"But the magic comes from the power of good, that force which tells us we need not give in to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by McFate, as Nabokov called it."

the start of school and merc in retro madness my turn tied to the wheel the days spill over into dreams and windfall.  i miss my blog, the time and space to write but life elbows out my reveries takes the armrests and eats all the popcorn.  merc in retro kicks my butt this time around im ready for the space of october.  all of a sudden you realize youve forgotten summer and autums faerie queen sweeps in with her fragrant raggedy train of rain, cider and woodsmoke.   

"Every great work of art, I would declare pompously, is a celebration, an act of insubordination against the betrayals, horrors and infidelities of life."

so many images uncaptured but there here behind my eyes brown till and dry corn, sun through a turned willow, up on the hill with the old hippies so many things i saw and wanted to show but my hands were full of books and wooden toys and the batteries were dead i just opened my eyes to it all the accordion player in the hayloft, the rain in puddles behind the boathouse, a mans hands on a lathe.  we ate good soup and bread and the world could be like this if theyd let it.

"...all victims of the arbitrary nature of a totalitarian regime that constantly intruded into the most private corners of our lives and imposed its relentless fictions on us."

i got a box in the mail today.  a me id long forgotten.  love from a friend, like a voice from the top of a well.  buoyant optimisn for who i was and may become.  i was overwhelmed it was a trove of opal, ruby, tourmaline.  sd you took the time to say youre not alone.  i see you.  and i felt the heart of me stir in her sleep, reach blind toward dreamlight.  thank you.

"...for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

they wanted latkes and we ate and talked for a sane quiet moment.  at work i battle abuse, neglect, intestinal parasites and a boy whose nose has run for three years.   i am the voice in the wilderness, the lame cry of a mother to children jigging toward a reckless piper.   the weather liminal by turns brilliant and dark.  pouring rain and rainbows.  gale force and stillness.  the clouds are marvelous landscape.

"We articulated all that happened to us in our own words and saw ourselves, for once, in our own image."

but i feel the difference being away from all of this, of me.

45 of 365:

1.  this book.
2.  the elegant architecture of the universe.
3.  latke dinner with my family.
4.  a bumpersticker that reads, "AIZIET!"
5.  my friend, sd.
6.  a gift beneath the pillow and over the sheet.
7.  david rovics.
8.  my boys humor.
9.  the decemberists.
10.  the folk on the hill.

space.  blank.  breathe.  sunlight.  moon.  small spirit sleeping on the stair.  the term is reconing.  reckoning.  koning or konig honig honey king.  queen bee and the honeysuckers.  people immediately think in terms of tshirts and bandnames.  beautiful light.

my inability to manage cosmetics.  im an unpracticed hand at the magazine mask.  that marge piercy poem about trotting past makeup counter ladies like a raccoon through an airport.   im dessicating and see the grasp of colored unguents as proof of oncoming age.  i didnt think myself such an easy mark. but  its just as much an act of playtime as is anything else i do.  the woman said snacks, naps and play, thats all there is.

we were supposed to go up the hill this year but the cowboys not up for it.  sat knitting between flares and later thigh to thigh with a wandering boy nipping bourbon and smoking my first cigarette in ten years.  made me feel half my age.  fireworks over the water and the man came down to the beach buoyant.  "i went to see the indians," he beamed.   

welcome fall.  

back by cowboy demand, while i wait to get the time to blog again.

"With his talismans singing in the astral wind, his three eyes aglow like forges, a drum in one hand, a bottle of moonshine in the other and the smoky froth of chewed mushroom on his gums, the spirit of Balashov's horse would carry the shaman where he wanted to go, by his will and against theirs, to the Upper World, to laugh in the face of the gods."

