Holidayletter 2011

Dear Fellow Traveler
Winter solstice has come and gone, Hanukah is glowing along, Christmas done outdid itself, and Kwanza is nipping at its heels. Jack Frost is, perhaps, an early victim of Dr. C.O. Two, since both coasts seem to be warm and dry. In any case, good weather and the consequent good feelings are definitely a Gift in this otherwise predictably unpleasant year where, once again, we had too much Greed and not enough Giving.
Talk about kayaking and water, something liquid and lovely.
Yesterday my hands, even in 3 mm gloves, felt clumsy with cold. And worth every shiver of it, with the sun painting the sides of the Muir Beach Overlook to the West, our Little Beach still in anticipatory shadow. The tide was very high at 0705, the second day of the new sun cycle, and the sky was lit up all blue and golden streaks and skeins of high white clouds. The twinkling jewels of light from boats (trolling for salmon, potting for crabs, taking containers to China) sparkled out across the water, with the still visible lights of San Francisco pulsating from the dark under Sutro Tower. And the surface of the sea, always rolling, but yesterday no more than a 10 second primeval surge, no flutter and dance of windy wavelets, all shiny and smooth and worthy of Dutch oils.
Once sealed into the kayak with a waterproof spray skirt and a dry top, I feel a surge of power; I’m a chimera, a boat with arms, an old man with a hull. I’m adapted; I can go anywhere. I can paddle to Pt. Reyes, to Alaska! Of course I can’t, but the feeling is nice. Like a seal, I lump myself down the smooth sand beach, and push hard into the next wash of breaking wave. Some days, it’s a struggle; the ocean in motion throws things back as often as it sucks them in. But now, in the still breathless metallic undulating swirls of moving liquid fire, I glide through the next wave, and it’s all possible.
Just around the corner there are a few pelicans on Bird Rock, and the usual accompaniment of cormorants and red legged black bodied long billed oyster catchers. The latter come in pairs. Cormorants, always reminding me of Paparazzi the way they stand around waiting, seem to be pretty solitary within their flocks. There aren’t enough anchovies to sustain many pelicans these days. Perhaps later a few young sea lions will show up, but right now it’s all birds. And the pungent ammoniac smell of guano hasn’t been completely washed away; it’s been the driest December in a long time.
Because of the high tide and the calm sea, I can visit all of the rock gardens and surge passages along the stretch of cliff between Muir and Slide Ranch. These are places where a difference in timing of the incoming swells creates momentary rushing streams over black jagged rocks that are ready to eat you up as the wave recedes. The idea is to time your paddle in and be lifted up on the bulge of water, feel its power under you and then carve down the wave towards the rocks that, you hope, will be flooded and safe to pass over by the time you get there. For just a moment, as the water all around turns loud and fluffy white with the impact, it’s just like a river. And like a river, if you just relax and work with it, the water will take care of you. Mostly I come shooting out the other side. Sometimes the wave isn’t quite enough, and I am suddenly aground, the water sucking and draining noisily all around, and the crashing approach of the next wave hanging overhead. But my old Perception is made of Tupperware plastic, and doesn’t mind a few jolts and bumps, and then I am floating on the other side of whatever was the obstacle.
In the pools, limned with occasional rays of light, there are big green and purple anemones, and the occasional flit of small fish, the scurry and stop of crabs. Black mussels, mostly young this year, and the double palm sized starfish in startling orange, blue, red that thrive on eating the mussels. And this year knobs and mounds of gooseneck barnacles. The seagulls seem to like them, in an oceanic “I’ll eat you up I love you so” way..
The rolling folds of Pacific kind of seem to be munching on the rocks as well. The ponderous inexorability of the gunmetal shining sea, the splashy tinkly draining anticipation of the sharp black rocks, as the water of the last moment falls back into the trough, and those fast moving time bound birds snatch the uncovered morsel before the heavy pounding smushing rush of water exploded instantly into white foam, escaping skywards in those fierce tendrils that hang forever over the Hokusai boatmen and are repeated everywhere there are waves and humans who venture out on them. “If you didn’t know, it would look like snow’, says Luna, looking down on it all from a high place in the later on of evening.
