THE JESSOP’S CLOCK, located in the middle of Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego, was commissioned in 1905 by Joseph Jessop, owner of a jewelry store. Claude D. Ledger, an employee of Jessop’s jewelry store, built the clock in fifteen months, completing it in 1907 in time for it to be entered in the Sacramento State Fair where it won a gold medal. Many clocks could tell stories if they could talk. It is said that on the day of Ledger’s death, Jessop’s clock stopped working for reasons unknown. It was restarted and continued keeping time until April 2009. After the clock was cleaned and refurbished, it was returned to its place in Horton Plaza where I took the picture today.
REAL TIME

Real time,
or, “in real time,”
was the exact expression
he used in easy conversation
as if everybody would know
or should know
what he meant.

He had that same self-satisfied
bordering on disgust look
that’s fixed in my mind
as the face of my high school physics teacher.

What the hell is real time?
I want to know!

Is this stuff I’ve been swimming sometimes
wading mostly through
not real time?

Is bathroom time not real time?
How about lunch?

Is there more or less of real time
than whatever the alternative is?

I understand centuries and decades,
years, months, weeks, and days.
I know what a minute is.
Don’t mess with my head
by suggesting I’ve wasted...
what?
With clocks and calendars?
What kind of time?
My Clock has a story... I'll write it another time.
Bill Derisi's ships clock...
San Diego Trolley Center Clock Tower

'Tis the Season... Margaret and I have succumbed to the temptation to go digital... to send a Greeting Card by e-mail. Just as in the old hard copy days, This greeting is sent with much love and respect. We hope you have all had a blooming good year and that two-thousand-ten will be strewn with all kinds of beautiful things for everyone.

Orpheus, the son of the Tracian river god Oiagros, was thought by the Greeks to be "the father of music." When he played joyous music, people danced. When he played sad music, people wept. He married Eurydice, one of Apollo's daughters, who happened to be an oak nymph. Orpheus and Eurydice were very much in love. On their wedding day, he played such joyous music that she danced out into a meadow and was bitten by a venomous snake and died. Orpheus did nothing but play and sing mournful songs; all the nymphs and gods were so distracted from whatever gods and nymphs do that they finally persuaded him to travel to the underworld to try to bring her back. You probably know the rest of the story. If not, check in any good book of Greek myths and read it. Then get any one of the great operas based on the story and listen. My favorite is Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. If you can listen to Orpheus sing, "I have lost my Eurydice" without being moved to tears let me know.

I haven't the faintest idea why I got home from church today and started thinking about Orpheus and Eurydice. The music in church was especially good. As I crossed the plaza from the sanctuary, the handbell quartet played Christmas carols. The writing just happened. ORPHEUS AND EURIDYCE

Something I’ve always thought was very strange
that Orpheus couldn’t wait a minute before he checked
if everything he’d planned was working out.
How could he throw it all away at the last moment?
Perhaps he wasn’t even looking back at her.
Could it have been a clap of thunder caused his head to turn?

Orpheus wasn’t like the other stars of Greece,
this champion of Thrace... He didn’t like to fight.
Ah, but how he loved to play the lyre.
Savage beasts and hardest hearted men
could not resist the sounds he made...
and all the trees swayed to the songs he played.

Perhaps the fault was hers.
Eurydice knew the rules as well as he.
She could have shuffled, no rule against that,
so he’d know she followed close behind.
Perhaps she didn’t want to come away at all.
Who knows what Hades and Persephone had taught her.

Perhaps she didn’t love enough the man she followed.
They say Orpheus was no prize catch himself.
He had a few good tunes that served him well,
but all in all he couldn’t beat the system
that the gods had made to keep in line
the heroes and the nymphs and you and me.

I wonder what kind of boy he was,
when boys, especially the sons of kings
were expected to be warriors before all else.
Did he prefer music to baseball
or whatever games they played in Thrace?
How did mighty Apollo cope with a son who’d rather sing than fight?

