Best of All --- Days 14/253 & 254

Walks: Presidio and Hood

Distance: 5 miles

“Best of all he loved the fall

the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods

leaves floating on the trout streams

and above the hills the high blue windless skies…now he will be a part of them forever.”

― Ernest Hemingway (excerpted from his eulogy for his friend, Gene Van Guilder, a publicist for Sun Valley Resort, which captures his own, Van Guilder's and Ciwt's deep love of the central Idaho landscape).

Being With Fall --- Days 14/245-252

Walks: Hood, PT, CPMC

Distances: 3.75 miles average

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), The Garden of Saint Paul's Hospital, 1889, o/c, @29" x 24"

In Ciwt's opinion Vincent van Gogh is the equal of any master at capturing the ways human emotion and nature's presence can echo each other.  To Ciwt there is an enveloping, introspective melancholy to the crisp air, elegant baring limbs, muted light and red-gold colors of fall that she also feels in the man (perhaps van Gogh himself) walking alone in the large garden adjoining the asylum he had once again checked himself into.

Heading In --- Days 241-244

 Walks: Back to the usual and always refreshing: Hood and Presidio 

Average: 3.5 miles

Caspar David Friedrich, Evening Landscape with Two Men, 1830-35, o/c

The end of summer puts Ciwt in mind of nocturne paintings.  They have a sense of brighter things ending and more meditative, private times approaching.  They remind her of how the approach of her favorite season, fall, felt when she was young. At some point in August, the long, humid, 'dog days' of summer began to make her sad.  She'd waterskied, played tennis, laughed, generally and exuberantly filled her summer vacation free time with friends.  But now that was done for her - internally. She was done with outside entertainments and privately longing for crispness, wool jackets, cozy autumn colors and the softer light of fall.  She was ready for routine, structure, even homework.  All these supported her true interior, contemplative, meditative nature and she looked forward to once again being surrounded by them.

Caspar David Friedrich, Man and Woman Contemplatig the Moon, ca. 1824, o/c

Okay with Small Spaces? --- Day 14/240

Walk: Radnet

Distance: 2.5 miles

So now if doctors wonder about anything, they can look right in and find out with modern technology.  Like, gulp, X-rays, CTs, MRIs, ultrasounds, and PET scans.  Every once in a while Ciwt's doctors send her for one of those.  Like today's MRI. 

The preliminary forms ask "Are you claustrophic?" and Ciwt answers "No." But then she's strapped onto the table, silently slid into the metal chamber, and the various loud banging noises begin. She lies still as instructed, hopes her "no"answer was correct about her reaction to small spaces, and is relieved when her table is slid out.  Next will come all those long medical interpretations which sound scary but, knock on wood, are no big deal (for her age).

Home At Last --- Days 14/237, 238 & 239

Walks: The usual: hood and Presdio

Distance Average: 4 miles

Probably  CIWT is a little blah for her readers right now so today she thought she'd show and tell you a little about why.

After just over a year of being here, Ciwt is finally finished (enough) with the many, many trips up and down stairs, to and from UPS with box after box.  She has the rooms furnished, she's 'deaccessed ' the things that don't work (even though she is attached to them), and now she's turned to bonding with her place as a home instead of a work station.  So far that has meant hours spent on her window seat (with one or two cats) with piles of books and notebooks, punctuated of course by her beloved daily walks. 

It is a welcoming, calm environment and, after 40+ years living 73 steps up from the ground, she feels more settled and 'complete' being close to it and the little (work in progress) garden she created.

But it is a bit of a distracting time as well with writers' words in her head and her own on notebook papers and letting all the years, places, people come and go and get resettled in her mind. 

Covered dining room chairs!  She always thought this was too much, but she likes them.

Jeopardy! watching station

Late Summer Breakfast --- Days 14/231-236

Late Summer Walks: Hood and Presidio

Distances: 4 miles average

Whipped cream strawberry birthday cake for breakfast.  One sign Ciwt's end of summer restlessness and appetite are setting in.  

A Pony? No Thanks. --- Days 14/230

Walks: Hood, Presidio

Distance: 3.5 miles, 5 miles

So for her birthday today Ciwt showered herself with presents.  She:

                                                        -had her mattress flipped

                                                        -had her new office rug and pad put down

                                                        -had things taken to her storeroom  (Thank you, Lugg)

                                                        -made an appointment to have her carpets cleaned

These are the things that make her day.  These plus not having to drive to a stable and muck out the stall for that pony she so desperately wanted long ago.

A Simple Three Days --- Day 14/229

Walk: Hood, Birthday shopping

Distance: 6.25 miles

So why does Ciwt stand back and devote 3 days to just pictures and songlists of the Grateful Dead's 60th anniverssry celebration in their home ground, Golden Gate Park?

Good question.  She's not a Deadhead.  For one thing, she was back East when they were in their Jerry Garcia prime.  But after being out in San Francisco a decade or so she did spend time following Phil Lesh and and Bob Weir's offshoot, Furthur.  So she knows the energy that is/surrounds the Grateful Dead.  And she respects it, stands back and lets it occupy the space.

There's no point trying to describe it.  Many have tried, and it has eluded all of them. It exists in its own realm beyond words. It's not just a stoner or LSD thing although there is likely much of both (and other drugs) in the crowd.  And it's not just a 60's summer of love thing; people of all ages join on every day. The Dead's music itself is in the same category.  There's a reason the band wecomed people making their own tapes of the concerts right from the beginning. Tapes could abound, but they knew the feeling that accompanied the music couldn't be captured.  Maybe it joined the other Greateful Dead energy and kept burgeoning and burgeoning over the years.  Who knows?  Anyway, the spirit of it was for the moment; the notes on the tapes were left but not it.  

Ciwt feels lucky she knows why people stop their daily lives, get on airplanes or anything that transports them to make it to Dead concerts; many for 60 years and thousands of concerts now.  It's a people thing, a music thing, a heart/spirit, a strong, palpable but indescribable energy thing.  And Ciwt honors it .