Just another day in Finals Week

A dry, windy, wind-chime-y kind of day. 

I graded all day, loving the way student final projects have turned out.

I raked a path through the backyard in the afternoon in the hope of persuading my human kids to resume their pre-prandial walks with me... The puppy kids are, of course, there whenever I'm out. 

I started a poem and stumbled into a good idea that's proving difficult to execute.

I've figured out everyone's holiday presents... just a few more things on their way. I've already gussied up/boxed/bagged most of the fam's presents too!

Mud Minotaur

my mask mimics teeth

I hiss from my heart

I've scratched earth from the inside

till it hides at my center, fills my nails

tranquilized by living

traumatized by living

I take the silky dismissal of the day 

beat its filthy drum outside my body

like whiteness, it feels-- 

white, old, dead, cold

or you know--just snowy and lonely 

and knowingly waiting for my touch

_________________________________________________________

Note: I yelled out to L that the fallen tree's rootball looked like a monster. Just silence--no response to that, so I turned around to look and couldn't find her! For a minute or so--she was off taking some pictures too... But it was spooky and I panicked hard for a few seconds. Reminded me of reading Donna Harraway and loving on Jim's Dog.

Counting smiles

The picture looks like it's just a happy Scout, but At's hand petting him is pretty content too... With At home, all of us are a bit more smiley. The stream of teasing, self owns, and friendly eye-rolling is at an all time high too. Big A and I are--not so secretly--relieved to have At shelter at home with us rather than in the wide, virus-y world outside.

Nostalgic use of family idiolect has made a comeback in a big way. At made me snort the other day, because he was 'sad' we never use the term "socker" anymore. Luckily for me, it's because the kids stopped leaving their socks all over the place. 

Smitten

I was nearly up to Sparty when Big A texted me asking where I was and then called me (because I didn't see the text). 

He sounded so sad; I asked him if he wanted me to come home right away. And he said please, so I turned around* and began to run** home. 

(*I didn't really expect him to accept my grand offer. **And I really couldn't run all the way home. Just sprinted here and there. Ha.)

It's not my story to tell; all I can say is I'm so glad there are doctors like Big A out in the world.

Sweet Meh-mories

One child sets the table; the other punches them.

And then they both stomp around shouting "Where the food go/Where does the food go?" until it becomes a chant. Not sure if they're asking where the food went or where the food should be placed. But they're laughing too much to tell me. Then it becomes a song and somehow even after many, many hours on my feet, it really seems infectiously funny rather than annoying. Eventually, the table is set; Big A gets some photos; we eat. It's "the best Thanksgiving meal ever/really knocked it out of the park" for the 10th or 11th year in a row. All these dorks are nothing but kind.

There was an aborted game of You are a Liar and another of Coup, and the Criterion edition of The Gold Rush and more of L's pumpkin pie and Big A's whipped cream. Repeat.

So grateful. Really don't know how I would make it without these two and the rest of my crew. (11/26/2020)

Just us

(Huckie must already be at the table starting without the rest of us.)

A couple of "trunksgiving" exchanges (LB+TB)

a couple of food drop offs (SB + KS)

It wasn't last year, or even close to our regular but it was happy.

 

Prep Mode

These guys kept me company while I got some Thanksgiving dinner prep done today. As At pointed out, this picture encapsulates them perfectly: Huck can barely contain herself and Scout is pretending stoicism.

It's going to be so strange doing a Thanksgiving with just us. We each picked a dish, and that gave us a more tightly edited menu, but it's not exactly spare. So far, my cranberry chutney turned out amazing (extra onion, apple, and fresh ginger... yum). No one actually asked for it, but what else am I going to goop over the roast root veggies which were my pick?!

Also keeping me company--EM's pistachio baklava. She had "extra" and brought me a whole plateful. I am so thankful.

To Sleep

How did I not get here earlier--

Was I just riding skies

instead of seas--

Sadness and gladness are cruel 

sirens, crossing countries

with me, waiting

near the cave that is my mind.

Do you hear me? Hear me!

Bear me forward.

I hymn you in the old ways

drowsily exhaling light

breaking like the day. 

Out and about

Today I want to write a poem that will not be about dying 

maybe something something being in community 

about being connected and continuing

About holding my arms out like a tree even when empty

(stop that!) about sending all my pain to the sea, 

where it's already salty

By day I will read something lofty, edifying, clear

At night, I will watch stars that seem cold 

and know they're really quite fiery

Alert with my intention, my asylum of inattention

I sling myself to beauty, ignore summer's

pillows smattered with snow

Afterglow

 

Voting rights and travel +

 

Within Without

Please hold my head as gently 

as a bomb labeled 'headache'

knowing the earth is waiting

feeding time under the loam

who is it who knocked on the door (we didn't hear)

who is it who wants to come in (we can't really see)

howling into the cusp, dreams away from disaster

learning the circuitry of sadness, the lineage of loss

For in a different world 

I lost many months ago

my tongue a tombstone

fingers clawing worms

Full

My babies are beautiful. 

(These human babies and also the two puppy babies asking for scraps by my side.)

At's Home

It's a school night and Nu had to head to bed at 9, but Scout and Huck (and Big A and I) gave At a proper bonkers welcome when he got home from college. (We'd asked him to come home last week when the number of active cases had spiked on campus, so he tied up a few organizing loose ends and agreeably headed back.)