It was Apollo himself gave Orpheus his lyre,
and he may not even have been the father of the boy.
There was someone in the woodpile, a certain Oeagrus;
and Calliope, with her own thoughts about music, wasn’t talking.
Besides she was much more interested in herself
than in anything her son could do.

But what does that have to with anything?
Euridyce and Orpheus were a special case.
He adored her more than music.
How deep his despair was when she was gone...
to drive right into Hell itself to find her.
Letting love go is very hard to do.

Things there are that simply cannot be recovered.
Wanting too much is bound to lead to loss.
It matters not at all who’s fault it is.

I WENT DOWN TO CRYSTAL PIER AT PACIFIC BEACH to watch the sun go down. When I got back home, I looked up several words to find one that most nearly fit what I felt as I watched. "Awe" is exactly what I felt. "A feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear and wonder. You'll want to click these images to see them larger."
SUNSET

The exact moment when the curtain drops
is as important as any bit of dialogue in the play.
Dusk has to happen; it can’t be postponed,
which is, if I were a playwright, and I’m not,
is what I’d want the audience to feel.
Let this thing be done with, I’d want them to think.
And as for that, I’d insist on a thing or two
different from the things I’ve seen.
The curtain should not drop at all,
but very gradually, like the coming night,
quiet darkness would envelop second by second
everything and everyone with just a hint of dread.

SNAKES AND LIZARDS

I am unable to be reasonable about snakes.
I don’t know why it is,
but they disturb and frighten me
with their writhing and looking
at the world from a head
that’s nothing more or less than the end
of a disgusting body
that comes again and again in my dreams
and makes me wake afraid
of what may be lurking between the white sheets.

I lifted the pot of geraniums on my porch
and there he was... a lizard waiting
for whatever was to come next.
He didn’t seem to be afraid of me.
I didn’t mind him.
He has five fingers
and five toes as I do.
I saw a hawk sweep down once
and catch a lizard up in its talons
and fly away into a grove of sycamore trees.
My sympathy was with the lizard.

David Miles, David Higgins, Bill Derisi, Ed Jirjis, and I hiked up Cowles Mountain today. The mountain is the highest point in the City of San Diego at 1,591 feet above sea level. The mountain is part of Mission Trails Regional Park, one of my favorite parts of San Diego. Looking west we can see the city of San Diego and a long stretch of the Pacific Ocean. Looking South we can see the city of Tijuana, Mexico. Looking north and east from the top of the mountain, we can see snow covered San Jacinto and San Gabriel Mountains. The photo above is of my son David at the top of the mountain.COWLES MOUNTAIN SEEN FROM ED'S BACK YARD; AND BELOW, LOOKING BACK FROM THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN, WE SEE GROSSMONT COLLEGE, THE CITY OF EL CAJON, AND THE RANGE OF MOUNTAINS TO THE EAST. IF YOU KNOW WHERE TO LOOK, YOU CAN SEE ED'S HOUSE.David H. and Bill.The Davids and Ed.ED AND THE DAVIDSED AND DAVID M.THE DAVIDS AND BILL ON THE TRAILEL CAPITAN, the mountain we climbed last month.

MADRUGADA

Who was it called me from deep sleep
In the early hour of this morning
While my wife lay still beside me
And the dog snored evenly across the room
And the gentle rain murmured
In the trees around the house?

Whose voice was it saying my name
Out loud so I woke and said, “What?”
The voice familiar yet strange
Saying just the name, no more,
The way my Mother would say it
Or my Father, but a woman’s voice,
The intonation intimate, confidential,
Alerting me to some turn of events,
Something I should pay attention to...
But not in panic, not in fear, not in haste?

Who speaks, not whispers, but says
Out loud at half past four in the morning
Nothing more than my name, just that?
Is it some female part of me,
Some voice that dare not show itself in daylight?
Is it God?
Did St. Augustine hear only that much...
His name? Nothing more?
Poor Joan of Arc...
No more than that to go on?
No explanation?

