Meditation at Pescadero

How many lifetimes standing here, watching
soft layers of sand and siltstone and mangled shale
erode, making an arch the waves pulse through,
sometimes with seals in the river shelter,
or with emergent seabed marking geologic time.
You've stood here before, at least a thousand times.
I keep returning. Not only the eternal return
of relevant reincarnation but each passing through
of a visit to a personally sacred place.
This is the anti-apocalypse. Yes, the rocks get worn down
by waves, but it takes a long time, and they meanwhile endure.
This is the anti-despair of a permanent presence
in one's little, ephemeral life. Make a snake in the rocks.
Make a stand of ovoid-weathered stones, call it a line
and dare the tide to cross it. Must I cease dreaming
merely because my eyes are open and I'm standing
over the edge of the cliff above the rocks here
and their tidal bathe? Must the world come to an end
merely because you're standing at the end of the world?
Ridiculous to believe the claims of the urban angst poets.
They never drive out here to stand and watch the sunset
fade gold and indigo through the eye of a hollowed stone.
I've stood here and watched people miss dreamstones
littering the riprap they step over, never seen, unperceived.
For every stone I find here, a hundred are still buried,
still being carved, gouged, hollowed, prepared for that one day
they emerge into the light, sand scooped away by winter storms,
the river bed inland redefined into a new channel, again
and again resculpted. Time and tide the changing agents.
How many lifetimes I've stood here, each one a year and a day
of breathless vows. How often I've seen the cliffs calve off
another birthstone. You can see the interface here, the line
between ancient spreading seafloor and newer inland sediments,
the muck and glop and mashed-up island arcs
that assembled California. Land of new beginnings at
the end of the world. The dark line of old ocean floor
discontinuous with iron-tinged conglomerates and siltstones
soft as talc, hard as sodden, compressed sand. An afterlife
of memory, polished shards with their evidence of ancient
mountains being worn down, uplifted, worn down again.
Water the most powerful erosive force of a dynamic planet.
How many times I've stood on the failing cliffedge overlooking
the receding tunnel of arch and surf. Light grey in cold mist.
Brilliant gold in clear winter sunset, a tunnel of light into time.
How many times I've waited till dark before going to find my bed.
Catching the last scanning line of the sun's retreat, sensing
earth turning east underfoot. Next dawn, another chance
to do it all over again. The rocks erode into the sea.
Then a new land crashes into the old, building it up again.
Somewhere the skin of the earth's face is stretched so thin
hot boils pop out of it, and lines of stretch-marks make
the basin and range. And again. How many times have I
thought of you, lost lover, standing here in the dark.
Only twice were we naked and free over stone, arch, and parapet.
I have the photographic evidence: skin blends into harder stone.
I make a collage of memory. Some images pull loose
from their roots in time, and become universal.
The mind of the world roots your own ghost into stone.
I'll be here again. Long after that, standing on the memory
and ghost of a cliff over a lost archway, a gate forwards
and back into blue sunsets.

Dreamstones at Pescadero

images from Pescadero State Beach, CA, February 2010



There are sandy beaches at Pescadero, especially when the tide's out. But the whole southern stretch of shoreline is gravel, rock, and boulder beach. When I visited this favorite place of mine, the surf was high and the tide was in. I went down to the shore where the heavy boulders rise all the way to the cliffside. The waves come in, and the boulders rattle together like a room of bowling balls as the waves slide out.





This is how you make a dreamstone. The conditions of surf, tide, and materials have to be just right. At surf's edge, especially during high tide or in a storm, the waves make the boulders and smaller stones smash together. Chips fly off, and cracks appear. Perhaps a bit of sand gets lodged in a pit or crack, and the moving water swirls it around. This is the same way potholes get made in river and waterfall areas: a grinding stone in a pit or crack gets swirling around by the waters, gradually making a smooth crater.







Here by the shore, if the crater gets worn all the way through the rock, you get a dreamstone.



Depending on the hardness of the stone, the strength of the tides and waves, and time, you can get a smoothly polished stone, or one still rough-textured. Some more fragile stone weathers much faster, but then crumbles apart. Here at Pescadero, ophiolitic seafloor high-density rock is overlayered by much softer siltstones, sandstones, and conglomerates. It's very easy to see here, how seafloor spreading offshore made island arcs that slammed into the coastline, assembling California. The seafloor rocks make smooth and polished dreamstones, and take longer to carve; the siltstone fragments carve quickly and easily, but once you pluck them from the shoreline, they might crumble in your hand.



I didn't find very many new dreamstones this visit. Since the tide was in, the best place to find them, right at the surfline, was hidden by the hard-rushing waters. I mostly stumbled along the boulder field near the cliffs, still getting splashed with spray. After the previous night's fog and cold, the morning sunlight felt good on my face.

Pescadero

One of my favorite places is Pescadero State Beach, at Pescadero, CA, on the Pacific coast some miles south of Half Moon Bay. The park also contains salt marshlands which include a bird and wildlife sanctuary. From the many times I have spent days and evenings at Pescadero, I have seen sea lions, seals, great blue heron, brown pelican, many kinds of gulls, and lots of other wildlife. On this trip, I camped at Butano State Park, just inland, which consists of a canyon and mountain of giant redwood trees, and spent most of two days and one evening at Pescadero.







