Yesterday Kip and his parents and I rode the tramway up from Palm Springs to a mountaintop overlooking the strange vastness of Palm Springs, the windmill farms by the freeway, the gray rocky ridge behind which we live, the casinos and the trailer parks, the lush lawns and bowers of the water-hogging golf culture--all of it in miniature of course. The tram ride itself was interesting because of the operator who was trying to be funny, the floor of the tram itself which spun slowly so you could see all aspects of the view, and the horrible radio station which spewed such awful crap interspersed with advertising for the gift shops that yawned at both the top and bottom of the small world inhabited by the private concern that runs the tramway. The small adventure at the top was worth all the strangeness: cool and foresty and piny and shadowy. There was a waterfall and maybe even a creek. These sharp fresh altitudes always remind me that when I first went off to college (a resounding FAIL), I wanted to be a tree-rescuer and nature-studier. But the math classes got in the way. Then the music took over. Anyhoo, there I was yesterday, staring at a stand of deciduous-type trees when I suddenly blurted out: "Liquidambar Styriciflua!" Kip raised his eyebrows (even higher), "huh?" "Sweetgum!" It is funny what sticks in your brain as you recede from your past lives; almost all of the Latin names I learned in my Woody Plants course nearly forty years ago in Ann Arbor are still readily available when I see the plant that bears the name. I have said that the tram ride itself was odd, and the restaurant thing at the top, with its unnatural green carpet and musty restaurant gloom, was even weirder. Still, none of that strangeness overwhelmed the beauty of the mountainside and the chasms filled with flora, some of it spiky and some of it lime-jello-green and alluring. And those greeny crevasses made me think of my favorite poet: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Which poem? Must you ask? The one born from a fragmented gothic dream that STC only remembered part of, and which, it is alleged, Dorothy Wordsworth helped him reconstruct from his fog-drenched skull. (And, by the way, ahem, if that's a true story, then I have to wonder how many of her brother's poems Dorothy helped pen.) This poem (to me) is all about the intrusion of the supernatural into the natural world. If you are any kind of artist, that border will be porous at all times and you can make a song out of anything—IF you can engage in "the willing suspension of disbelief...." That is, you gots to be ready. Whether or not you might enjoy a taste academic puffery (forgive me, dear professors, if I make seem to light of the academy—I don't mean to!), here is Charles Patterson, Jr. quoting Plato, in a quote from a long-lost assignment I once had to complete: an analysis of Coleridge's Kubla Khan "...all good poets...compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed...The poets are only the interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed." What do you think? Doth it require a “self-obliterating empathy, when the subject of his song taketh control of a poet’s mind and he calleth up...a beauty untrammeled by the demands of the rational and analytical...?” Oh to live untrammeled by those demands! At least we get to experience a sense of untrammeledness when we read Coleridge, though, don't we? Don't his poems take you places? Let's go to Xanadu. Kubla Khan Or, A Vision in a Dream, a Fragment Prologue (where Coleridge describes having his dream interrupted by a caller): Then all the charm Is broken—all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shapes the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes— The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon The visions will return! And lo, he stays, And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms Come trembling back, unite, and now once more The pool becomes a mirror. Yet from the still surviving recollections in his mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. I'll sing you a sweeter song another day. [this was originally written in Greek according to my book....] In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and flowers were girdled round: And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Fiver miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice! A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise. (If that poem did not transport you, try "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." It is almost impossible to come back from that one...) In the meantime, things have been busy here. I am frequently (and pleasantly) surprised by how busy one can keep oneself out here in "the middle of nowhere," or BFE as it is known by some lucky few. You think there's nothing out here in the desert until you stay awhile and give some respectful attention. Then things begin to sprout and scramble at your feet. And Kip and I have now survived another June, and thereby we have survived our 57th birthdays. I never thought I would even make it to 30. Ha! Now, here we are: Seniors. The age of everyone's parents and, in many cases, grandparents. In the "old-enough-to-be" category. To me, at this point, someone who is 50 has their whole life ahead of them! Or at least a half-life! (Some of you might remember our "Hawaii-5-0" 50th birthday party. "What a milestone; how did I get this old??" I thought at the time...) Our musician friends here vary in age, but I would wager that we are older than most of them. Anyway, Kip did not have a happy birthday because it was the day we lost our Luna. She took ill the night before, and suffered in terrible pain through the night. We took turns getting up to check on her and it seemed to keep getting worse. Her tolerance for riding in the car was so bad by this time that we didn't dare take her on the two-plus hour drive to the all-night vet in Indio. She was already so far down that she might have perished on the way. They told us over the phone that she might have bloat and the only option was emergency surgery that "might save her." She would likely not have survived the surgery if she had made it to Indio. We took her to our regular vet in Yucca Valley and they turned us away. So we went to the vet in 29 Palms, unfamiliar and terrible territory for Luna—and, as it turned out, for us. The paw prints were on the wall. Luna had always rallied, and there was a shot of hope as she wobbled to her feet and strode into the clinic. But then she huddled under the desk while the vet's assistant gave us the verdict. We wept and held her while they gave her a dose, and and then the vet said "her heart has stopped." What a heart it was. Luna, whose footprints are now erased from our yard by the hard afternoon winds, who always came over and placed her head on your knee if you were sad, who had a charcoal smudge on her tail, who loved to lie next to the piano when we played and sang, who loved the snow, who we brought home from the shelter at age six, who was always a puppy, whose tail curled upward until arthritis got the better of it, who loved us so much that she lived until sixteen, who talked (almost in full sentences) when she wanted something, who tolerated so much from us—the kennel, medicines, curry combs, being banished when she pooped in the house--, who loved to graze on popcorn, who once stole a burrito off of our friend Heather's plate, who also snagged a bag of tortillas off the counter and dragged it to her bed (having eaten only half of the bag so she could save some for later), who understood everything all the time, who had several revolving silly nicknames as well as her own theme song, who maybe we could have saved by not putting her in the kennel that last time, who might have eaten rat poison when she dashed out the gate the last evening of her life and ran over to the abandoned house next door and somehow got in for just long enough to have eaten whatever poison pills were lying around on the rotten floor, who was a pain in the neck sometimes but mostly made our lives a lot more fun, and who was really the only child of our ten-year marriage, is gone. Luna is gone, except we find the hairpin-wavy fibers of her undercoat everywhere, except her leash and bowls are still in the shed, except we are farming out what remains of her biscuit supply to our friends' dogs, except she is still in my heart all the time—is gone. We miss her. Sometimes I wish we had taken her ashes, but we decided in the blur of tears of the moment to let them sprinkle her ashes in the garden behind the vet's office. I hope they did that. Her photo is on our table with candles and roses, a painted pawprint I salvaged from a large piece of cardboard that had served as a dropcloth (she always stepped in the paint...), and a little piece of popcorn in case she gets hungry. I am attaching my favorite photo of her. A Husky girl in her element. Ready to play, ready to protect her resources, ready to take all comers, especially if they were holdin' biscuits. Maybe her happiest days when we lived in El Rito, New Mexico and she had her own yard-- though her desert days were happy ones too. She had the run of our sandbox and got to bark at tortoises and jackrabbits.