The Love Experiment

The Love Experiment

     Can love, make more love? A rule says that matter is conserved, nothing is made or destroyed. But love is something quizzical. Love does not have mass or volume. I wonder if love can defy the laws of matter and grow from a tiny seed to a burgeoning mushroom?

If I pick up these cigarette butts – they are yucky and I don’t want to touch them – but if I do pick them up and continue to pick them up everyday from this sidewalk will someone else notice and feel different when they walk by? Its hard to measure something like that though.

     They say you should clean up graffiti real fast so that other people don’t add to it. Maybe it can work the opposite way too? I want to try. If I pick up little pieces of plastic that fall on this sidewalk maybe someone else will notice and perhaps be less uncareful with a cheese stick wrapper?

A dilapidated house, where to begin? So much falling apart. It has seemed better to let the front go to waste and nestle into the back where I can manage a tiny garden for myself. But this love experiment extends to other places I normally turn my head to. A baby silvery lavender no bigger than my head; I broke open the clay next to this littered sidewalk and turned up the dirt. There was not an earthworm in the seven inches I managed to break through. But my handy hoe managed to break apart softball-sized dirt clods into change sized particles. What will happen if I stick this soft, new seedling in this broken up dirt against this uneven sidewalk? Of course, I can’t just leave it there.  I will sprinkle it with water each morning or afternoon. Will someone else notice this little baby and appreciate its hopefulness? Maybe it won’t spark a conscious thought, but maybe someone will unconsciously step a bit slower when passing by. Love, without mass or volume is difficult to measure. So, it will be hard to tell. Still something in me feels lighter when I see it. Kind of like a pendulum without air resistance.

     Love does take energy which is curious because energy, like matter, is conserved. It makes you think love might be conserved, also. But there are unexplained events which show love can spread from tiny acts of kindness. I want to test my hypothesis for burgeoning love, it might be hard to conclusively identify a linear trend. However, it will feel good trying. So, I will go to work dusting off steps, washing faces, cutting cucumbers, and hanging up wet towels. I will sprinkle this lavender once a day and remove any cigarette butts I see. It’s my love experiment.

     

Taking time to sift through the new salt in my partner’s spiky fine head and kissing his face. Accepting the changes time has brought and shifting to keep moving. Flowing from utmost freedom as twenty-year olds to dutiful parents keeping kids close and engaged. For love, we keep the necessary routines in place. With hope, we love, and hope it spreads with these two wrestling cubs. Love passes between us and through them. It’s a love experiment.

Remembering

A ten-minute drive up Spruce, away from the buzz on San Pablo.

Cross Grizzly Peak and swoop down Canon drive.

On Canon, there is enough dirt ledge to hold up your vehicle so avoid parking in the cramped lot below.

A sliced-up redwood stump juts out from dust where you can plop down and give your Achilles a good tug, bring them back to life.

For the jaunt, all you need is a slab of rubber tied to your feet.

You can probably get away without it though.

It’s totally free, so leave your plastic at home.

Across the road, a tiny post, 12-point font marks, Memory trail.

Take four steps up, follow the single track under a canopy of Live Oak, Madrone and Coast Redwood.

They greet you crackling with their faded patchwork on a silky mattress below.   

However, steer clear from three-leaved daggers saluting you on the right and left.

Pause to suck in a pungent vapor originating from oil on arms of the most decorated Bay Laurel on this path

Invigorating, it’s too tempting not to press down on the dirt with big toes and push off into the canopy.

The downhill begs speed, take caution though passing an outstretched Bay toggle switch that flings you sinistrally down into a jungle of serrated and lacey swords.

With all of their edges, they won’t cut you, feel free to tap the seeds under their fingers to wake them up and inspire fiddleheads to shoot up in the spring

With your arms swinging forwards and backwards you swoop parallel inside the tree-line.

Cawk as you wish, the crows will grimace and cackle back in approval.

Down, down, down, then up, up, up

Your wings outstretched with each roll, knees thundering in a circular motion

The pounding is soft, a pleasant bread dough.

The hobo sticky monkey seizes your shoulder for a ride.

The path declines abruptly, sword ferns switch roles with Thimbleberry and Box elder vines that twist and tangle obscuring the light overhead.

The temperature drops and the trail continues to roll, turning left and right making you dizzy trying to maneuver with racecar precision through this convoluted greenway.

It is important to be ready to bound forward and upward, as there are logs flung in your path waiting to derail you so they can tell their sad tale of a time when they were rooted.

Leaping successfully lands you next to a Jewel, a lake equipped with a floating sanctuary log keeping twelve turtles dry and undisturbed from pesky boys with sticks and moms who try to tip toe out to them end up soaked and muddy.

Ancient Giant Sequoias at the lake’s edge direct you left for an outback adventure or right for a quick loop return to civilization. Whatever you need that day, is for you to decide.

The return is the same, the fireroad is there but the planked watershed is much more tantalizing. Breathe through your nose to avoid flossing your teeth with swamp flies.

Not that swamp flies do not taste good, but they tickle when accidentally inhaled.

