Holding Water

  • Holding Water

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Holding Water

    By M.A. Dooley

    I remember the first winery I designed in the middle of a level vineyard.

    Construction began after the vines were removed and the earth was excavated for the foundation.

    A big storm hit the northern Sonoma County and lasted for days.

    At the jobsite meeting, the crew had erected a sign at the edge of a large body of captured rainwater where the future building would go. The sign read Lake Dooley, named after me, the architect. It was funny and I laughed.

    I had great capacity for everything, hard work, men and their jokes, life. My lake would evaporate, percolate, and be drained and no one would ever know of Lake Dooley.

    The spring of 2023 was too full to process. The snow and rain kept falling, the rivers were swollen, the thirsty earth saturated. The valley oaks turned sparkling emerald. Front yards were lush. Lakes filled up. My home state, region, county and backyard was amplified with aliveness.

     All this water was a promise of a future, but some absorbed the deluge and others drowned. The swollen rivers and runoff pushed over the levies and found the low spot.

    Water returned home refilling Lake Tulare, a drained body purposed into agriculture and industry with homes built on her dry bed. The rain and snow melt filled the valley of Tulare to four times the size of Lake Tahoe’s surface. That’s something I’d like to see.

     The Spring of 2023 seems to correspond with my condition. I’m too full to process it all. There’s steady snow fall of activity, but the sun comes out hot and melty and quickly my dam overflows. It’s harder to keep it all within my capacity.

    Maybe I had once been empty like Lake Tulare, purposed for my fertile ground, growing all manner of seeds for harvest. I could always take on more. More work, more play, more interests, but now, I am too full to process the present abundance of my own creation. I’m seeking a way to let the water out before I drown in Lake Dooley. 

    M.A. Dooley is a writer from Sonoma County who frequently ventures to the Sierra Nevada range. Dooley has been published in “The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings in a Pandemic Year” (2021)  and “Poems of a Modern Day Architect,” Archhive Books, (2020)

    Marlene C

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  • Know Your Colors

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    Know Your Colors – An Introduction to the Plant Mood Chart

    By M.A. Dooley

    Luckily, my face turns colors when I feel emotions. Whether I am sad or happy or embarrassed, angry, jealous, afraid, confident, guilty, content, confused, giddy, flirtatious, thoughtful, nostalgic, hesitant, determined, focused, agitated, brazen –or if I feel a song coming on–I can consult the Plant Mood Chart. Rather than grasping at some external label that’s not quite accurate, I hold up the chart at the mirror, or sometimes with a friend, to make sense of the inside of me. It’s quite convenient, saving me lots of time and effort.

    Much like the little cannister with the PH and alkaline hues used to test hot tub water, but far more complex, the color chart corresponds to feelings and can even suggest a backstory as in, “What happened that brought me to this point?” 

    Although little understood by the public, there is a consistent body of work by Species Translators over hundreds of years.  They were doctors, spiritual leaders, druids, medicine women, scientists, and athletes who uncovered a correlation between emotions, humans (who change color) and plants including trees, fruits, flowers and vegetables. I just checked as I am writing this, and sure enough, I’m a white orchid, focused on explaining how the system works. Later on, I might be a pink lady – a little flushed with excitement to share my research with a broader audience – and then shrinking back in sepia, like an acacia, as some consider me a whacko, which turns me embarrassed into bright tomato.

    Yet there is a great deal of science behind the Plant Mood Chart similar to the deeply analyzed Bach’s Flower Remedies. Recent neuroscience has shown how the amygdala strengthens the part of the brain’s cellular memory reaching back to reconnect with earth’s ancients – plant beings. They are the ones that came first, offering life to all that followed. Biologists and healers alike know that plants actually feel and communicate. Plants not only have feelings but create feeling. Like us, they exist partly underground hiding their vulnerable veins, cool and safe, but also seek the sun their heads shining for all to see.

    As we breathe in their shifting colors, the more we become like plant beings. Today, we have a growing evolutionary opportunity to adapt as carbon emissions increase along with our CO2 intake. Oxygen transmuted by the sun through chlorophyll makes me turn ivy green with envy of their design to efficiently transfer and store life energy.

    With so much wind driven cross pollination, subatomic particles get into genetic codes and distribute globally. Most color changers are part wood fairy (my 24 and Me results indicated Corklorian Sprite at 1.3%). Many people are finding it natural to burrow into a soft barked redwood (sienna – comfort) or hide amongst the autumn fern (pale yellow – shyness) or wave their arms in the meadow like a big sunflower (golden – pride). Since we don’t always have a mirror and the color chart handy to verify our emotional states, listen with the ancients and their children rooted and sprouting from the earth to learn the colors of feeling. Our relationship to plant beings becomes our guide to understanding ourselves.

    M.A. Dooley is an architect, mother, skier, runner, and dancer who spent most of her life exploring the Santa Cruz Mountains, Sonoma County, the Sierra Nevadas, and the San Joaquin Delta.

    M.A. has been published in The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, and Poems of a Modern Day Architect, Archhive Books, 2020.

