Catching Up

Lull between guests. I joyfully and with great relief devoted a whole week to being at work. Learned about something new I could do for our catalog (LibraryThing now has collections!), started working on executing it; survived the somewhat rocky launch of the tape preservation project that isn't mine but somehow everyone thinks I can apply my mystical librarianly skills to keep it organized; ate elders' lunches. Ah, speaking of being an elder, someone came by the education department (library) giving away braids of sweetgrass to elders. "It's true I'm older than dirt," I said, "but I'm not a tribal person." But she gave me the sweetgrass anyway. I said many thankyous. I was at work, so I posted about it to Twitter, where the thankyous reduced to 'Thnx'.

But the work question, the central organizing factor of my whole adult life. As I explained yesterday to the next houseguest about my present relationship to the tribe, "I speak of it as 'work' even though I am no longer being paid; it's who I am, it's the work I do."

As soon as it was the weekend, after PH and SA left, I had to go do my June beached birds survey out at Rialto, couldn't very well miss my responsibility in what was only my second month as citizen scientist. I would otherwise have continued pottering around putting my life back in order— return neglected emails; sort out fridge, cabinets, closets; weeding in the yard, etc etc. I even cleaned the keyboard. If I'd had a pencil sharpener I would've sharpened all the pencils. And would've read books. Many many books. But I had to go so I went.

It was a curiously flat day, no ecstasy and so on, and it's a whole different state of mind to be obliged to pay attention to details I normally tune out, shambling along examining the wrack line and peering among the driftwood. No birds, neither beached ones nor live ones, except some crows and two eagles who briefly did a tumble-around in the air over the trees behind the beach. Lots of people. I definitely have trouble doing the count-the-people-on-the-return-leg, I space out and lose track unless I think about ENTIRELY nothing else but reciting the number I've gotten up to as I walk along. Maybe gonna get a little clicker so I can count without it taking over my brain...

"Hmmmm, yeah, here's a mound of seaweed, is there (parts of) a bird hidden here? Hmmm, maybe they are here and I'm just not noticing? Well, no, I'm noticing the occasional stray feather, so I think there simply are, as usual for Rialto Beach, no beached birds."

Somehow, though, it was entirely satisfying. I had that happy, smiley, floaty feeling as I started driving home.

Closely Examined Seaweed (Click for larger image.)

One morning this week there was a deer out the front window. He (she?) was ignoring the mostly dry grass in favor of sampling the much greener weeds in the rock bed. But he didn't like those either, dropping the one he pulled up, and wandered away.

Deer out the window (Click for larger image.)

Yesterday drove over to Kingston to pick KF up from the ferry. She just finished sesshin with the Red Cedar Zen people, and a nice person heading back to Seattle dropped her at the ferry on the Edmonds side. We have been busy all morning talking about our lives.

The ferry Puyallup arriving at Kingston (Click for larger image.)

We now return this blog to its usual programming. Later this morning we are going to Hurricane Hill.