 

"...a way to take the certainty of death and the great wonder of life and hold them in balance, neither denying the other and each casting light on the other, death and life as both the rim and the core."

into the steps of september.  this morning in cloud valley sun over the east hill  through thick mist and its blinding like heaven perfectly blank space illuminated and on the other side.  cool condensation the good cold mornings i love when summer is over and by afternoon its almost eighty and were surprised, sweating.  everythings gone to seed, the corn orphans i dedicate to the cowboys beloved red squirrels and it all rides the arc of lifecycle down back into the ground where next spring the resurrection will be everywhere.  

  

"we were the history of the moon." 

books and food, the increments of my days.  one day ill get the dishes done, the other i clean the catbox.  theres the world to catch up on and this blanket to be done with.  i vent and he gives me just a little more room and it feels like the whole world.  the dogs are mad with end of summer, everything vaguely rotting, deconstructing itself, self-metabolization.  surrender.  

  

"...at the terminus of a journey from the sum of all our homes." 

the fields and roadsides in evening are glorious.  the rich slanting sun against greens and golds and seedheads, bees making fine time with tiny flowers in lilac.  the smell is new and wonderful, the good smell of leafmould smoke and oncoming cold.  i work and sleep and read and knit and laugh and my tides are making something of the teaselhead of me, abrupt and prickly.  but i recognize it and work mindfully to be gentle with myself and thereby with others.  breathe.  have some water.  smell good. 

  

 "...an experiment...the fundamental mind-set of revolutionary creators of art."

i give thanks for these opportunities.   life lessons and capital improvements.  being of use.  the love of my family.  bookshelves and bodywork.  growing into my life. 

  

"God, Cosmos, Angels and Guides, please clear me of all nonpostitives."

 i smote the datura.

  

"...the dogs as a symbol of the divine protective spirit." 

 comes fall and all the wonderful fall things.  i am a strange woman who knows herself.  my dance card is full of the facets of self, more room on the empty dancefloor for multitudes.  the nights are cool and quiet and beautiful.  my dreams elaborate and slightly terrifying.  they are full again of people i dont know.  but im not trapped and trying to get away, im playing shadowworld cocktailparty and taking the marvels for granted. 

 

   "Art is the medium those of us who see the unexplainable converse in."

44 of 365:

1.  my job.
2.  this book.
3.  my animal companions.
4.  morning dog schnorgling.
5.  a good hot shower.
6.  red wine.
7.  i can knit.
8.  this book.
9.  safe space.
10. cheese.

"All in all, it was a good summer to be an epiphyte from one of the gloomier, more downcast species."

...summarizing the literature of raymond carver:  "nothing happens and rarely do they prevail."

 

start at the beginning.  try equanimity.  see it as a blessing.  revel in gratitude.  take a breath.  make room for grace.  seeking a response vs. causing a reaction.  these are just a few things im learning right now.      

  

my first monarch in the goldenrod under damp woolen clouds the grey angel of september descending the light when it happens not punishing relentless but lyrical miraculous.  standing with two dogs on a lonesome road watching a negative space in the clouds like a star slide insideout revealing the flannel blue sky. 

 

everything itself.  undistracted by the craze of spring the plush of summer the recluse of winter.  the teasel dropped its lavender peignoir two weeks ago the brown bones beneath revealed space and air i am here.  teasel felted woolen shoes in a past life and the low valley clouds turned insideout by the infinite sky.  poking about on the verge with a long stick and again that story at the end where the dogs run a ring around her.  portent easier to discern as today is a day where the wind cant keep its secrets and only those of us out in the wind will be the ones to hear.  rustletide.   

 

 the last time i drove through pennsylvania it was a highwall pylon single lane in the dark from harrisburg to the state line.  

"...blue to denote sensitivity and an emotional nature, a dreamy, caring, loving individual.  pursues her thoughts and fantasies, intuitively attunes to the needs of others...a lover who does not wish to commit, who is attractive, but passive...does what she believes in, and is considered a charmer...you?"
 

recent conversation bw myself and the cowboy:

m:  you wanna check your chicken?

c:  you said you werent up for it.

the laughing blonde the only one that laughs like i laugh out of turn only unreasonable when you fail to consider that everythings an inside joke.  someone said i was a leader because where i sat in the room everyone else sat away from me.  she sat near me and i fetched her paper for her and she fell off a horse in dallas and jesus our blessed lord savior is the light of the world.  i mused to the cowboy that perhaps there was a pool going, who would convert the heathen first like a dogfight like who can drag the witch out of the circle like evangelical sumo.  dusk and the sound of a weedwhacker assures me that the farm is far away. 