Whatever or whoever it is that disturbs my sleep
Has alerted me, has given a sign,
Has said this room I live in all alone
Has doors I cannot lock.

David and Ginny Burnight’s home is perched on the side of a hill in the village of Crest, aptly named because it is a scattering of homes around the top of an impressive hill east of El Cajon. Of course, I wandered around their house with my camera and got pictures of a real cat, a ceramic cat, a grandfather clock, and a party happening in a room with good food and a beautiful Chistmas tree. Back at home when I was editing the images, I had the odd feeling that the party could have happened in the miniature village the Burnights set up every Christmas on a couple of book shelves.

Our backyard is very green throughout the year. The trees in the picture are ficus. The aloe vera growing in a big tangle at the edge of the back patio is a plant that Native Americans in the Southwest and in Mexico used to treat rashes and burns. It is used commercially in ointments and salves.TO SHOW THAT WE ARE GREEN in San Diego...The photos are from our back yard. After yesterday’s photo du jour my fine friend, Антон Гуленцов, in Smolensk asked in an e-mail:

“My dear Friend,
 
Do you have time in San Diego when there is no leaves on trees at all? It's winter and the trees have leaves like ours in October. Wonderful!
 
With Love,
Anton”


I wrote back:

“Anton, My Friend,
     The liquid amber, laurel, sycamore and flowering fruit trees do finally drop their leaves... in January or February.  The old leaves are usually pushed off by new leaves coming on... The same trees grow in colder climates where they become bare at the same time that you are having autumn.  We just had our first rainfall in over six months, and it has been wonderful.  I long for lightening and thunder, which we almost never see and hear.  We have a very long dry season.  The amazing thing is that we can actually see snow on the mountains to the east of San Diego.  Early in the week when we got about three inches of rain all in a day-and-a-half, there was a dusting of snow on the mountain where I was hiking in mid-November.  I actually like rain and snow... I like to walk in the rain... like to turn my face up to it...  We will have rain off-and-on from now until April... then we go into the long, long dry period.
Jerral”

Anton wrote back:


Yes, my Friend, I hope to see it all one day. So, you just do not have bare trees? Your trees are eternally with leaves?
 
Love,
Anton

I wrote back:

Anton, My Friend,
Actually, we do have a time when some trees are bare skeletons in an otherwise green landscape. Sycamore trees are bare for the longest time of any trees. They are beautiful wimps, the last trees in springtime to get new leaves; and they are the first to lose them in the fall. Our poplars and the cottonwoods along the river give up their leaves without waiting to have them pushed off by new growth. The trees behind our house, and all along the street where we live, are tropical ficus trees that are eternally green. They actually lose their leaves, but it’s not noticeable because a new leaf always pushes off an old one. Palm trees are never without green fronds. Most of our ubiquitous eucalyptus trees (which came originally from Australia) don’t lose their leaves all at once.
Jerral

TWENTY-PERCENT CHANCE OF RAIN

Blue sky with only the faintest wisp of cloud
way over in the west where the fog bank sits,
and the weatherman says we may have rain
but not until the late afternoon if at all.

What do they know anyway about the weather?
All their computers and gauges and meters
don’t tell them for sure what trees know and
flowers and squirrels and don’t forget butterflies.

Where people are concerned, the old ball of earth,
which is the great deceiver, plows through space
reminding us every now and then that all of the
hitchhikers on her back can be evicted at any moment.

A rainy San Diego day kept me mostly inside. The photograph of candles and the poem have nothing to do with each other... except, when I think about it, the picture may be appropriate. A flickering candle is a feeble but effective metaphor for a single life. I can even let my mind go searching for a way to make a candle with a single wick mean one thing and a candle with two wicks mean something else. It's important not to waste even a rainy day.
A GOOD WOMAN I KNOW

When a person reaches ninety-two or four,
a right to crankiness, even meanness
might be considered earned,
the years and gravity having pulled and reformed
the original body of bones and flesh
all smooth and round and firm;
but a good woman I know hasn’t cashed in the chips
that buy the right to bitch and moan and cry
that life’s unfair and Nature’s cruel.

