, I flashed back to a related episode from years ago in Malibu.

The deed was done as rapidly and humanely as possible. I felt terrible. The next day I stepped out to the deck and gazed sadly at the space above the aloe where my little nursery orphans had hovered so trustingly. There, toward the edge of one leaf, was a lone survivor. Smiling, I walked back into the house, and immersed myself in my music.

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Illumination, from all sources.

The lighthouse at Lime Kiln is one of this island’s best loved spots. Between sightings of Orcas, Canada, the Olympics, Mt. Rainier on a clear day, and tourists with a serene smile on their face, there’s plenty to see, framed by bright auburn Arbutus trees whose orange bark glows neon in the setting sun.

I think I’ve felt a little bit like a lighthouse this past week, informing others of what lies ahead. The topic in my case hasn’t been rocks that might sink someone’s vessel, but rather, tools that will help their professional ship stay afloat and find a great harbor. If you’re curious about the power of social networking (and since you’re connecting with me by reading this, you may well be), here’s a piece I wrote for Molly Sheridan’s ArtsJournal blog, Mind the Gap. There are plenty of thoughtful entries and comments on this subject if you swing over to the main page, too.

There’s no sense in cursing the darkness, when we can all find our own light.
At least, as long as we have electrical power and the internet!

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Below, from slightly above.

One couldn’t find a more spectacular dinner location. Last night I stared across the fringe of the rocky shoreline to the Haro Strait that separates the island on which I type this, from the much larger one named Vancouver. Orca whales glided quietly behind the shoulders of my five dining companions, one of whom has the lucky title of being the property owner of this particular piece of paradise. A pair of bald eagles stood at the tide pools for hours and just like the rest of us, watched the sun disappear behind the mountains. Maybe the birds were as entranced as we were. Maybe they didn’t care as long as their favorite fish swished by. The moon and conversation rose as the sun and levels in the wine bottles lowered, and all evening long, I thought how fortunate I was to be surrounded by brilliant people in a brilliantly perfect setting. Ahhhhh.

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Island music.

Unless one has followed this bloglet for a while, one might not understand why there is algae in the title. Thus, a reminder. It’s everywhere around me. Eat your sea vegetables!

Huge swaths of the stuff drape the shorelines, and at low tide it looks like the chaotic ladies’ dressing room at Filene’s Basement or Ross Dress for Less, the oddly greenish fabric strewn everywhere, left behind in a mad tidal retreat to the next big sale. This particular dressing cove looks straight out to Victoria, which I could see far more clearly than my little pocket Nikon could. My phone could see it clearly, too: on this side of the island the only cell signal you can hope to momentarily grab comes from Canada, as witnessed by the “roaming” indicator on my readout. Only in or extremely near the bustling metropolis of Friday Harbor (all four blocks of it!) can one hope to use their cell phone. But that’s okay, because I really didn’t feel the urge to call anyone. I was in deep conversation with the plants.

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Swell and swirl.

I can stare endlessly into the water, imagining all the life that thrives where most above cannot see. Like the creatures who cling to these rocks, I’m waiting for my own version of high tide. Having just finished a solo piano work this week for one of my favorite pianists, I’m about to embark on a journey for ten instruments– a double quintet of strings and woodwinds that will premiere this fall in Chicago by this very hip ensemble. I’m nearly done with a sizable article that addresses writer’s block (it would be rather ironic if I were to the deadline on that one), I have a few pithy words to add to other blogs I like, and am never lacking in additional music projects, like finishing up my long-promised electroacoustic CD, Alextronica. Each of these projects and tasks is poised at the edge of the shore, waiting to set out to sea on an adventure. I’m always looking for the next tidal surge.

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Hot music for a temporarily warm amphibian.

I realize the mug shots of Kermit here make him look like the frog that ate Cleveland. He is, however, just over an inch long.

He is also quite lucky: I narrowly avoided stepping on him and turning him into froggie puree as he sunbathed on my deck today. After the requisite photo shoot, I extended my seemingly gargantuan hand, into which he and his big smile readily hopped. We cooed at each other, (ok, I’m anthropomorphizing: I cooed at him, and he was probably thinking, “get me the heck outta here”), then I brought his slightly sticky, very green rubbery self over to a nice, bug-laden salal patch and placed him on a leaf the exact same hue. I hope I did not separate him from a large family that is now worrying about where Grampa Bubba went, getting ready to place his photo on the side of bait cartons around the county.

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Re-paired.

If you happened to read the comment section to my penultimate post, you know that I quietly eulogized the newborn fawn that I saw once last week, but not again the next day when his mother strolled by. Well, happiness today: as I was on the phone in the kitchen, I looked out the window and there he was, standing in the woods in front of me next to his mom, suckling, exploring, with all his white spots looking a little more spread out across his growing body. I won’t give names to these creatures because I know their lives are routinely shortened. Yet it’s impossible not to take some proprietary interest in these cuties.

A very young fox poked her head into my studio door yesterday, too, and then fox trotted off to the front of the house before I could snap a pic. My wildlife photog documentation is sorely underwhelming (the little fawn here is, literally, trunk-ated) and I flog you, dear kelphistos, with amateur shots barely worthy of a sixth grader’s homework report. But what I lack in ability with my camera, I still see in my mind’s eye, observing and pondering these encounters long afterward. Jane Goodall was one of my heroes when I was in sixth grade, after all.