 

 

43 of 365:

1.  reasons for waiting, jethro tull.

2.  andrew bird.

3.  my friends of faith.

4.  brian eno.

5.  i brought my own lunch.

6.  i prayed for grace.

7.  vanilla oil.

8.  first kiss, tom waits.

9.  learning to juggle.

10.  the magic eye metaphor.

11.  nina simone.

thinking of you ben, and of you miss molly bloom as the autumn sweeps in.

"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

sunday afternoon.  jerry ali farka toure and the rolling stones come off exile on main street.  the speakerfoam is shot and no insane amount of duct tape will bring it back.  but these ashes accumulating beneath the emptynest of subwoofers are the nest of speaker phoenix.  worthy of pink floyd when syd was still there.  having these speakers clarifies the concept of 'producing an album.'  and this bit about the speakers clarifies the concept i came to lay down for you.  im all about these speakers and all ive been reading is iraq afghan and the man who gave us the bomb and then ted kennedy dies.  so of course im thinking about my father. 

 

 my dad at one time was brilliant and beautiful.  articulate and cock-sure immigrant with fine skin fair hair  beyond the pale blue eyes.  had had some black bloomless seeds implanted somewhere early on the floor of his wide blood ocean but could dance and say things in a growly foreign tone to girls that made them think he was far out and made him think he sounded like real kgb.   he lived in the city when they came from where they were after they left with the ghosts in the farmhouse and where he wore long blond curls and leiderhosen and had to kill all the cats with his hands.  he lived in the city and they kept rabbits in the backyard and the neighbors thought that was sweet but he ate them.  he killed them with his hands.  and he was sharp and learned to speak the language by telling jokes.  the whole cold red peril was big big fresh hot and steaming make them laugh.  make their chemicals change.  like a star through the sad city schools and big deal college in america for this we ate dirt at the side of the road beneath which an ocean of our blood is buried.  big american businessman.  fancy suit smooth hands smelling of real cologne the coins make a bright shuffling in his pocket.   

  

saw a girl in the secretary pool real pretty looked like natalie wood was like him had come a long way to get here.  she was quiet like a comet.  one night he sent her to fetch some beer and he told everyone they were getting married.  when she got back she couldnt understand why everyone was so happy.  he hadnt told her.  they got married.  bought a pink house in the suburbs.  i was born. 

  

he traveled a lot.  he traveled quite literally around the world.  he sold people from different countries these big american machines.  maybe because the people of the world recognize him as not american, and it would throw them off their guard.  he was damn good at what he did  but those seeds got soaked in alcohol during that trip around the world and the hot hard itchy seeds cracked and something in them stirred.  and the progress and politics of the world made telling jokes and selling machines harder to do and the progress was crushing and the factory closed.  distracted, my father had become obsolete. 

  

fertile ground for spiny vines that lay along the heartroad and siphon with a million hollow teeth the blood of whatever he had come to be fated now somehow to become what was left.  his plantsnake consciousness predatory and insatiable.   i grew up in that sucking jungle i grew up like a lucky rabbit. 

  

but the history of him was blinding.  dovie was the last one to see him break the surface of that ocean of blood.  engaging, like in a war. they sent him to kuwait and riadh and afghanistan and i remember when they would have slim dark bearded men over for dinner sometimes too and i had to go to grandmas and eat sweet porridge and watch the lawrence welk show and you would forget the very concept of time when he told you stories of pissing off balconies with howard hughes and swimming in the lake when mengele died.  i have photographs of him and beautiful brazillian whores.  stories.  marvelous wonderful sensuous stories.  the round trip world tour adventure a comet a star.  this volatile fuming clusterbomb on the brown tweed couch i remember when he drove the lincoln through the tollgate my mother scurried up the stairs and told me to lay very quietly and other blind nights when we played kitten.  his name for me was always nigger and when i was young he would tell me after i came home from school that some guy named ted kennedy called, could i come for a ride.  he loved his speakers.      

