I'm standing in front of the garage, and under the porch, of Jane's elderly neighbors Ramsey and Marianne. Marianne is bedridden now, with arthritis, and Ramsey is suffering from the onset of Parkinson's. They are wonderful people and despite their ailments they glow with life still, when I see them from time to time. Ramsey still drives down to the grocery store on Shattuck and when it happens that I'm there waiting for the bus, he always gives me a ride down the hill.

Their house is quiet this Monday morning, as I wait for the #8 to arrive and I'm under their porch because it's raining, hard. I love the sound the rain is making on the roadway, on the plastic sheet covering Ramsey's blue recycling boxes, and on the leaves of the evergreens in their yard. When it rains like this, plants and trees seem particularly intense, as if they're meditatively accepting every raindrop into their bodies, drinking the wet sky with their leaves, branches, trunks and roots.

So October ends. I'm leaving in a few days... well, Saturday, but this week will feel so brief and fast for me. I always look forward to returning to Maui come November, as my life there is so different from the one I lead in the SF Bay Area. Equally interesting, but radically different. I'll be writing about it in my weblog, of course. This was something I didn't have last year, this weblog... there were the e-postcards that I sent out to people on my e-mailing list, but those were relatively few and far between. Naturally, when April ends I'll be looking forward with as much intensity to returning to Berkeley once more... and to seeing all of you in the flesh again, and not just online.

But until that time, I will be a faithful and constant visitor to each of your weblogs, and it doesn't matter whether you update them daily or just once in a while... I shall be there, looking in, frequently, to see what's up in your interesting, varied and wonderful lives. Listening to your voices, ascertaining the beats of your hearts and running, swimming, hiking, climbing, working to the pulsing of your minds. In the end, that is what weblogging really is all about: keeping in touch in this particular way that modern technology affords us. Without this human and humane component, technology for its own sake is sere, lifeless.

In the picture above of Kealia Beach on Maalaea Bay in Maui, there's a protected wetlands area off to the left (click on the pic to see a larger version of the image), at which some rare and endangered Hawaiian Stilts live. I once spent hours there, looking for them, and was disappointed to not see any. But then, as I was leaving, a couple emerged from the reeds, wading into the shallows a ways before flying off to the far end of the marsh. I had already packed my camera so I was unable to take a picture. But they remain indelibly in my mind...

...like you all do. You rare birds whom I love like life itself.

{ net.casting }
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