Give ‘Em Some Heat

Yesterday as I started out on a bike ride I had to stop and wait because I encountered a couple of cowboys moving cattle, which is always sort of fascinating to me, like watching a scene of the Old West from a hundred years ago in living color, complete with sounds and smells and cow shit.

The herd was coming out of Coyote Canyon and heading up the main road, and I paused at the side of the road with Kathi, a picturesque cowgirl with long blonde hair, until they began to ascend the hill. Then I heard John (he’s the head cowboy) call out: “Get ‘em moving! Give ‘em some heat!” and Kathi took off on her horse and gave ‘em some heat. Two little border collies darted about in the dust, enjoying their job.I realized while standing there that it was too hot for a bike ride, so I turned around and headed towards home, but not before stopping on the bluff to watch the surf for a few minutes. 

A guy I know named Paul was standing there also, gazing in the way that surfers do, trying to get a handle on things before going out. He made an effort to be social for a moment, though, and politely asked me how my writing was going. At first I thought he said “riding” and I said that this one had been abbreviated due to the heat, but then I realized he meant "writing", and when people ask me about “writing” I never have an answer.  I suppose it is flattering to be asked, since it means that the asker views you as a writer, or at least as one who aspires to be a writer, which is actually sort of embarrassing when you think about it, but the question always seems to want a more interesting answer than I can give. In fact I'm pretty sure the answer is supposed to be something like, “Oh, I just published my third novel.”

Being a truthful person, though, I simply said that I wasn’t doing much writing at all lately.

“I knew a Maori shaman once,” said Paul, “who told me that he wrote during a certain portion of the lunar cycle, and only then. But everything he wrote during that time period came out of his pen exactly right. He never changed a word.”

Is it just me, or is that what you'd call a non sequitur? I had no idea what to do with this information or how to respond.

Maybe I just need to find my special lunar phase?

Today I worked on various projects around the house but finally succumbed to the heat and went down to the beach to cool down. It was hazy there, and the sand was covered with kelp, bunches and bundles and boas of it, and the surf was big but in a messy sort of way, and some hulking guy with a beard and baggy shorts was walking with a mean-looking dog that bounded up to me and started growling.

This got me thinking about the election results, and how everyone seems so angry and negative, as if throw the bums out and turn back the clock represents some sort of American spirit and wisdom. There’s so much displaced resentment, so few solutions being offered. (Unless it's like...um...let’s get rid of that whole evil health care thing.)

The best analysis I’ve read so far was an article in the New Yorker by Hendrik Hertzberg written before the election. He agreed with the prevalent view that the election would be all about the economy, which is still in lousy shape, but he also pointed out that President Obama and the Dems had in fact kept the Great Recession from becoming a Great Depression. This goes largely unrecognized and unappreciated, however, because, as Hertzberg succinctly puts it, “…the presence of pain is more keenly felt than the absence of agony.”

So here we are. Pain is present. Moon at waning crescent. And this, apparently, is not my personal creative lunar time. But you know what? One of these days I’ll have something to say and it will spring forth from this keyboard magically edited.

And one of these days, I’m gonna give ‘em some heat.