    M.A.’s writing has appeared in Sunset, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Press Democrat.

    #amwriting #justwrite #creativewriting

    Marlene C

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  • I Scream, You Scream

    Memorable writing that sparks imagination. Lean in. Hear the writer’s voice on the page.

    I Scream, You Scream

    By Nona Smith

    It’s been well over a year since I’ve done any grocery shopping at Safeway. Early on in the pandemic, it was Harvest, our other local supermarket, who quickly adopted safety precautions: it made mask-wearing mandatory, limited the number of shoppers inside the store at any given time, provided handwashing stations outside, and offered free Latex gloves. Safeway was slow to adopt protective measures, making me feel unsafe in Safeway.

    Fast forward eighteen months, and I’m fully vaccinated and in need of a cake mix Harvest doesn’t carry. Being as health conscious as it is, the shelves in the baking section at Harvest are laden with organic, gluten-free, paleo, KETO, dairy-free cake mixes. There are only a handful of non-organic, full-on gluten, white sugar mixes on the very bottom shelf. I’m guessing their placement there is to give the consumer time to re-think their unhealthy choice while bending over to reach one of those boxes. So, I’m off to Safeway to find my cake mix.

    Of course, it’s there, nuzzled amongst dozens of others of its ilk, within easy reach. I pluck it from the shelf and decide to do the rest of my grocery shopping while I’m already in the store. I pull out my grocery list.

    When all the items are checked off, I crumple the list and stuff it into my purse. Then I go in search of the shortest check-out line, which––because shoppers are encouraged to stand on the six-feet-apart circles painted on the store floor––brings me half-way down the ice cream section of a freezer aisle. And, because I have nothing else to do while waiting for the line to move, I begin perusing the freezer cases and discover an ice cream trend. The highest end ice creams––Haagen-Dazs, Ben and Jerrys, Talienti––have adopted “layering” as a new marketing gimmick. Only pint cartons are offered this way: four layers of different textures and flavors. I’m imagining plunging my ice cream scoop far enough down into the container to reach all four layers at the same time. Nope, I determine, it can’t be done. One would need a spoon to get the effect the product promises. I suspect the idea really is, to sell more product by encouraging shoppers to have their very own pint to dip their very own spoon into. I can’t imagine this trend will last beyond the summer.

    The line moves, and I find myself in front of a section containing lesser-known brands, such as Fat Boy and Fat Boy Junior. I’m wondering what kind of market research led someone to name their product that when the line shifts again.

     Now I’m in the popsicle section and looking at a product that reminds me of the summers of my childhood. I can almost hear the tinkling notes of the white ice cream truck as it announces its tour through my neighborhood. And here it is in Safeway’s freezer: the Good Humor Creamsicle, orange popsicle on the outside, velvety vanilla ice cream on the inside. I’m tempted to put a package in my shopping cart. The only thing that stops me is knowing the Creamsicles would melt before I got out of the store.

    Another five minutes pass, and I’m now standing in that spot between the end of the aisle and the conveyer belt, leaving enough space for shoppers to pass through with their carts. An idea strikes me, and I reach into my purse for the crumpled shopping list and a pen. Smoothing out the list, I jot some notes about what I’ve just discovered. As a writer of personal essay, I know that anything––and everything––is fodder for a story. Why not ice cream?

    By the time I’m wheeling my cart out of the store, I’ve decided to make a stop at Harvest on my way home and do a little market research of my own.

    Standing in front of the ice cream freezer at Harvest, it’s just as I suspected. Yes, the high-end, four layered, products are there, but there’s no sign of Fat Boy or his son. Instead, there’s a product called Skinny Cow. Also, it appears there’s an equal amount of low fat, sugar-free, nonfat, nondairy ice creams made from soy, almond or coconut milk as those made from actual full-fat cow’s milk. The Rebel label promises “high fat/low carbs” for people on a KETO diet. There’s even an ice cream designed for kids who don’t like vegetables. It’s called Peekaboo and is made with “hidden veggies:” vanilla ice cream with zucchini, chocolate with cauliflower. Who knew? The freezer is filled with organic, health-conscious choices, seemingly designed to keep the Harvest shopper living a nutritious lifestyle.

    I tuck the note-filled grocery list back into my purse and head home. Maybe one day I’ll write a piece about ice cream.

    Nona Smith is the author of Stuffed: Emptying the Hoarders’ Nest and numerous other short stories published in various anthologies, including The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year, journals and the St. Petersburg Times (now Tampa Bay Times.) Currently, she is writing a mystery about a woman named Emma whose dear friend goes missing. In her search for her friend, Emma finds herself. Nona writes personal essays and memoir pieces as well as fiction, always with an eye towards finding the humor in situations. She lives on the Mendocino coast with her husband Art and two mischievous cats.

    Stuffed: Emptying the Hoarders’ Nest and The Write Spot: Musings and Ravings From a Pandemic Year are available at Gallery Bookshop and on Amazon.

    Marlene C

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