ZOËLAB: THE LIFE AS ART BLOG
Creatures Night and Day
There is something to be said for peeing under the stars. Where the crickets can see you. I can hear them now with their staccato siren call. A surround sound symphony easing me into night.
ZOELAB DAY 94
Original Date of Post: December 3 2012
There is something to be said for peeing under the stars. Where the crickets can see you. I can hear them now with their staccato siren call. A surround sound symphony easing me into night.
And the stars, they are here to remind me how empty I am, that there are star-sized spaces inside. And the moths, with their lamp worship, inspire and disgust me with their number and their diligence. In the morning, they are still there, calmer now, just sleeping through the day, where all light is equal.
To really arrive here, at home, is a relief. Living with the creatures, I find my way towards acceptance. We both can be ruthless.
Today I destroyed a black widow nursery. Maybe. The tiny soft sacs cradled in web nests under the seat of the wrought iron chair. I poked them with the tips of the gardening shears I found yesterday. Then I saw the mamma, but I could not identify her in the book. I stomped on her with out knowing if she was dangerous. I, with my foot and my gardening shears, was dangerous. I spoke to her as I killed her, and I felt it. The brutality of nature. It’s that way sometimes, when we have someone we need to protect.
Backwards Night Dreaming of Camp, Illustrated
ZOELAB DAY 79
Here are some photographs that illustrate some of my pluses and minuses of living outside list from yesterday's post:
Check out our Camp Video.
Backwards Night Dreaming About Camp
How beautifully simple life was when we camped here. Not that it was easy, but it was a special and peaceful time. I realize how lucky I was to have lived in nature while I was pregnant--ocean, mountains, desert, and also: dessert.
ZOELAB DAY 78
I have been so busy lately. Working on ZOELAB is the only time of the day where I don’t feel “busy.” Or when I watch television, though television is still being busy, because we aren’t really present when we’re that passive. (I must confess I fell off the television wagon the other night, and instead of creating with ZOELAB, I watched four episodes in a row of The Sopranos. God, I forgot how good, and funny, that show was. Carmella is my empowerment heroine.) Anyway, what is busyness but preoccupation with things that don’t exist in the present. I really don’t like being this busy--when we’re busy, we start to accept stress as a baseline emotion. I want to remember the reason we live here, in Baja, in the desert next to the Pacific ocean, is so that we don’t have to be so busy. So that we can be more relaxed as parents, and as a family. So that we have more time to be creative and social. So that we can have time to just be. But, with parenting, work, and all our various projects, we are living in the busy world.
Trying to find inspiration for sharing on ZOELAB, I started looking through some old writing and found a list I had made for my first blog, almost four years ago, of pluses and minuses of living outside, while we were camping on this very land that we now have a house on. I never published the list. Today I noticed there were 15 items on the minus list. On the plus list, only 14. I added the 15th today, so the two lists would be even.
How beautifully simple life was when we camped here. Not that it was easy, but it was a special and peaceful time. I realize how lucky I was to have lived in nature while I was pregnant--ocean, mountains, desert, and also: dessert.
Pluses vs. Minuses of Living Outside
Minuses
1. Everything gets dirty
2. Sun damage
3. Windy
4. Cold at night
5. Have to dump our toilet
6. Keep food in storage away from animals
7. Lots of prickly, hurty things, scorpions and cholla
8. No cell connection
9. No internet connection
10. No place to hang a mirror
11. Things break a lot
12. Lack of security
13. Lack of comfort at night
14. Lack of entertainment at night
15. Have to take garbage to the dump
Pluses
1. Keeping track of how much water, gas, electricity using
2. More aware of the moon, the stars & the sun
3. Love rocks
4. Peaceful (except for noisy neighbors)
5. No rent
6. No bills
7. Can make as much noise as we want
8. No need for alarm clock
9. Can recycle gray water for plants
10. Hear ocean and birds
11. Perfect for Ping/guard dog/free dog
12. Appreciate the little comforts in life, with each new comfort comes a whole new possibility of life style
13. You can create new spaces freely
14. You never have to worry about parking
15. Being present comes naturally
Three Days: A Poem in Three Parts, Part Three
The valley welcomes a new calm.
Outside, the air lets the sun shine through.
The wind is a welcome friend.
But, what happened to all the caterpillars?
ZOELAB DAY 47
The valley welcomes a new calm.
Outside, the air lets the sun shine through.
The wind is a welcome friend.
But, what happened to all the caterpillars?
The rain has chased them out of their homes.
As it has with the scorpions and snakes and beetles.
I find one, curled up on a leaf.
I find another one, eating our bougainvillea.
Then, I see them:
Tiny, yellow, fluttering.
I try to capture them
with my camera,
The weather thief.
The question remains:
Which butterfly belonged to which caterpillar?
Three Days: A Poem in Three Parts, Part One
Sneaking out of the house,
before little eyes see me.