Talk about the family. Well, at some point today we will all be here at Muir Beach, even including the extended family, that now have to be spelled out as Neumann-Deantonis -Steinbach-Sanchez in order to include us all. Aminta (and boyfriend Aaron) arrived with a big box full of Dungeness crabs (Aaron has a friend in the crab boat business). Aminta is full time at Rockridge Kids helping connect families with the right toy or stroller, and living sober. Perhaps the greatest blessing of the year is the joy of daily exchanges with Aminta, sharing dog care, washing up after dinner; all the normals that parents of brilliant children hope for. Severin that most brilliant child of Aminta, now closing in on 20 years old, lives independently in El Sobramte and works in landscaping. And has a car. And a girlfriend. And seems happy, yet looking towards move. Tirien lives not far away in Berkeley, filling her life with Ernesto (who is a member of the California Bar, and working at a law office in SF) and those most brilliant of grandchildren Amalia (now 9) and Joaquin (almost 7). A and J are at the same Berkeley public school, and both liking it. Joaquin is very busy with book-making; mostly bright colored cabbalistic symbols, but with increasing snippets of explanatory words. Amalia’s books tend toward the picaresque, fraught with adventure and intrigue. This week, the Muir Grandparents (S,A and Yeshi our upstairs landpartner) were hosts to A, J and also their agemates Luna and Plum, children of Rachel and Jason. Gingerbread houses, potato block printing, and there is always the beach and the small dog Fuji to play with. Emma, aunt to Luna and Plum is back from Portland and full of plans for a spring wedding to Jon.
Fuji..now there’s a bright star in the firmament! Who would have thunk that a 12.5 pound Chihuahua mix could burrow and brazen her way so deeply into our lives? Perhaps because she has all of the brass and bravado of a big dog and fits into a lap or under the seat of an airplane. Yes, she barks at suspicions, but with tail wagging, and holds her own with much larger dogs and small children. Since Aminta rescued her over two years ago now, she definitely rules the family.
With so much change in the world, we all seem to be pretty occupied. Sala has just finished up an 8 week Practice Period at Green Gulch Zen Monastary just up the road, and will move back there for a month in January. She’s a senior practitioner there now, and not just in age. As always she remains a student of zen, a grandmother and mother, wife and friend, enjoying her life and being helpful when she can.
I didn’t give Tirien and her ongoing saga as Executive Director at East Bay Community Law Center enough space. EBCLC is weathering the hard times for NGO’s, largely due to T’s ability as a fundraiser and organizer. As the Clinic for Boalt Law (now Berkeley Law School), they enjoy waves of eager young professionals bent on upholding the law and de-criminalizing poverty. My good friend Osha is a senior presence in the clinic dealing with emergent neighborhood legal issues, a perfect role for a legally trained experience wise intensity junky.
Alan, that’s me, was happily retired into two days a week of medical practice and one half semester of tutoring medical students, and then….well, as you know, when you close a door, another opens. I had stopped the regular teaching last year, and begun to consult on another project that my friend and work partner Kevin(really work soul mate!) had begun in Florida; nothing less than a new medical school to be developed outside the University context. Sadly, Kevin was killed last July while riding in a shuttle between UCSF and SF General where he worked in the psych ER. And so I have increased my work on the Florida project, and if it gets funded and credentialed, will be out of retirement for a few years in the very near future. The project is very exciting and will be challenging as well. When I think about the days I won’t be sailing or kayaking or riding a bike on the path from Woods Hole to North Falmouth, I feel some regret. Then I think about Dr. Kevin Mack, and his incredibly effective and porous boundaries, and his love for the work of Problem Based Learning, and all the world’s people, and I feel blessed to have the opportunity. And, after all, my father retired two..no, three times, so I have a few to go.
Well, that’s the Solskwanaskah news for 2011. May 2012 bring you meaningful Occupation, and the many joys that family and society offer all of us, if we have good fortune and good health, and we accept the challenge, to reach out for the gifts.
Joaquin, Amalia, Ernesto,Tirien,Sev, Aminta,Sala,Alan