Geologically, the outcrops that run into the ocean at Pescadero clearly show the layers of sedimentary rock—rust red and brown and tan sandstones, siltstones, and conglomerates—overlaying the massed ophiolitic peridotites and olivines—blue, gray, slate and dark green in color—interlaced with white quartz intrusions, that are the remnants of oceanic spreading ridges. California's coastline and coastal mountain ranges can be accurately regarded as "glop," as I've heard one geologist put it: the land is composed of numerous island arcs made by seafloor spreading slamming one after another into the edge of the crustal plates, accumulating here as rammed-together masses. Island arc after island arc has underthrust and pushed up against the sedimentary and metamorphic remnants of older mountains.



Where one finger of land thrusts out into the ocean, there is an archway that has been carved from the sedimentary layers on top of the ophiolites. This is one of my favorite places. It is where I found my first dreamstone, lying wet in a tidal pool at low tide, near the arch. Since then, I have collected many other dreamstones here, and from a few other locations along the Pacific shore, where the right combination of rocks, tidal forces, angle of repose, and other forces combine to make these stones that nature has carved perfectly round holes into.





I have made several pieces of land art sculpture at Pescadero since 2004. These are ephemeral pieces made from materials lying at hand—the rounded ovoid and disc-flat stones, dreamstones, driftwood, etc.—that time and tide eventually destroy. They are not meant to endure. All that remains are my photographs of each piece.



This visit, I made a new piece, Orientations: Direction Finder (Garden of Stones)—the long title comes from the fact that several of these land art works are done in series, and this one seemed to fit into two of ongoing series—consisting of several flat round obelisks set on end, and an arrangement of dreamstones found that day. Flat rocks stood up on their sides, perpendicular to dreamstones propped to look through, to look out to sea.



At one point before I could finish the arrangement, a rogue wave flooded in, knocked over a few of the flat stones, and swept out to sea again. I happened to catch the wave in a photo sequence. I rebuilt the arrangement, then shot some more photos and video. I took only one or two of the dreamstones with me this time, and left the rest of the arrangement in place, to be removed later by the tide.

a shaman's critique of pure poetry

they don’t shapeshift enough. becoming something other. than themselves.
they don’t take the world’s shapes, become the world. beasts. radiance. allness.
they spend too much time in their heads. they invent instead of report.
they try to make the world conform to the shapes of their words, rather than words to world.
they play with their toys, their tools, their ways of spinning their voices.
they don’t spend enough time voiceless, obscure, half-buried in else. just seeing.

instead. invite. steadfast becoming. something other than.
arches filled with sand skin abraded half-buried skin red and raw eyes closed open arch
fill waterwave enter slosh through vessel channel avenue drown bury in sand scrape raw rocks tan

other. besides.

chest sunk in sandstone breathing with calcified seas anemones tendrils awhirl skipjack leap
lungs of giant trilobites before disappear ear to the slate stone chimes

going to step outside skin take on form of skin outside stone take on stone skin form take on
to green algae rockgripping coat close shales to slab of ancient seafloor spreading veined serpentine
black peridotite alchemically greened by intrusive seawater slip into the rock cracks
spread hands arms naked self sex breath into rock transformed green life white arterial intrusion

and back to self. and breath out. and back to worldself. and breath. back to self.
spirit self beside into other. interweaving of stone skin bone brain shale sex oceanwet blood.
ocean water the alchemical same electrolyte balance as blood. we circulate remnant oceans. within.

sentinels.

begin with losing the self. carry nothing extra. no thoughtbaggages. no wrinkles. in time.
less to loss self lose to losing self lost left unlost unfettered left behind no wake
astrolabe of the sea. pine overlooking wet cliff. bathed bright. heron's eye. raven dreamstone.

come back to center and extent.

returned self opening eyes. blaze of sun wind wave breeze glare off sea.
opening eyes caked with dried. salt sea taste of blood sweat seawater.

and only then to make a poem.

•

here
here
here
here
here

serpentine
serpentine
serpentine

dreamstone
dreamstone

the Sea at Moolack

the Sea at Moolack
(a haibun)

At Moolack Beach, along the central Oregon coast, a beach of flat wet sand, spreading out at low tide, while dramatic clouds stack over the sunset. Sky and wet mirror of washed sands both the color of clouded amber, with honey and lemon highlights. Where stream meets sea, a channel of sand, a canyon perfect in every chaotic detail. Abandoned shells of dead crabs. Smooth round river stones, flat, black, sculpted. I pick up a stone, and discover it is perforated by weathering: a dreamstone. And another, white instead of black, white of weathered bone in the desert.

sea and desert
abandon driftwood logs—
gulls cry, lost voices



The lighthouse on land’s end, south downcoast, is framed by rain-veils, but no rain falls here. Waves crash far out, and the shallow sands are molten glass mirrors reflecting the sunset. I stay until I cannot see my own feet, then climb up to the road and continue on my way.

indigo night sky
gapped with broken clouds and stars:
my bed still far away