We are made of Water

The ocean curved and crashed into the shore. From my perch on the cliff the surfers looked like tiny colorful bits of kelp tumbling in the froth or long winged seagulls riding the breeze into the shallows. I took another bite of my carne asada and guac burrito, breathed in the salty air between savory chews, wiped the hot sauce from my face, and sighed. 

It was good to be home.

San Diego! 

I took another bite of heaven and recounted my years spent shuffling through this sand, drinking at bonfires below these cliffs, baking my skin under these cloudless skies. 

Yet a feeling of agitation slowly rumbled to the surface.

I heard it before I saw it. A sound that made me uneasy before I could even identify the source. The sound of water hitting pavement. I looked down over the bluff.  At the base of the swirling stairs leading to the beach were two outside showers, bits of wood and metal, one of which was running full power- with no one there. A deep gouge had formed at the base of the shower. 

A delta of wasted water soaking into the sand, seeping back to the sea. 

Water water everywhere… but nearly 90% comes from somewhere else so really we each may only have a drop to drink and certainly not enough to let run into the sand. 

I wrapped up my burrito, ready to descend to shut off the faucet when a surfer approached the shower and washed off his board. 

Please please please turn it off, I telepathically willed him, then watched in fascination mingled with disgust as he walked away from the spewing showerhead. 

Really, dude? I mean, brah? Maybe he’s from the East Coast, I reasoned, where they don’t know that water is scarce in these parts. But then I thought of my family at home- running the shower for five minutes to “warm it up” or letting the kitchen sink shoot water directly into the drain while washing dishes off to the side. It kills me! 

I cannot leave a tap running and I drive my Mom crazy when I instinctively swoop in and switch off the water. 

“Jennifer! Stop being such a fanatic!” 

To which I calmly (or sarcastically, depending on the day) reply, “We live in a desert, remember?” 

Maybe I am a fanatic, I think as I stare off at the boats on the horizon, the sound of crashing waves intermingling with the hiss of water of that sticky handled shower.

Maybe because I’ve lived on a boat for so many years where water is surrounding the damn thing but you either have to make your own and hope that the expensive and finicky reverse osmosis watermaker works, or you must ration the water in your 400 (or 40) gallon tank so that it will last for weeks. And that’s not just drinking water. It’s for washing dishes and showering (or sponge bathing) too.

Maybe it is because I have actually been in situations where the ability to procure water has been life or death. On my 32 ft sailboat my (former)partner and I once went for three weeks without the ability to fill our 40 gallon tank. We had a few five gallon jugs to supplement the stock and we funneled rain into extra containers when we could, but we made that total of 60 gallons last. 

For three weeks! 

60 gallons is less than ¾ of what the typical San Diegan uses in a day. 
One. 
Day. 
88 gallons! 
On my boat, we had no choice but to conserve. We held our lives in our own hands. Or rather, in our waterbottles and sink basins. 

So I think of water differently, for sure. Yet I think that San Diegans are in the same dire situation (or you could say the same boat) but the majority just don’t know it. Or won't admit it. 

Where are the mandatory water restrictions? Where are the public service announcements? Why aren’t there planes skywriting, “If it’s yellow, let it mellow!” Oh wait, carbon emissions- never mind the plane. Why aren’t we shouting from the corners of the Gaslamp, “If it’s brown, flush it down!”  Why aren’t all the lawns dead or better yet ripped out? Why doesn’t anyone seem to give a fuck? 

What is it about many San Diegans, transplants or natives, that breeds this apathy? Sure the weather is perfect year round (read: no rain), but don't you think that comes with trade-offs? Is it the laid back, live for today attitude that many bring with them to the bars and beaches that dissuades them (us) from thinking too far into the future that may include an even more severe drought and possibly even systemic collapse? Or is it the same fear of truth that forces them into denial, just like it does with the seemingly worldwide denial of fishery collapse? The forever shifting baseline changing our perception of "normal." If you can't see it or feel the crisis in this moment, does it not exist? Might as well eat all the fish you can get your hands on now before they are all gone. Keep using the water as you always have to wash down that driveway at noon and cross your fingers it will still come out of the tap tomorrow...

I stand up to take matters into my own hands. I start down the sandy stairs but then another surfer comes along, rinses off his board, dunks his head, and wiggles the handle. 

It’s off! 

Thank god, another caring soul. Or another someone with a touch of OCD. But it’s off, that’s all I care about. Until the guy after him uses it and walks away, leaving the constant stream to dig deeper rivulets into the surrounding sand. 

