Lift

You said to sing with you:
I start off like a boat

dropped into the water
turning round and round

worrying and wondering
at the same movement

until I catch the uplift
and the current leads us and

we're at the top of the next note
floating, the size of an insect

which then washes over, catching
us in the clear curl of the wave

* I don't know where this came from, but I will say Nu and I have perfected the howl part of Lady Gaga's shalalalalalalow, and sing it every time we're on our way to school.
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Wordless

I am the child with a knife--
for all my years now,
and in monosyllables

I have been digging in the
softness, the door
to some other worlds

Moon is eyeball today
side-eye tomorrow
I stay here, I witness.

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Today at UU

Transcendental Etude by Adrienne Rich

[The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New 1950-1984 (New York: Norton, 1984) ]

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,
make of our lives a study, as if learning natural history
or music, that we should begin
with the simple exercises first
and slowly go on trying
the hard ones, practicing till strength
and accuracy became one with the daring
to leap into transcendence, take the chance
of breaking down the wild arpeggio
or faulting the full sentence of the fugue.
–And in fact we can’t live like that: we take on
everything at once before we’ve even begun
to read or mark time, we’re forced to begin
in the midst of the hard movement,
the one already sounding as we are born.

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Every mention of death in the sermon today seemed like a special message just for me. And I would start thinking about how my children are too young for me to disappear. And I would imagine that Scout and Huckie would be bewildered; that Nu would be devastated,  become hard; that At would rally, becoming more vulnerable as he goes. That they'll all keep looking for me everywhere. Ugh.

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We're Having Lovely Weather

And Saturday Hiking Club is Back!
(Nu's "2018--Let's Do This" tee is hilarious.)

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Shower Thoughts

It's likely that I'm in a state of denial, which is why this still makes me chuckle.

I've had a kind of on-again-off again dull pain in my left breast for a while, and while in the shower this morning, I decided to figure out if it had definite origins. (Big A and I had been talking about the politics of breast cancer detection guidelines earlier this week--so that was on my mind.)

What I could feel in my 'underboob' area--possibly why it had been undetected for so long--felt like a couple of smooth Lego blocks. My first thought was that weight training had resulted in some amazing muscle formation. Alas, it's only on one side, so no way, but I chuckle every time I tell this story.

I was kind of hoping that Big A would say I was imagining things, but he said it was a definite "mass" and that I should call my doctor on Monday. So I had to take a some time to compose myself before I could return to our guests at 'Fun Friday Film Fest' and Your Name (B's suggestion, and cute for several age ranges).

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Honors Day

I woke up this morning excited for Honors Day.

At was nominated for the Kapp Prize 

as were two of my students, 

and chances were that I'd be

celebrating at the end of the day. 

(And not just because it was my Boss Day.)

Sure enough: At's presentation was 

AHHHMAZING 

and my dear student MW won the Kapp. 

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Why we're going to hell

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