I walk up the mountain,
which I have come to realize
is really a hill,
and along the way I counted
128 caterpillars.
ZOELAB DAY 45
Three Days
Day One
Sneaking out of the house,
before little eyes see me.
I walk up the mountain,
which I have come to realize
is really a hill,
and along the way I counted
128 caterpillars.
Each one, clinging quietly
to a blade of grass,
appearing very much like a cattail
but green, and speckled, and shiny.
One hundred and twenty eight
for my two miles of walking
a straight-ish line.
My view, a few feet wide.
Imagine,
for a moment,
all the other caterpillars in the valley
unseen by my eyes.
Seen, only barely,
as hot air balloons
by the busy ants.
Or as finger snacks
By the hawks.
I did not stop for one caterpillar,
Only taking notes and numbers
With my eyes.
Trying, not that hard,
not to step on them.
Some Creatures
Sometimes it’s the creatures that make the stories.
Sometimes it’s the creatures that make the stories. The moths have become a part of our daily life. Many of them are as large as bats. They are attracted to our lights at night, and loudly waver spellbound near our lamps until we turn them off. Then they flutter near the upper windows of our house, transfixed by the light of the moon, trying desperately to reach it while flinging their bodies against the glass. During the day, they stay flat on the walls--looking like intricate decals. I’ve been collecting the dead ones, one of which is in the above photo. Upon inspecting it up close, I discover their huge eyes and hairy legs. I am developing a fascination/repulsion with them.
Our friends’ horse Canela, had a surprise baby. They didn’t know she was pregnant, and then one morning they woke up to discover a miniature horse looking like a carbon copy of his mother.
I found and caught a big spider (which I am pretty sure was not poisonous) and tried to put her on my latest spider web drawing for the website so that I could photograph it with a real spider. But I just couldn’t get her to go on the paper. So I let her be free outside.
I also want to share two poems by Mary Oliver that feel relevant right now. I was introduced to these by one my psychology professors in grad school who started class with a brief mediation, and a poem which she always read to us twice. Sometimes lines from each of them come into my head. I love Mary Oliver’s hauntingly exultant way of communing with nature.
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
The Slow Making of a Dream: El Campo Elias Calles, Part Two
Having been a city girl my whole life, it was a real shift for me to live in nature.
ZOELAB DAY 23
“It was extraordinarily peaceful to be pregnant and surrounded by nothing but vast amounts of sky, desert, ocean and mountains.”
Our campsite continued to develop over the months we were there. Eventually Lucas made a mediation and yoga spot for me. Spring came, and the trees started to spring leaves. We found a beautiful arrangement of elephant and paper trees that naturally made a semicircle. Both kinds of trees are short, and they had no leaves because it was winter. The paper tree has peeling skin that is very fun to peel, but apparently once you peel it always stays smooth. We cleared around this circle of trees so that it would be more noticeable.
At the time I was avidly collecting rocks, shells and small animal bones that I had found in the area. I started arranging these around the circle of trees. Having been a city girl my whole life, it was a real shift for me to live in nature. I became very fond of it. It was extraordinarily peaceful to be pregnant and surrounded by nothing but vast amounts of sky, desert, ocean and mountains. The simplicity of life was comforting, even if I wasn’t always comfortable.
Summer
Every night we are visited by hundreds or possibly thousands of: moths of all sizes, dragonflies, no-see-em’s (bobos), flies, mosquitos, tiny flying beetles, giant flying beetles, spiders, cockroaches, scorpions, and countless other bugs that I don’t know the names of.
ZOELAB DAY 20
It’s still summer. Most of our friends are away in the States. All cafés but one are closed for the entire month. There’s no work. Except there is for me, because I am planning weddings for a local hotel. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s buggy. Really buggy. Every night we are visited by hundreds or possibly thousands of: moths of all sizes, dragonflies, no-see-em’s (bobos), flies, mosquitos, tiny flying beetles, giant flying beetles, spiders, cockroaches, scorpions, and countless other bugs that I don’t know the names of. Not to mention other types of beasts: little mice, geckos. During the day we hear the clinging of cow bells who roam the area and the whinnying of horses, who also roam the area. Some days are hotter or buggier or more humid than others. Some days it rains, but most days it does not. The sky feels like it’s closing in on you. Your skin feels heavier, drenched and sticky. Your loneliness turns to boredom. Bad moods erupt out of nowhere when your body has decided it’s had enough.
But, there are moments of sweetness. The relief of a cool breeze from the Pacific Ocean. The irrepressible greenness of growth covering the ground. The joy of seeing a friend, lifting you into mutual understanding. Simple pleasures of ice cream, tamarindo water, grilled meat tacos, fresh mangos, ice cold beer. The low and fast ocean waves, freshly delivering you to the shore. Long mornings sitting on the floor, making a mess, playful lethargy. Feeling the comfort of continuity. Loving a season for it being now, knowing it doesn’t last, and feeling the certain promise of fall.