Our governor has mandated no in-person classes from tomorrow as part of our three-week "pause" anyway. 

The one thing the pandemic has given me is bonus time with my first-born. And also, somehow--the time and desire to disappear into a long, hot bath.

Auspice

They tell me time is a thief 

I plant surviving memories

for there is no cure for life

as there are no answers.

There is history to my grief

geography too--I wear what 

was done to me--uncertainty, 

a sadness, the calls to flood. 

Someone--carry my disbelief, 

it is heavy as a civilization.

I read skies to déjà vu myself 

greying--sometimes--silvered.

A Sweet Diwali

Happy Diwali! Sweetness and light from our home to yours!

***

I usually buy sweets at the Indian store for Diwali (or some years it has been a bar of chocolate or an assortment of fruit), but this year I watched a few Pinterest videos and made my own versions of coconut ladoo and besan ladoo. 2020 just seemed to call out for some extra effort. 

We're a difficult family to make sweets for--At is sweet averse and allergic to all nutty things; Nu can eat some nuts; Scout and Huck can't eat raisins and sultanas; and Big A won't eat anything too sweet.  

I added pumpkin seeds, dried apricots, and dried cranberries to the coconut ladoo and almonds and pistachios to the besan ladoo (and given that besan is chickpea flour, that one must be pretty high in protein!). In this Diwali iteration, At could theoretically eat the coconut ones, Nu will eat both, and I can safely share bites with Scout and Huck without hurting them (as I subbed out the raisins). Big A may still not like/eat them.

We've packed boxes for LB, TB, BS, and EM, and sent proud pictures to every family chat.

The stuff of horror

Tomorrow is Diwali and I want to get this down in the hope that I will be able to set it aside for a little bit. I've been carrying it around since yesterday when I read a thread on Mona Eltahawy's Twitter (since then, I've seen a few news outlets calling it the "Kashmore Tragedy"). The details are so horrific I can't say them out loud without choking and I don't really think I could pass it on to anyone else.  

But the story keeps going around in a loop in my head, knotting now and then around the old nodes: the precarity of being a single mother; how difficult it is to love and grow a girl child in this fucking patriarchal world; the horror of captivity and unending rape; lives where people move across the country for a job that pays about 250 dollars; knowing people are out there victim-blaming--saying things like 'bad choices' and 'where is the father?'; what care and support are available to the mother and child; why support wasn't available to them previously; the courage it took for the mother to go to the police instead of prolonging the cycle; if the police treated her with respect; the bravery and compassion of the ASI (assistant sub inspector?) using his wife and daughter as decoys to catch the rapists; were the ASI's wife and daughter given a choice in the matter; worried for the ASI and his family now that his name and likeness are all over media; knowing there's so much more abuse I'll never even know from within safe spaces in families, communities, and professional + emergency services. Why are so many men/humans such trash? 

On the Enby parenting group, one parent recently asked what our own lives might have looked like if we had the freedom of gender choice we support for our children. I know I've always wished for genderlessness, especially in professional settings. And in so many other settings, I'd have loved the possibility of having what Wanda Sykes calls a "detachable pussy."

"Stare at each other like TV"

Probably one of my favorite lyrics right now, and not constantly in a romantic way. Sometimes it's the little ones I want to stare at... also trees.

In other news, Covid cases have been spiking on campus, so I'm moving everything online especially as students are being encouraged to go home. It's so disheartening after so many have been so vigilant and careful. And my classes were going to share research presentations next week too. Anyway.

Like most people, I feel I've normalized some stuff like going to the store, getting massages, etc. because it felt nicer not having to worry for a ninth month. But we ought to be worried. 

This story about a smallish wedding reception (55 guests) leading to "three separate Covid-19 outbreaks that infected 178 people, putting three into the hospital and killing seven more" where "none of those who got seriously ill or died even went to the wedding, and many lived 100 miles away" is a sad and awful unsnooze call for me. I don't know that I could live with being the cause of someone's decline+/-death in this way.

Believe in open-minded people

Dr. Ibram X. Kendi in our Presidential Speaker series (via Zoom) tonight and here's my question and his response.

How do you decide whether or not to engage with someone who may put you in a position where you have to argue for your humanity/human rights?

Well, remember there are people who are close-minded and people who are open-minded. 

So someone may believe in voter fraud, and you may bring them some sources and say: there is no significant voter fraud. 

And they may say: [I] don't trust your sources. 

So you ask them: Ok, what sources do you trust? 

And you go and find material from those sources and they say: I don't trust those sources anymore. 

Those people may have closed minds. And when a person's mind is closed, I try to not spend my time on them unless they are really close to me. 

I'm going to spend my time with the open-minded people. 

I keep dying

                     1                                                   2                                                     3

    But was it Camus who said      Wasn't it the butcher who said        Perhaps it was I who said 

    Autumn is a second spring       he'd operate on my identity            my tongue was wronged--

    when every leaf is a flower?     until I had slowly been bled           as while I prayed and read 

    Yet I know that I am dead         into kindness and serenity?          and inherited freedom songs,

    and dead-er by the hour           Not sure anymore--it maybe          my mind, raveling like a knot,   

    in my sad and furious head.     only leaves were actually shed.    forgot--sick tyranny lies ahead.