  

i read the newspaper at three and from then on i best know how to define this, spell that or else i get the tendriltail my first word was miscegenation.  to this day if theres a crossword its like crack and i do it hard and fast and in pen.  there were years we lived together and didnt speak.  i was in middle school.  i was a butterfly on a pin and he was horrified somehow that i had managed to live to maturity.  i fled.  when my mother was dying and they wanted me to stay i said i couldnt live in the same house with him.  and when the cowboy asked me to be nice afterward i got within a foot and a half of him and he hit me.  then he died.   and they didnt find him for two days.  

 

and im reading all these books about the middle east and perseverating about the disintegrating speakerheads and goddamn its been two months since my last crossword. 

a heaviness.  an acceptance.  feelings of guilt for not measuring up to others expectations but its all external.  inside there might be disappointment but its fleeting.  theres been an incredible amount of slack around here on my part for sure, but the days of structure and obligation are coming and im sucking the very last marrow from my lazybones before.  better today, clearer, the hormone vortex subsides.  acceptance of who i am and what i make of myself.  an it harm none do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.   

cowboys been very cool about it all.  i think were both realizing how much of ourselves is defined by negative space, by whats not there.  and that absence requires a great deal of energy, it absorbs light unlike being and doing which creates it.  that is to say ive been feeling a little like a blackhole.  once again this summer my relationship with the tomatoes has fallen apart entirely, and theres only so much i can blame on everyone elses bad luck, too.  i realize all this sounds rather dreadful but what i really want to get across the event horizon of my days is that i can stand before all my failures and with an unassailable earnestness say:

im grateful to be learning from my mistakes in all areas of my life.  i believe that i can take these shortcomings and disappointments and build something stronger brighter and more satisfying.  the rubble of bricks and the vastness of space will offer me tools with which to build a house for my soul, something of joy and nourishment for my spirit.  inexhaustible optimism.  picking oneself up, dusting oneself off and trying again to dance with the devils, wrestle with the angels.  learning where to put your will, learning to listen to the whisper in the wind.  learning ultimately to be alive.   

we all fall short one way or another, were mortal, the failure is hardwired.  its learning to work around it.  its the red thread running through the system.  all of us with spinal cords can either get up and dance or lay down and die.  im realizing how fragile i can be if i let that disappointment fester.  the rot at the heart of a tree.  im recognizing all the aversion techniques, all the locks on poorly hung doors that block a million thresholds.  anger, self-loathing, fear.  and inside me all around me is that softness.  that tender consciousness  i want to share.  like a bag of food from my garden or a smile. 

look, this is where i am tired, where i ache, where my heart wants to be let in  and to let in in return.  i didnt do half the things i wanted to this summer but i learned so much i grew so much.  it was the summer of the sowing, of it all happening underground.  and sometime soon a little shoot will break the miraculous surface of the earth and something will be born.  something emerging from the center of myself growing toward the light in all things.   i have seen flashes of the light within me and i am learning to not be drawn back into the shadow it invariably casts.

42 of 365:

1.  advair.

2.  laughing out loud. 

3.  this book.

4.  the cowboy.

5.  autumn is coming.

6.  my good sweet boys.

7.  hope.

8.  amy goodman.

9.  sunflowers.

10.backyard sweetcorn.
11.my new dictionary!

how'd you rate?  i got three outta five...

im still learning how to dance with the new blogformatting.   ITS ALL A LEARNING EXPERIENCE!

