Our rooster crows early. I would say at the crack of dawn except that here, on the north coast of California, dawn doesn’t crack. Here, where the mountains meet the sea, the sky is trapped low, a dimmer switch of cloud or fog elongates the dawn and smudges the distinctions that sharp shadows would bring.

It can make me feel dimwitted that way. I leave a warm bed, a night owl in diffuse light fumbling with jeans and shirt to free a rooster and chickens from their roost and coop.

Recently, though, I’ve noticed some advantage accumulating in this arrangement. Some value slowly showing itself as an unintended consequence of indenturing myself to the needs of chickens. Actually, I think that advantage may be the wrong word here. The emphasis is more on the noticing itself.

I notice, for example, that it’s hard to think. I notice that my senses don’t mind that a bit. There is the caw-caw, tsk-tsk, and bubbling tweet of the morning chorus free of the need to name the birds. There is the traceless, sweeping arc of bird flight. There is the unencumbered quench of cold well water on the tongue. There is the dew seeping into my clogs. And, then, there is the noticing of the noticing.

That’s not to say that thoughts aren’t arising. Somehow, though, the usual foreground importance of concepts popping up takes a back seat to the simple neural activity of all thoughts – thoughts making themselves known by their activity, like the sound of waves on the beach, rather than by their meaning.

I also notice the perfect ordinariness of all this. The just-letting-it-be-ness. Aliveness without add-ons. Just this….

Yesterday morning my sister, Judy, and her youngest son and his wife left for Oklahoma from California in a sort of reverse migration of events in American history. Many of the reasons were the same: untenable living conditions and keeping (most of) the family together. Compared to the bloated and collapsing California economy, Oklahoma has reasonable housing prices and more available work. And of course there’s my sister’s oldest son, wife, and two year old child already there; the growing edge of a thinned out family tree. A small part of a new American history, a large part of a new family story.

Well, new and old actually. My father emigrated from Denmark in the wake of the crumbling European aristocracy in the 1920’s, my Iowa-farm-girl mother fled alcoholism and domestic violence for the big city of Chicago. Eventually they left Illinois for work and a healthier climate and worked their way to California in their two-toned 1951 Chevy, my sister and I in the back seat munching cookies. Route 66.

The last days of preparing to leave were, of course, chaotic. It’s impossible to pull up roots without loosening the very soil around you. And there are no close passive observers in family moves, my roots were being yanked even though I wasn’t moving. We drew closer and more honest about our feelings. And more honest about what life looks like through the cracks of altered ordinariness. Every interaction became a reminder that it was one of the last before the big change. If excited, we reveled in the betweeness; if tired, we retreated to observations of how “it could be worse”. Family stories of births and deaths circulated amongst the constant revision of plans.

The big day came. Nancy’s and my house became the staging ground for the departure and I cooked a big breakfast. At times giddy, at times stuck in a middle distance gaze, we were reminded that much of what is good in life is unbelievable.

After they left I started cleaning the house but it was as if I had one foot nailed to the floor. I went from task to task without completing anything. Objects defied me and hid themselves from my use or just broke at my approach. When the computer froze and wouldn’t allow me to send an email to the nephew in Oklahoma, I bolted in frustration and went out on the front porch for some fresh air. I found there a hummingbird trapping itself against the glass ceiling of a skylight, frantically beating itself against the unseen. Her situation spoke to me directly.

I slowed down the internal rush of anxiety, exhaustion, and excitement and fetched the ladder. Step by small step, I put the ladder in place and carefully climbed to the hummingbird, gently caught it, and stepped down the ladder. Each step was an act complete in itself, each feeling of completeness releasing an individual emotion. This step: sadness; this step: joy; this step: fear; this step: release. As I cleaned off the cobwebs on her wings, the hummingbird cleaned off mine. We were both spent. Opening my hand, she rested briefly and flew off.

I am writing this on a 1942 Royal Signet portable typewriter. It has no exclamation point and has only upper case letters. It demands a firm stroke; and hesitation producing only a faint impression of your intentions. It is sturdy and obviously built before and notion of planned obsolescence. It sounds and smells like history.

My father bought this typewriter the year that it was manufactured, though I only remember it in brief moments of clarity in an otherwise vague childhood during the suburban 50’s. The machine recently came to me from the far reaches of a storage unit that my sister was cleaning as she prepared to move to another state. I believe that it has been about forty years since I
last pounded these keys.

Along with the typewriter, many boxes of photos and papers also showed up, including little love notes typed on this machine and left for my mother as my father headed off to the still mill in the Chicago of the 40’s.

The boxes also proved to contain a dissembled chronology of both sides of my family history. Folders full of trivia hid notes of clarifying significant events. Photos of unknown people having fun at a picnic provoked a visceral discomfort. Memories and narratives of my life began to stand on their heads and morph in endless iteration.

This disruption of the story of self continues. There’s a liquefaction of the ground on which I stand, like what happens to silty soil during an earthquake. This all sounds rather dramatic, but there really are only moments like that. Mostly it’s been about noticing the shifts in perspective and quietly waiting to see what’s going to show up next. Not forcing myself to dig deeper, not turning away from what’s there.

Every so often I come across a picture of myself at a younger time; peering into the picture like I’m trying to see through to the truth or gazing out-of-frame trying to look cool, or both. And I see now how much I missed wearing such earnest blinders. At the same time I notice that it’s all being offered again and again and that more of whatever IT is can be seen when viewed through the tatters of what I last held to be the real story.

In the midst of this unfolding, I especially appreciate this 1942 Royal Signet portable typewriter for its helpful qualities: that it requires such sensate – and anchoring – operation and for its ability to have waited for 40 years to again be of service.