Notes From the West Coast

I'm sorry about the long delay. R.A. and I got back last night from a ten-day trip to the West Coast, which included San Francisco, a wedding in Bodega Bay, two days and a Shakespeare play in Ashland, two nights in Bend to do the laundry, a visit to my sister and brother-in-law (and dog) in Hood River, and then a morning flight out of PDX. Pretty whirlwind, actually, and I probably could have done with a little less time in the back of the truck. But we got to see a lot of California via car, which is my favorite way to see it, and we even got to see the Sacramento Bird and Wildlife Refuge.

Throughout the entire trip, R.A. and I kept coming up with fantasy scenarios for our future. We'll move to San Francisco, start up a small publishing company, publish the works of all our friends and other obscure poets and Wittgensteinians. R.A. will get her Ph.D. at Berkeley, and I'll help raise money for the local nonprofit dance and ballet scene. We'll buy a ranch outside of Sebastapol, buy some llamas and raise and breed corgies to pay the mortgage. We'll rent an old cottage on the outskirts of Ashland, attract a following of young university students and teach them all a new religion that contains elements of Voodoo Catholicism, the mythology of the Shasta-Achomoawi Indian tribes, and A Midsummer Night's Dream. At night, we'll go out and rob graves in order to open a portal to the underworld and undo all bonds forever.

Probably shouldn't have told you that last one.

"The Owl Doctor":

The prairie falcon made war on the northerners and was killed. Coyote claimed to be a medicine man and was the first to doctor him. He was merely a pretender who wanted to obtain pay. Then others, all owls, doctored him. Hihina, the large owl, sodut, the white owl, wedjiji, the ground owl, and hihimcha, the small owl, were the ones who doctored him. It was the white owl that cured him.

Hawk is skeptical of this plan.