From: montemerrick at speakeasy.net
Subject: from los angeles
Date: 4 June 2007, 13:36:10 PDT
To: montemerrick at speakeasy.net

hi everyone

today the marine layer is taking its time to burn off and last night i
dreamed the facility where i've been working was surrounded by rising
seas, and the netting that keeps our patients captive had vanished.
so.....

we've treated and released between thirty and forty birds, mostly brown
pelicans and loons -

the re-integration to this world of daily seabird rescue has not been
seamless - i've been challenged, exhilarated, and fulfilled.

the strange privilege of holding a pelican or a gull or any wild animal
in my hands - a privilege that i can take only because the animal is
too sick or too young to resist - a privilege that comes with its own
questions and concerns - but here i am - the bird is in my hand and
broken - well what can i say - the thick and bloody dialog with the
actual world - each day is a conversation with freedom, integrity and
autonomy and each day the words are different but, so far, the actions
are the same - i wake up, i make coffee - i plunge into the ocean of
tasks - action in this world toward what we cannot know - but onward we
go - may the eucalyptus trees of topanga canyon live another hundred
years - may the seas thrive and never die - may our own hearts be
useful to heal the wounds of our mad descent. - across the street from
this cafe in playa del rey someone flies the american flag upside down
and at half mast

we do not forget the larger world - we find the universe in the
cormorant's eye.

this morning on the rocky shore beneath the shale and sandstone cliff
forty pelican's unspooled themselves from beyond my sight and banked to
the left, banked to the right and flew just above my extended reach -
their perfect soaring, coasting flight - a cuneiform - a telegraph -
whatever it is that they intend i hold it in my loosened grasp and see
it only when i slit my eyes and obliquely let them glide.

take care


monte merrick
lummi island washington
montemerrick at speakeasy.net
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