My View

[sooZen]

I guess you are gonna suppose or assume that this has something to do with what I think. It doesn't. This is about what I see.

Our home looks like a one storied place from the front yard but this is its deception. The lot (actually two city lots) slopes down one side of the house to the back yard, a gradual slope that is weed covered this time of the year, especially if one hasn't bothered to weed it. The other side of the house is just a drop-off, a wooden fence and rock wall then a drop of 10 or 12 feet to the aviary on the side of the house. The aviary is empty except for the occasional mouse.

The house from the back looks two-storied and is. A giant aleppo pine that I planted the year my oldest son was born grows past the second story and towers over the house. It is as big and strong as Noah and both are a pride and joy. Right now, there are two large nests in the tree, above the roof line. One is occupied by a very charismatic boat-tailed grackle and his two mates. The girls fight all the time and he just points his beak into the air, preens, and crows. The lady grackles spend the day carrying nesting material to this stupendous nest they are building. Over to the side, a pair of white wing doves are building a more modest sized nest and try to ignore the noisy grackle family as best they can.

A redwood and iron deck (porch) is on the top level and some iron and cement stairs arrow to the yard. Under the top porch is a brick patio with a couple of chairs that are out of the wind and in the shade of the porch above.

Sometimes, mostly in the early morning hours before the sun, I sit on the bottom of the stairs and listen to the train whistle and a city rooster crowing. I write haiku in my head.

In the cool of the evening, we sit on the porch upstairs. The back sunporch (good name for it as it faces south) is where my studio is. On the corner of the house, surrounded by windows and embraced by the aleppo pine, it has a treehouse effect where I sit and work.

At night the view is very Lucy in the Sky With Diamond like. You can see all the way to Mexico, the lights much dimmer across the Rio Grande but the scene is starry. We sit out on the porch in the gathering night watching the lights come on. The park across the way has installed some huge stadium lights for the softball field and these impair our view somewhat but they are on a timer fortunately, and don't stay on all night. Besides, listening to the kids play softball, their voices muffled by distance, you can still hear them laughing.

It is a great place to sit with friends, sharing a glass of wine, talking nonsense or politics (nonsense) or just watching the birds fly home from a day of work. A hummingbird feeder hangs from the rafters but leaks badly so is not used. It still attracts the little critters who fly around it, looking frustrated by it's uselessness.

Sometimes we sit there in silence, comfortable together, watching the night fall after our dinner. It is a view that I treasure...not everyone can have such a view of the city lights spread before them. (I will not go into issues here about pollution, over-population, etc.) Just an amazing sight on any night.

[sooZen]

The back of the house:



the porch is on the left of the pine, my studio is in the far right beyond the windows. This is a rare picture after a snow this last winter. The wooden box is an unused dog house (they sleep inside.) I sit on the second step at the bottom of the stairs before sunrise and contemplate. At the window on the first floor is Cecil's studio. You can just make out the light attached to his drafting table.

[judih]

Oh, that's nice.
Great windows for your studios. And yeah, that tree is gigantic.

We have pine trees planted here but unfortunately, sand is no soil for pine trees. Every now and then, one topples over. i look at your pine and hope that the soil is sympathetic.

Snow? Yes, for sure you live in pine loving territory.

[sooZen]

well judih...you may have seen a few aleppo pines as they are native to the middle east and Israel in particular. A desert type pine tree, they don't grow well in wet, moist conditions and prefer a rocky or sandy soil. This tree is about the same age as Noah, 31 years and grew from a one-gallon container and was just one little stick so you can see, it grows fast!

Here is a little more about aleppos if you are interested:

http://web.odu.edu/webroot/instr/sci/pl ... aleppopine

[judih]

Aleppos look middle eastern - tall camel like trees.

but no. What we have here (here, on the kibbutz i mean) have all been hand-planted. Nostalgic longing for cold climates must have moved the heart that sowed the seeds, cause these trees grow for about 40 years and then the roots don't support the height.

One almost fell last year on a specially obnoxious kibbutz member. G and i looked at each other but only for a moment. We all snickered at the whims of fate.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Lyrical and open to sensation, this short piece shows a clear strength in capturing the inner, as well as the outer atmosphere of your surroundings.

I love the way your vision, in imagination, extends "all the way to Mexico", and to a Mexico of the mind, like mine, since I have never been there, though I have ministered to hundreds and hundreds of its citizens in my Writing Skills and Reading Skills for the Spanish -Speaking classes, the ones I taught at the old bi-lingual center ( which, since it was so obviously useful and benign, was quickly done away with, and the money funneled to more managerial salaries and away from the poor . . .).

The extension of your vision I mentioned above makes you, like me, what William Blake always referred to as (characterizing himself this way)-- a Mental Traveler.

By the way, do you know the short story by Vladimir Nabokov called , ". . .That in Aleppo Once" ?



Zlatko

[sooZen]

judih...I can imagine a tree looking to fall on someone especially obnoxious...hah!

Someone shoulda' planted some aleppos as they blow over on occasion but mostly tend to stand up to the desert winds.

Zlatko, thanks for the reading. I take the complement dearly as I have high regard for your opinions. Gracias.

One of the juxtapositions that truly stands out here on the border of a country always on the verge of the poor revolting and overthrowing the government is what you see from both sides of the river that flows between. Our university, besides standing next to one of the biggest polluters in this area, the ASARCO copper refining plant (in the throes of debate about re-opening...lead levels are off the scale), also is directly across from the land squatters of Mexico. On one side of the river is the institute of higher learning with it's beautiful Bhutanese architecture http://www.utep.edu/library/ and just a stone's throw away are rickety wood and cardboard shacks with no running water and dirt floors of the slums of Juarez. It is a sight to bend the mind. I am always aware of the differences that a fence and a river make as I drive down the border highway.

I haven't read the short story by Nabokov...yet.

[mtmynd]

Nicely worded piece, Soo... Yes, those evenings (and lately, early mornings before sunrise) are calm-inducing times as the hush beyond the hum of city life instills boundless thoughts, most of which heal the wounds from the hectic tribulations of daily life.

Thank you!

[Arcadia]

beautiful house & pine buddhabitch!
I enjoy reading your text.
Saludos,

Arcadia

[Dave The Dov]

What kind of taste do those pine nuts have in particular???? Is it like pesto????
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