Month: May 2006

Bad Karma

A few weeks ago I drove down to Aberdeen to photograph the annual shorebird migration. Originally, I thought I’d been pretty lucky. A high tide drove the birds close to shore, and a sunny day provided fast shutter speeds. There was even a wide variety of shorebirds. Only when I got home did I discover that the flash card had apparently been incorrectly formatted, and none of the shots could be saved. Not deterred, after checking the tide charts, I returned to Aberdeen last Wednesday expecting better luck. I should have known better considering my past experiences there.

I worked as a caseworker in Aberdeen after my Vietnam tour of duty many years ago. At first I laughed off warnings about the rain since I‘d been raised in Seattle. I shouldn’t have. I’ve never experienced rain clouds at nose level before, and I hope never to do so again.

I spent a dismal nine months there, suffering from repeated bouts of colds and flu, and finally an ulcer. I always figured that my ill health was due to the political battle over Vietnam and my work as a welfare worker, which proved more frustrating than I could ever have imagined. Rather than helping people, I felt like I was slowly but surely being sucked down with them.

Even then Aberdeen had an unusually high welfare load, largely due to the number of workers who got injured in the timber industry, but also the result of the high level of rural poverty. Even then jobs were scarce, and the timber industry demands back-breaking labor. Those who were weak or injured got thrown aside by the system.

I met my first wife there, but even that eventually ended up as the greatest tragedy of my life when my marriage ended in divorce after seventeen years of marriage. Perhaps I should’ve listened to our landlady who waarned our horoscope signs were in conflict.

Unfortunately, Aberdeen hasn’t faired well since then, either. All one has to do is visit the area to understand where the anguish in Curt Cobain’s music comes from. This was the little town that couldn’t. Driving through the town forty years later, it seems to have shrunk rather than grown, and though there are a few new stores and restaurants most of the town looks like it has been caught in some kind of time warp.

I’ve always thought that population growth was the bane of western Washington, but after looking at the Aberdeen-Hoquiam area I wonder if slow decline isn’t even worse than rapid growth.

Needless to say, the photographs I took Wednesday are some of the worst I’ve taken since I started photographing birds. While it was encouraging to see the large numbers of shorebirds migrating, it was nearly impossible to get a decent picture of them.

Most of the time they were simply too far away to get a decent picture

and it was impossible to focus accurately on the spectacular waves of flight when they were spooked

I’ve always dismissed superstition as irrational mumbo-jumbo, but after my experiences in Aberdeen I have to wonder if the place isn’t jinxed for me.

Camas

Although I’ll have to admit that I was originally drawn to the showiness of this Camas Plant flower:

At the end of shoot I had fallen in love with this much simpler shot of the Camas Flower about to blossom:

Which led me to this
fascinating article about the importance of the Camas plant to the Columbia River Indians, which, in turn, makes the picture even more exquisite.

Point Defiance Rhododendron Garden

If you live in Tacoma, or nearby, for that matter, and haven’t visited the Rhododendron Garden at Pt Defiance, you’re missing a real treat. Although some of the early-season rhodies are already beginning to fade and some of the late-season plants haven’t started to bloom yet, the majority of the rhodies are now in full bloom.

If you’ve visited in the past, you’re in for an even bigger treat than before, because the garden was rededicated this year and a number of changes have been made. Here’s a new rhodie named after the park:

and a subtle addition to the garden, signs identifying many of the rhodies. More substantial changes are evident in the piles of brush still awaiting removal. The clearing makes many of the plants easier to see, but thankfully still manages to preserve the greatest charm of this garden, seeing the rhodies in an old-growth environment.

If you’re lucky, you may even find yourself sharing the garden with a friend

like this young buck who, thankfully, seemed more interested in eating ferns than rhododendrons.

Though you can’t count on the wildlife, if you get there soon you can count on seeing this Naomi Pink Glow

this orange Medusa

and many others, that prove nature’s natural beauty transcends man’s attempts to classify or contain it:

Dorothy Livesay’s Ballad of Me

I’ll have to admit I’m always hesitant to read personal history into a poem, even though it’s clear some â€?”confessional poetsâ€? intend their poems to be a record of their personal struggles. While personal history can undoubtedly give us insight into a poet’s meaning, a poem, like a short story, is obviously not an autobiography or even a personal essay.

However, it’s difficult not to read the author’s personal life into a poem when she includes her own name in a poem entitled â€?”Ballad of Me:â€?

BALLAD OF ME
i
Misbegotten
born clumsy
bursting feet first
then topsy turvy
falling downstairs;
the fear of
joy of
falling.

Butterfingers
father called it
throwing the ball
which catch as catch can
I couldn’t.

Was it the eyes’ fault
seeing the tennis net
in two places?
the ball flying, falling
space-time team-up?

What happened was:
the world, chuckling sideways
tossed me off
left me wildly
treading air
to catch up.

ii
Everyone expected guilt
even I —
the pain was this:
to feel nothing.

Guilt? for the abortionist
who added one more line
to his flat perspective
one more cloud of dust
to his bleary eye?

For the child’s
‘onlie begetter?
He’ll make another.

For the child herself
the abortive dancer?

No, not for her
no tears.
I held the moon in my belly
nine month’s duration
then she burst forth
an outcry of poems.

iii

And what fantasies do you have?
asked the psychiatrist
when I was running away from my husband.
Fantasies? fantasies?
Why surely (I might have told him)
all this living
is just that
every day dazzled
gold coins falling
through fingers.
So I emptied my purse for the doctor
See! nothing in it
but wishes.
He sent me back home
to wash dishes.

iv
Returning further now
to childhood’s Woodlot
I go incognito
in sandals, slacks
old sweater
and my dyed
hair

I go disarrayed
my fantasies
twist in my arms
ruffle my hair

I go wary
fearing to scare
the crown

No one remembers Dorothy
was ever here.

Section i is certainly generic enough that most of us can relate to it, or at least I can. Most of us end up â€?”treading airâ€? trying to live up to our own expectations, much less our parents’.

Section ii is a little more difficult. Is the abortion suggested in this section one the author actually had? Was it a metaphorical abortion, one that led to an â€?”outcry of poems?â€? Or, did a real abortion, with all the accompanying heartbreak, lead to an outburst of poems?

Section iii could easily be autobiographical since it was widely known that she and her husband had marital difficulties, that it was faddish to consult psychiatrists during that period, and, like most men of the period probably considered it â€?”normalâ€? for a woman to be at home taking care of the home, washing the dishes.

How many of us are famous enough to be remembered when we return to our childhood home? How many of us can ever rediscover those childhood fantasies, much less have them come true. Or do we discover that the Wizard of Oz isn’t a wizard at all, but a charlatan that impresses us with our own fantasies?