 

“It's better to send in the Peace Corps than the Marine Corps.”  - Edward Kennedy

  

the sun never really rose today despite a dim blue sky it only got darker and more humid.  a familiar mewling alerted me to the arrival of kittens again on the sleeping bag in T's bedroom.  lots.  of course the two already picked from the litter, they have the faces of losing pugilists.  a spotted one, of all things, and one with just this face, this broad wide face.  the niece wanted a black so ill give her the one from the last litter.  but lets keep this fertile myrtle home til we can get her fixed.  funny last night i spoke of the birth smell and here i am today in the half light head in a sleeping bag smelling of the ocean.  kittens.  

  

 the new formatting.  im not going to fight it.  it wants the photos this way, fine.  it wants me to write centered, fine.  the datura energy is remarkable.  resonant.  it reaches out along its psychic ley lines and binds the focus.  weekly castrations are called for but one is certainly enough for this lightworker.  a presence in the garden diametrically opposed to the sunflowers.  balance.  the sunflowers give and give and give even after they are gone.  this datura tempts.  ensnares.  takes and takes along.  it is what the datura wants, not anything we could impose upon it.  it is literally a fascinating plant.  the stick broke before it, the smell is rather indescribable.  it smells like time.

  

made bread, brownies, sauce.  got an email from sdg asking "WHAT IS TRUTH?"  i offer for your consideration my knee-jerk responses composed while attempting to not eat the entire pan of brownies, the smell of new kittens still in my nose:

is it subjective or objective?    i once broke up with a boyfriend on christmas eve and sent him out into the snow because he believed in human objective truth.  objective truth in math, maybe.  not with people.  an infinite set of variables i believe makes human objective truth impossible.             

is it the opposite of anything?  does anyone remember big daddy from cat on a hot tin roof and his mendacity bit?  this is a difficult question.  didnt kant say anything by virtue of existing is truth, the yes?  what is not true?  i think when you lie about how you feel thats a lie.  the truth is a constant but lying is something we superimpose on the truth like lipstick on a pig.  the lipstick is a lie.  but its fleeting and does not change the nature of the truth in any way.  but the truth does not need us.  it exists independently.  lies need us to exist.  in the absence of human mendacity everything is true.  and i said that.

if you tell a lie but no one catches you, does that make it the truth?  no.  thats lipstick on a pig.  no one catching you just makes you a makeup artist. 

is it an absolute, ever? i believe that there are some absolute truths within the boundaries of our consciousness.  the mechanics of the solar system, gravity, friction, thermodynamics, hydromechanics.  i think we call them constants.  theyre pretty unassailable.  entropy in carbon based life forms.  thats a big one.  thats the closest you get to human objective truth.

can it change?  if it did it would not be a system we would recognize and it would alter all other aspect of that system and make our present consciousness obsolete.  this makes me rethink the idea of the solar system, say, as absolute.  introduce some random chaotic event.  an asteroid or whatever hitting one of the planets, setting all the orbits askew, cosmic bumpercars, all hell would break loose and the way life had gone on for millennia would be out the window.  i dont think were intelligent enough to notice subtle changes that are probably altering our consciousness over an enormous period of time.  like all the nuclear detonations weve made.  those must be mutating our very cells in a subtle way, not so subtle if you consider all the cancer now.  we dont have universal perspective.  this is leading me into a train of thought about karma, but were not talking karma.  truth can change.  yes.  we see it now, climate change.  theres not one kind of truth.  theres the truth i live with , live by, then theres physical, chemical, biological truth, etc.  what is true about me might not change over the blink of a lifetime.  in spanish theres the i am truth -- i am a girl.  i am a brunette.  then theres the transient truth about me -- i am hungry i am cold.  again, i think, the lipstick could be true but it will never be as true as the pig.   these are infinitely fascinating questions.