Thimbleberry and White Alder twist over and around your head in this outdoor cave. Eventually you start to detect the sun peering through holes in the ropes, they become less dense and you emerge from the planked watershed onto the fireroad wide enough for three strollers across. There you find the rest of your clan happily beating each other with branches of Hemlock.

The trail circles back up into the treeline once more.

Switching left and right of coast redwood, climbing back to the car on the dusty ledge.

Mind swimming. Refueled. Replanted.

Again, and again, it’s there. Grateful for Memory.

   

   

  

Making friends with your bugs

If you give an E. Coli a petri plate, it will ask for a warm place to grow.

If you give it a warm place to grow, it might start off too slow.

If it starts off too slow, it may ask for a bit of Luria soup.

If you provide it some soup, it will ask for a ride on your loop.

If you offer your loop, it will ask for a spin

If you give it a spin, out of happiness, it will make a twin.

If you feed its twin, its twin will divide into two, too..

If you leave them in the roux, they will make a bonafide zoo

If you streak this crew out onto a dozen or so plates, all the little bugs will make lots, and lots more mates

If you pick off a few from these plates and stick them in a heat block, you will most definitely give them a shock

If you give them a shock, they might take up your gene

If they take up your gene, they just might turn green

If you turn them green, they will give off a nice sheen

If they give off a sheen, they will want to be seen

………….

If you give an E. Coli a petri plate, it will ask for a warm place to grow…

If you give it the right conditions to grow, it just may start to glow.

Not-so buried treasure

Expressionless, he says, “you should go look in there”

He takes a few steps away from a dumpster at the end of a county road; at the Twin Lakes trailhead in Eldorado National Forest.

The likely pop into my head: a bag of disemboweled trout, nitrile gloves next to a bloody finger, a raccoon eating a sandwich…

At 42, unphased by blood, guts, chemicals and varmint, I peer in.

And, a double take…

White folded bags and little red farm houses…

An oh so familiar white font on red banner with yellow trim.

Neatly aligned rows, 8 by 10, maybe by 12?

Interminable pyramids poised for picking, in a cardboard box intended for a college mini-fridge.

Packages untainted by dust, oil, or dander, except maybe for a juice box thrown on top.

Now…there were not any Mint Milanos.

But, who in this world would complain about enough Naples and Genevas to feed yourself and your entire family of four for another six weeks?

If you just lugged a 30+ pound pack six miles at 6000 feet, you will take chocolate in any form.

Not one of us bothered to check the expiration date of those Pepperidge Farm delights. Those never matter for candy or cookies for our Hura-d.

In collaboration, we decided to Santa Claus hikers as they approached us eating our lunch…

“Hi there, do you like cookies?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Look in there!”

We all giggled microscopically at the hiker dude who excitedly reassured himself he could grab a bag when he analyzed the packages’ markings which showed another 6 months or so of freshness

We each had our hypothesis of their occurrence:

-A boy scout troop had to ditch the extra weight before their hike.

-Traveling sales people needed to hide them somewhere safe from bears while they enjoyed a dip in Wright’s lake.

-A sweet, but mischievous ranger grandma with a smoke’s cough envisioned gifting each hiker on Saturday with a bag of cookies as they departed or entered Desolation Wilderness.

-Dionysus, the God of wine and feasts, bestowed a gift to nice hikers of the forest in exchange for their agreement to construct a “booty-fort” out of fallen Ponderosa and Jeffrey pine branches along Grouse lake.

Can you guess which one was Zennen and Finn’s?

It is hard to tell which of these possibilities was correct…

Except for one hard-fast fact:

It certainly satiates to strike GOLD in Gold Country

On descending switchbacks from Grouse Lake, Finn exclaims,

“I think I am going to try the kitruss when I get back there.”

“Kit? Oh, sit-rus with a C …

Yeah, that one looked good. So will I.”

Hackers

Feverish Mora knives slash at whim

Fig leaves curl falling from fractured limb

Snap, slap, crack; two hackers stand back

To admire the mushroom-shaped trim

Sock it to me

I was so close

Now it makes me morose

Paying off, a hard-earned teacher’s credential

But something so primal, at the time seemed essential

I recall the event

Which makes me lament

An electromagnetic force

Realigned my course

A labyrinth of color and geometry

Candy and flowers don’t parallel its spectrometry

I want every single one

I pace until the deed is done

Otters, Corgies, I love Coffee and Bill Nye

Give me identity, I just want to buy

Each one

No!

A picture won’t due

It’s not satisfying unless I accrue

It’s a justified gift

However, not thrift

Can you guess which one?

You’ll receive for Christmas when I’m done?

Rainbow unicorns fighting a Narwhal

Leprechauns dispensing pot in a pale

Hillary Clinton and Ghandi, mid-quarter length portraits

Toe socks, knee highs, anklets piled into a fortress

Have caused me to take two steps back

From my scheduled pay track

But I sure will look cool

When I go back to school!

That darned sock store

Again, made me poor

However still, I adore.