Jesus Christ buddy! See this crumbling red earth? Do you remember the last time it rained? Sure, I’ve been gone for four months, but I know we haven’t “caught up” on rain. Yup, according to the government, we’ve received about three inches of rain this year. San Diego’s yearly average is around 10 inches which we haven't reached since 2011. And even with an “average” rainfall, we still import almost all of our water!

My frustration mounts once more as water drains into earth until yet another surfer rinses and wiggles (the faucet, that is) and the stream is halted.

At least some people seem to care.
And my mom just gave me a dozen or so adorable succulent plants.

Maybe there is hope. 

What can we do about it? The best course of action is probably to move back where you came from.  There is most likely a hell of a lot more water there. But I know I’ve got to share my hometown with you people “from away” and I happen to love a lot of you, so, actually, I’m glad you’re here to help get the word out. Until, of course, I get fed up and move out of town to greener, lusher, wetter pastures myself- but maybe you'll join me?

In the meantime here is a list of obvious and not so obvious things we can do to save water if we’re going to stay in this desert. And notice I say WE. It has to be a community effort.  Voluntary, Mandatory, or For the Love of San Diego and Mother Earth: Let’s go!

The Basics: 

Limit your showering time.

Turn off tap when brushing your pearly whites (or coffee stained yellows).

If you want to take a bath, make it a shallow one. And scoop out the (minimally soapy) water to feed plants when you’re done. 

Don’t wash your car on the sidewalk (pick a carwash place that recycles water) if you’re that kind of car hygiene person. 

Water your veggie or native plant garden (NOT LAWN! RIP IT OUT!) in the morning (preferable) or evening.

Turn off the kitchen sink when you’re soaping up dishes. 

If you absolutely must use your dishwasher, make sure its full. 

Same goes for laundry.

Get low-flow everything: toilets, showerheads, etc

Fix leaky shit. Duh.

Even Better: 

Get a small tub for your kitchen sink. Soak and rinse dishes in the tub, using minimal soap. Or two tubs if you have the room. Remember how they used to talk about Dishpan Hands? Lets bring em back in style, hey!

Throw out the dishwater in nearby bushes or trees if you can.

Use greywater (the used water from your laundry, kitchen and shower) in your garden. Hook up a system yourself or use the amazing talent of someone like Brook Sarson at H2OME.

Install water-harvesting tanks if you have a house. We may only be getting a few inches right now, but may as well make the most of it.

When waiting for the shower water to heat up, place a bucket to catch the cold water. Use that to water plants or flush the toilet.

Speaking of toilets- “If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.” For someone who drinks a lot of water like me, I can save a dozen or more gallons a day by following this rule. It’s just pee, get over it, even if it’s somebody else’s in your household. Geesh.

Weird, and perhaps not necessarily local, but stay with me:

Eat grass fed beef if you’re a meat eater (perhaps with the exception of the ocassional  kickass La Posta carne asada burrito?). Growing grains, which aren’t good for cows anyway, uses up a shit ton of water. One pound of beef requires thousands of gallons of water (mostly going to mono-crop production). Grass fed tastes better, is better for you, and you can get it from local farms. Have you ever been up The 5 freeway and seen all those unhappy, smelly, CAFO cows? They eat grain instead of grass and seem very sad. Stop the Sadness. 

Use a refillable water bottle. It takes water to make plastic bottles. But you already know plastic is wasteful anyway, right?

Turn off those lights, turn off the air conditioning. Electricity production requires water to cool those huge power plants. Capeesh? 

Ok, enough from me. Google “water conservation” if you want more ideas. Or go to this site for more desert friendly water conservation tips.

And if you have more tips, ideas, rants, use the Comment section to your hearts delight.

Mourning

Feathers at the window.  A heart shaped mark where she hit. 

We untangle limbs and mouths, slip cloth over tangled heads of hair. 
We open the screened door and step out onto hot concrete, the astringent smell of the desert invading our lungs: sharp intake, sigh. 

An angel, wings hunched and shaking, lay gasping on the ground. 
Her deep black eyes wide with panic, 
wide with what the fuck just happened, 
wide with a glimpse of the shadow descending. 

We bend over the broken body, lay hands on the bird’s beating chest, breathe with her ragged breaths. A single drop of blood on her beak, head twisted impossibly behind her supine bluegreyness, legs kicking into which she once flew. 

The window is an inverted photograph of this afternoon: the robin blue sky, billowing clouds of the West, pinyons and junipers climbing past the frame of upper sill. 

She was flying into a dream and smashed into this reality. 