She walks erect, cloth coat pulled round
against the chill of early winter
and holds her head as high
as when she was eighteen.
She looks directly into my eyes when she speaks
about the things she will do tomorrow
and next week and next year
and never moans or suggests that this day
in her life is any less important
than those she had nine decades past.

Jim sang before dinner at a birthday celebration for friends. Irene played... Extraordinary neighbors. A man and a woman for all seasons.

NO WARRANTY










The rudest shocks of old age
might have been anticipated
if I had been paying more attention,
especially when my father died
after rotting from the inside with cancer,
and Grannie’s heart stopped one day,
and they were just part of the evidence.











What could I have been thinking
when I looked into Viola’s casket
to see lying there the cold remains
of hot shared adolescent beauty,
or when I read in the paper
about Richard Powel’s not surviving
even long enough to go to college,
the boy who had the gym locker
next to mine all through high school.










These assembled parts,
this collection of bones and sinew,
blood and other assorted fluids,
this whole complete thing that I am,
this machine that thinks and feels
slipped into general use with no warranty.










Satisfaction is possible,
but not guaranteed.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9

Storms further unsettle the unsettled. Two days ago San Diego finally got much needed rain... as much as three inches of the stuff fell all in one day. I enjoyed the wind and the rain... from the comfort of my warm home. All of the people I know were either snug in their homes or safe in their workplaces. The aftermath of a heavy rain and wind storm littered the valley where I went out for an early morning bike ride. It was obvious that some people didn’t fare so well. On my way across and beside the swollen river, I saw several usually invisible homeless people trying to dry and reorganize their belongings.

Several times I’ve spoken with a shaggy man whose home is his bicycle. He sometimes sits at an outside table at a shop where my friends and I have coffee. He is known by regulars as “Butterfly,” Today he was especially scattered mentally. As I came out of the coffee shop, he recognized me and motioned for me to come over so he could speak to me. What he said was gibberish. He is among the hundreds of slightly or thoroughly mentally ill homeless people in San Diego. The storm left him more unhinged than usual.

Of course, it can be said that there are shelters for these people; but shelters don’t fit into the “reality” of many of the mentally ill homeless. Most of the ones I saw today could have taken shelter from the storm if they had managed to get themselves down to Market Street, but they are staying close to the places that are dry and relatively safe most of the time. Behind a Friar’s Road bus stop two homeless men had spread their wet possessions on bushes to dry. One of them is someone I often see sitting on the bench at the bus stop throughout the day. He obviously has no place to go.

As I started up the hill toward home, I spotted a naked toy doll that had washed down the street and onto a storm drain. It seemed an appropriate image for today.

OUT AT THE MISSION VALLEY LIBRARY
in the late afternoon I stood
on the second-story back porch
looking down at the green-line trolley
slipping past like a proud fire truck
glowing that special light
that only happens
for about half and hour before the sun sets
and thought how trains always, always
make my feet and soul itch...
even when I've just come back
from a fantastic adventure
on a mostly tropical island.CONTRADICTIONS

Contradictions abound,
at least enough to make prediction
unlikely to be trustworthy
unless, of course, the forecast
calls for what is not expected,
but that’s not what this writing is about
as much as it is about the fact
that I like the unexpected
more, I suspect, than other men
and confess without apology
that fascination with the possibility
of adventure around the next corner
or in the next hour of my life
keeps my eyebrows raised
and my mind racing.

Why is it, then,
that there is such comfort
in a twenty-year-old shirt
that frays a bit at the collar
and must be mended at the pocket
every four or five years.
This white shirt with blue stripes
bought in Andover, Massachusetts,
isn’t even the kind of shirt I prefer
when it is new and crisp,
but now the soft, gentle material
has become part of the fabric of my life
that, like a good friend,
I hope to keep forever.