a handful of summer things

It feels like I just got home from a fun family beach vacation on Cape Cod because I just finished Catherine Newman's Sandwich. I'd picked it up on Nicole's recommendation. Actually, the whole novel felt like it was being narrated by Nicole with that characteristic sense of warmth, humor, personal history, and integrity. I snorted and chuckled and laughed out loud so much while reading this on the cloud reader, that everyone knew I wasn't working on my laptop. Also: Was there a character called Maya? (Yes, there was.) Was she the same age, and at the same stage in her PhD, as when I used to go up to Truro for a week every summer as a guest of a dear friend's family? (Yes, she was.) 

And inspired by something Jenny did a couple of weeks back, I treated myself to a trip to the bookstore. I browsed and browsed but didn't buy anything although I still have my birthday bookstore money to spend.

Also: I got a massage after months off.  Wonderful R, who used to make house calls, has moved away. I had bought myself some massage gift certs around the holidays, but the person was flaky about scheduling and then sent a group text that they couldn't honor the certs because they had been diagnosed with cancer. (They're being sued by a bunch of people who say they have proof this is a ploy. But I keep thinking what if they really do have cancer--how shitty would that be to have to fight these BBB claims while also fighting cancer and being impoverished by having to pay for treatments under our horrible healthcare system?) Anyway, I'd already spent half a year's budget on massages, so I had to wait until now. I got an acupressure session today, and it feels hurts so good right now.

Pic: Eating my colors. This is the poké bowl I made for Big A's Boss Day: Miso rice, shaved sprouts, grated carrots, chopped cucumber, avocado, cherry tomatoes, mango, and tiny peppers + broiled salmon/tofu. I was going to add arugula before plating, but I forgot.

...the little children

our world wanes thin 

this hard-won hope 

afire and at once

*

               sky bright - tear dark

                flowering - hungry

                  prayers - profanity

*

its ruined road looks

back, asks us a riddle

shadowed answers 

*

                  seem to see a child

                 say just some child

                  it is the same child 

_____________________

Note: I was going for "suffer the little children" for the title with its biblical sense of "allow" but also to evoke the idea of suffering.

I think some of the early images came from a dream in which someone I admired told me something was "not strong, but it is right." I was very impressed by this insight in the dream and on waking up. But I agree with Big A that it doesn't really seem to make sense or hold up.

________________________________________________________

Pic: The first ripened tomato from the veggie plot. May there be many more (if the deer, squirrels, birds, chipmunks, slugs, bugs, groundhogs, and bunnies grant).

summer slide

I guess I have my own version of summer learning loss a.k.a. summer slide. I'm not losing knowledge over summer, I keep forgetting things that worked for me last summer. I'm having to relearn. I have to remember that I have a folder of no-cook dinner ideas. I have to remember that turning the shower to "cool" for a few beats at the end will keep me from sweating when I get out. I was doing these things by rote by the end of summer last year, but haven't yet fallen back into those habits this year.

Yesterday, when I was horrified by a movie plot twist At and Nu shared with me, I was informed that I had reacted the same way when they'd told me before. "Sorry to retraumatize you, I thought you already knew" At said. Every time I remembered that bit of the conversation today, it made me laugh.

Also: I was so relieved to get back into reading today. I was stalled on a book for over a week in a terrible self-perpetuating cycle--I wasn't enjoying it, so I wasn't making time to finish it, and I couldn't start another book while that one was unfinished (plus I had that deadline, so I didn't have much free time). I finally finished it yesterday and got to read a whole book today. (Rachel Hawkins's The Villa. I particularly enjoyed the allusion/shoutout to Mary Godwin Shelley writing Frankenstein at the Villa Diodati.) It was a relief to know it wasn't me or the genre--that other book was just bad.

Pic: Big A, Huck, and Max. They're all leaping in the air because of their proximity to the treat jar :).

Summer Solstice: Full of Pride

Early morning date with a sweet delicious baby-- DVA's grandkid was visiting, and I got to play and feed the baby as DVA got showered and dressed for the bridal shower they were going to. It was truly lovely. I'd forgotten the way babies make noises of contentment as they're on their bottles--their bodies calm, their fingers curling and uncurling in delight. So precious. All sustenance should be so enjoyable.

I hung out with my own babies for the rest of the day at the Pride festival. We started by the river where the feminist coalition and DSA had set up a radical reading library with zines, books, and community events under the banner "The first Pride was a protest." They had a lot of materials and quotes by queer Palestinians on hand-lettered posters. After we'd helped with repositioning their tent and tying down some of the posters (At knew them from DSA), we went over to the "rainbow capitalism" side, seeing more people we knew, getting freebies and treats and then stopped for cold drinks and pizza at the pub before heading home. At headed off to work, Nu headed back of to Pride with friends. They joked that they were so full of Pride.

Pic: BOL holding a polaroid of us at Pride today. BOL, Nu, At, and me.

Circling

I can be a gate

even birds with broken wings have visions

they see our world without lifting in flight

I can be a flame

every time my heart returns, I feel again 

how simple and honest it is, how not shy

I can be the magic

stirring in the song that may fracture the sky 

the calm violence in my implicit transformation 

I could be a god

sunk deep in sleep and remembering my life

baked merciful in stone and skin and sunlight

______________

Pic: LB and TB got us all together for a picnic and a performance of "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" at MSU's Summer Circlemseries. I enjoyed the cross-dressed, campy Juliet misinterpreting Romeo's "call me but Love..." and calling him "butt love" way more than I should have.

an easy hang

A lovely day-spend with the lovely KPB. 

I joked to KPB about how I finally sent off my work because I had to get ready to hang out with her today and how she was helping me check things off my summer fun list too... Today: A walk though the Rose Garden, Baklava at Sultan's, and a meander through the Broad Art Museum's new exhibits.

Bestie KB set me and KPB up when she left to go live in Minneapolis.  So KPB reminds me a little of being with KB (they even have similar names and initials)! But KPB and I have lots in common and today was just an easygoing ramble of chatter and jokes and shared positions on things that matter. And new ideas--now I want to get a glass-cutting tool and work with old bottles.

Pic: "Angel Soldier" by Yongbaek Lee (2005). In this hanging video installation, there are soldiers wearing flower camouflage moving ominously through a vista of artificial flowers. It's their movement that gives them away, so they're difficult to detect in a photograph. (But if the photo were a clockface and you look in the region of 10, you can kind of see the muzzle of a gun.) Broad Art Museum today with KPB who came down from Alma for the day.

just press send already

I should just press send, but I'm finding so many excuses to hang on to my manuscript. 

One main reason being I can still find things to tweak and improve and cite and... and... and... every time I  open up a random page. How do professional writers do it?! (StephLove?)

It's 3:30 am, one more run-through, and then I really will send it. I swear. I didn't even go to the Juneteenth thing I was supposed to go to...

The series editor to whom this will go is in New Zealand, so I'll still technically be compliant with the deadline.

Pic: Max and I found scads of tadpoles in the pond this morning. I'm excited for our future frog chorus.