If it changes does the thing that was previously true become a lie?  or just not true?  it is still true.  when you look at a photograph of yourself in a diaper covered in chocolate cake that is true.  whether or not that photo was taken twenty years ago or last night.  insofar as every moment is the present and there is no future no past just the infinite now the truth we can really only hold on to for right now.  now.  now.  and some truths, the solar system pig truths, maybe take longer to disintegrate than the weather lipstick truths.  the lipstick lies are like building a model with pingpong balls and wire and calling yourself master of the universe.  lies are absolutely toxic and deadly and i think the greeks had some sort of harpies that ate the livers of liars.   lies are fear and the universe is love and lies fizzle in their own shit and i believe eventually get washed up on shore like beach glass, scoured beautiful from the wreck of the model solar system at sea.  boy, i can really go on.  

is there a difference between a lie and not true?  a lie is intentional.  not true simply is.  it is not true that brad pitt and i are secret lovers.  but if i tell you brad pitt and i are secret lovers, that is a lie.  brad and i not lovers = pig.  i am brads secret lover = lipstick. and i realized i confused the lipstick thing by making it sometimes a lie and sometimes a transient truth.  i am an incoherent philospher.  but for a fleeting instant that dichotomy addresses the question of transient truth vs. no longer true.  

how about between not true and no longer true?  this might be the same question as "If it changes does the thing that was previously true become a lie?"  is this a trick question?

 

41 of 365:

1.  new kittens.
2.  steve earle.
3.  my garden.
4.  typhoo tea.
5.  my resurrected love affair with dictionaries.
6.  dim cool weather.
7.  my compost piles.
8.  the good kitchen smells.
9.  mary oliver.
10.my ceramic mug.

very sad all this. i flinched inwardly when he used the term 'resuscitate.'

"...the passenger is always right vs. never let the passenger carry his own bag..."

40 of 365:

1. "howling fantods."

2. my banana bread ovenwarm with butter.

3. everyone gets along when my sisters dogs come to stay for the week and the

little brown one sleeps on my head.

4. i have a job to go to in september.

5. books, booklists, bookblogs, bookshops, the smell and feel of books, the sound

of pages, getting books, anticipating getting books, having books, having time

to read books, having money to purchase books (used, as a rule).

6. my friends ncm and sdg.

7. my two beautiful boys.

8. night quiet and cool.

9. the first mashed potatoes after a long time.

10. looking forward.

soft again soft again jiggety jig.  the waves, the breaking against the rock, receding, returning.  always returning bringing new things to shore beachcombing my soul things that glitter wet bits of broken ship now smooth as stone a shell was someones home now an empty treasure bladderwrack the salt cleans all wounds scours the surfaces everything smells of birth.  be gentle i asked him.  be gentle and i will in return because i cannot bear the heavy hand after so long at sea im exhausted waterlogged sundevoured everything trying to eat me free me but im here now before you dazzle eyed and drifting abit with the muscle memory of so long on the water.   hello.  be gentle and i will return.

the second dream i remember having is one where a black panther walks the tree canopy above me. i wasnt afraid, it was more like a protection. but this poem reminded me of that dream, and how black panther still figures prominently in my life. plus, this is one plath poem i never read before. 

There is a panther stalks me down:

One day I'll have my death of him;

His greed has set the woods aflame,

He prowls more lordly than the sun.

Most soft, most suavely glides that step,

Advancing always at my back;

From gaunt hemlock, rooks croak havoc:

The hunt is on, and sprung the trap.

Flayed by thorns I trek the rocks,

Haggard through the hot white noon.

Along red network of his veins

What fires run, what craving wakes?

Insatiate, he ransacks the land

Condemned by our ancestral fault,

Crying: blood, let blood be spilt;

Meat must glut his mouth's raw wound.

Keen the rending teeth and sweet

The singeing fury of his fur;

His kisses parch, each paw's a briar,

Doom consummates that appetite.

In the wake of this fierce cat,

Kindled like torches for his joy,

Charred and ravened women lie,

Become his starving body's bait.

Now hills hatch menace, spawning shade;

Midnight cloaks the sultry grove;

The black marauder, hauled by love

On fluent haunches, keeps my speed.

Behind snarled thickets of my eyes

Lurks the lithe one; in dreams' ambush

Bright those claws that mar the flesh

And hungry, hungry, those taut thighs.