Chest heaving (hers, ours) her strangling tongue flicks into dry air once more before stillness descends.

Mourning a mourning dove, my melancholy cry of childhood summertime, I cradle her in my hands, I lift her into a tree to keep the dog away. 
We say words, we hold hands, we cry at what is lost 
and what is meant by this 
and for what is to come (for her, us).

Today the ants have moved in, her body a feast for tiny legs and grasping jaws. 

We soar, we break, we die, we nourish* 

*Not necessarily in that order. 

Manufactured Heartbeats

Fingertips pushing the hands of time

I move the hours forward

I dance with the space between tiny minutes

A click

A chime

A heartbeat behind dusty glass

Room becomes womb

Cradled in the mechanical drumbeat I sleep and wake and sleep

I am held by the rhythmic chanting of this little clock 
clucking its stories to me as I dream

A simple key can jumpstart the measured passage of life!

Eight bells and back to one

Again and again

and again

Will I forget to wind? 

When will my hours will slow and stop? 

When will I no longer be able to twist and feel cool metal on swirled fingertips?

Anxiety grows: 

the bell will tangle in levers and gears inside 

and I will not wake to do the very important tasks that I must do before

 it all

 we all

this all

 rusts and seizes

The chanting returns me to the core

Listen! it rants

I do

I listen to the spaces in between the seconds

 and dance once more

I continue to wind, 

my heart fluttering to keep up with the tick tick tick of this clock 

in my head

within this room

of this world 

Just Float

I am.

Waterlogged.

I cling to scratchy branches, seeping wounds in bark, splintered trunks, attempting to stay afloat. 

I thrash and gasp and scramble atop my unwilling (unneeded?) raft.

I was the one who cut down these trees.

I lose my grasp and go under time and again, fighting for breath, fighting for words, fighting to know Why. 

The river is winning. 

I kick my legs and flail my arms and add to the (self generated?) turbulence, white wash, din.

The sky is blue and calm above the chaos. 

There is water in my eyes and I look down, trying to find the stones in my path.

I don't see above.

When I decide to let go of these trees and float down this river, 

(surrender?)

I will see that infinite calm clearly.

I will see the land on either side.

I will swim to shore and set up my tent and roast a marshmallow (crispy burnt!) and smile.

I will wonder what all the fighting was for as I wring out my jeans, pull silvery fish from jacket pockets.

I will dance naked under the flickering stars, wet hair slithering down my back to remind me of the struggle (until the fight evaporates from my skull). 

I will lay with the water rushing by my toes, the land singing me to sleep.

The logs will keep moving until...(I stop cutting them down)

Down the Shadowy Hatch

“Adjustable wrench. And ¾ socket. Fuck those guys.”

I hand Captain L. the tools and nod in agreement. “Those guys” from the boatyard are now 700 miles south of our stern and are the reason we are tossing about the ocean without the ability to steer. They repaired the rudder this winter but weren’t necessarily the most fastidious of workers. Fuck em. But cursing them doesn’t help our situation now. So L. is crammed in the stern compartment of the boat where the rudder post and steering cables do their magic. Or in this instant, don’t, because something slipped out of place and now has to be jacked up and tightened. But even with loosening and tightening, hammering and shivving, something’s still wrong and the steering quadrant is hitting a bolt and preventing the rudder from going to port so here we are doing circles to starboard 100 miles off the coast of Jersey. 

Our autopilot quit working on the second stormy night and the navigation instruments keep shutting off at crucial moments. Half of the navigation lights shorted out. We lost the dinghy that was being towed behind. I lost my favorite hat overboard. L. continually tells stories about the last delivery where the engine crapped out. What else can go wrong? He wonders if the rudder has slipped down (if it slips all the way down and out of the boat it means we start sinking) but quickly abandons that thought at closer inspection. 

My first thought is: I am so glad this didn’t happen last night when the wind was blowing 35 knots and the seas were choppy 10 footers and the squalls dumped rain on us for hours straight and if we had been spun around in circles it would have been a Very Bad Scene. 

My second thought is: SeaTow! If we can’t get this fixed then we can get towed into port. I’m pretty sure they come out this far.

“Crow bar. Hammer. This better fucking work.”

I am looking down into the compartment full of sturdy metal plates and tubes and cables. The aluminum hull of the boat curves to meet the deck where I sit, a pile of tools next to me glinting in the sun. The breeze is light rendering our sails useless, the swells are gentle but still cause the boat to sway with every glassy crest, the smell of the briny water of the North Atlantic teases us about how close to port we have come. We are just below the shipping channels of New York Harbor and the chatter of cargo ships and fishing boats dominates the radio. 

