Una and Robinson Jeffers

Deep, life-changing, and confusing, someone said of my writing yesterday afternoon.

Thank you, I said.

I attempt to reach out as far as I can, though am often submerged.

(Note: I don't use the word 'try,' advised against using the word 'try' by Charles Bukowski himself, the great writer who advised, 'Don't Try')

Standing in front of the Pacific Ocean yesterday morning I suppose I was seeing what Bukowski meant.

Stuff either comes to you or it doesn't.

For five minutes yesterday morning I looked out at the ocean as far as I could see--some tankers from China, the outline of the Farralon Islands, a series of small waves coming and going for as long as I stood there. I was much more intrigued by the going away of the waves than in the coming, so peaceful and calm and mysterious like it knew exactly what it was doing, whereas the coming in was chaotic and accomplished in fits and starts.

Una Jeffers used to poke her broomstick on the kitchen ceiling, not hearing her husband Robinson upstairs working on a poem, thinking he was asleep or looking out the window at the ocean.

I've been in that room, in the stonehouse Robinson Jeffers built for his family in Carmel, California. I've also been in the room downstairs, the room with the sea-window, seen the little bed there, and heard the poem Jeffers wrote about it, 'The Bed by the Window,' read by a lady who greatly admired him.