His ardor snares me, lights the trees,

And I run flaring in my skin;

What lull, what cool can lap me in

When burns and brands that yellow gaze?

I hurl my heart to halt his pace,

To quench his thirst I squander blood;

He eats, and still his need seeks food,

Compels a total sacrifice.

His voice waylays me, spells a trance,

The gutted forest falls to ash;

Appalled by secret want, I rush

From such assault of radiance.

Entering the tower of my fears,

I shut my doors on that dark guilt,

I bolt the door, each door I bolt.

Blood quickens, gonging in my ears:

The panther's tread is on the stairs,

Coming up and up the stairs.

Sylvia Plath

after i posted i saw there were dupli-duplicates of photos. oh well.



its okay. i can be open and soft but i think ive earned the right to say, "its probably not a good idea for me to do this," and stay home and read. theres a part of me that believes its environment. that if i were elsewhere i certainly wouldnt stand out like a peacock in a henhouse. ive been places like that. ive been with folks who dont make me feel like a lumbering toxin. but in all things ive planted myself square in the henhouse and i should be surprised? if i cant communicate my feelings with the cowboy without causing a row when all i wanted to say was this is how i feel what do you think i should do? then silence is a golden cage. back to the old dancehall, the same steps. the red shoes. i should be surprised?



im having so much trouble with posting external etcetera that im not gonna do it anymore. just me and mine and that probably makes more sense. i will occasionally hyperlink to a photo. like this.



rough seas. but a morning spent drifting in peace, puttering, homemade bread into toast with good preserves and english tea. sunshine. couldnt save the dragonfly. dont panic. the film that didnt have a happy ending but the lesson was let it go. decide whats important. it was a crazy downward spiral of a film and my mouth was literally hanging open at the long and dreadful end. what is home? what is important? and how our choices are not vacuum packed. they affect everyone forever. i was angry because i felt i was not being heard by the only person i felt i needed to hear me.



D. back from his summer away, so tall and the beautiful eyes, the long hair, my gentle headbanger. talking to him about how it is with me on the way home in the flaming dusk trying to explain my lifetime. his lifetime in the context of others. desperate to be honest and not then shouted down. yesterday the sounds of small boys with legos and young men with electric guitars. between sets at the show the three of us ate cheddar kettle corn and i talked to some guy about a town with eight lanes and a good korean restaurant. is there still that cornfield at the end of that road? i asked his friend. most of it, he said.



"...poor emotional contact with other people...talks all too freely...an impaired sense of what is socially appropriate...to show a mood state not apparently congruous with what is being discussed...to have some unusual, metaphorical way of expressing oneself...to find tidiness and punctuality difficult to achieve..."



and i danced and danced and danced and danced and danced and danced.



T's first show, with me in the ladies talking to two peggys neither margaret my batik wraparound goes from bottom to muumuu its hot in the paddle and sway of the crowd and my body wants space and air. space and air. im so glad the boys will both be home soon and we settle into the winter routine. the going in. the deep quiet. i was so angry the other day i felt like all the talking in the world had been into a hole. like a bad dream where no one is listening.



i get so soft and then the hard hurt comes. it waits. foot in the door, boot on the neck, and my failure is in fighting back. i need to be peace, let go, breathe. but it hurts so much when he doesnt hear me. because there isnt anyone else for there to hear. he is my one phone call from the cell of exile and he does not accept. we do our best, lay a clean cloth over the wound and eat together from the plate of time. but the wound is there, and hurts us both.



"...of superior intelligence...prefers animals to people...conversations characterized by emotional detachment, literalness and much use of metaphor...the sense of being different from everyone else..."



39 of 365:

1. tulsi sweet rose tea.
2. having food from the garden to share.
3. starting to bake beautiful bread again.
4. dagoba chocolate with lavender and blueberry.
5. this book.
6. a washing machine in the house.
7. line drying.
8. soft clean sheets.
9. derek trucks.
10. being home.