And here we float. 

I want to help somehow so I hand down tools and give words of encouragement. I don’t talk of sinking or SeaTow. I ask questions about the mechanisms in the shadows and try to absorb as much as I can about fixing quadrants. I want this to be fixed quickly but I know that these things take time. The old “hit it with a hammer” or “just caulk it” or “just wait and see if it fixes itself” solutions aren’t usually actual solutions. They are ways to put off the inevitable repair or replacement or abandonment of something that isn’t working. 

In my own personal life I often avoid the real work of sitting down with the parts and pieces, taking the time to tune into the true damage at hand. Like my experience with a broken transmission whose insides were decimated by vibration: it wasn’t because of a faulty transmission but due to the engine mounts not being secured properly to the boat. It was a foundational problem, not a defect in mechanics. No matter how many times the transmission is replaced, if you don’t get to the core problem, the health of the whole system is compromised. 

“It’s not perfect, but hopefully it will get us in.” 

L. climbs out through the hatch and wipes sweat from his sunburned forehead. He’s grumbling but I can tell he’s proud of his repair. I carry the tools over the deck and down below to the canvas bag where they will wait patiently for another breakdown. This being a boat, that won’t be long. 

I step out on deck, look out to the blue sky empty horizon, and decide that I don’t want to jury rig my life anymore. I don’t want to immediately call for someone to come and save me when there is really no danger, no need to be saved. I am ready to break out the tool box and sit with the problem until I can truly see what is broken. I am ready to tinker and try different angles, different tools and call in the experts for help if need be. Storming away from my problems hasn’t worked so far, so I’m ready to turn around, lower myself into that shadowy hatch, and get to work. I am ready to roll up my sleeves and get greasy in this life.

I take the helm and steer us north. Back towards land, back towards “real life” where I will get a chance to pull out my tools one by one and tinker and try.  

And steer this life of mine. I cannot rely on Autopilot anymore.  

Perspective

.

There is a tug in my belly to go up, out.

Sometimes I forget there is an outside (this stove, fridge, bunk).   

I emerge from the galley into the blackness of night. The boat heaves and rolls as each swell barrels past the invisible reef and sways the hull, the mast swinging the anchor light like a pendulous comet. 

I climb onto teak and peeling rubber, glass and metal. I feel my way forward, steel guidelines in my hands, salt crusting on my fingertips as I go. At the bow I sit near the anchor chain, where it has disgorged itself from the boat and leads forward into murky water. The chain speaks with the passing of every wave, every gust of wind pulling it taut against rope and metal. I speak to the anchor, that little lump holding us in the middle of this dark bay, off the reefs, off the island. How much we depend on something so small and fierce! Dig in deep little one! 

My eyes adjust to the surrounding black, to the pinpoints of light overhead. I still don’t understand the Milky Way: how can we see it so clearly up there if we are a part of it down here? How can it be a sprinkled band across the sky if we are encompassed by it? Where does it begin and end? The stars don’t answer my questions, the Milky Way blushes at my ignorance and throws a worn stream of light my way. I make a wish, tear at my ribcage to open it to courage and love. 

I sway with the swells, the mast, the comets in all their forms. The darkness embraces me, the wind lustily kisses my neck, the water flashes silver with mystery. I want to capture this feeling, to jar it for the next day when the heat and this relentless cough and oftentimes meaningless work overwhelm my spirit. 

The wind shifts and the southern swells are less noticeable as they approach the bow and we ride into them. They are still there, still stroking the hull with salty memories of deeper water, but I cannot feel their influence in this moment and forget (exactly) how it felt to sway and heave in the past. 

It is all about perspective. 

I jar that thought, full of gratitude, and head down below to sleep.

Silvery thoughts

Wind whispers over the water
Moonlight flutters toward me
The rush of silver in my ears
I see patterns in the ripples

I am 7 splashing in a pool all day, every day, all summer
I am 18 floating on a longboard, letting the swells push by, the sun setting into grey and orange
I am 21 falling in love under sails, making love on teak planks
I am 29 and yearning to sink my hands into soil yet not able to tear myself away from the ebb and flow of salt and seaweed
I am 33 finding solace in each ocean wave as my course weaves and wavers
I am 36 and now dipping my feet into water at the base of islands that know me, welcome me back with dolphin sighs and the tears of squalls

The wind sings over the century plants and careens through swaying masts
It brings the moonlight into my waiting lap
The crickets recite love poems to the whales
And I listen for the stars
I am all these ages, all these people, all the in between