Silver Linings

My social media is full of amazing pictures of comet Neowise cycling through on a 6800-year orbit (SJ's, DM's, AD's were particularly beautiful). And here I am taking pictures of the sun finally breaking through in the middle of Service Road. I do what I can, I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Big A and I cycled over to Whole Foods for supplies and assembled poke bowls together for dinner. At was charmed by the cycling, Nu appreciated the poke (esp. as they're still adjusting to the reality that school will open 100% online), and Scout and Huck always treasure all things related to "Mr. Slammin."

Oh, and I finally finished designing a necessary campus-wide learning module and uploaded it. Now it's up to others to refine, repair, or redo, I guess.

Obviously

There's a town called Mesick, and it has a pharmacy. NBD, but last week's travel photo makes me chuckle.


Random nomenclature-related silliness is my path out of grumpiness today.

Parataxic

#MSU Radiology Gardens

Bright, they flow in at our voices
showing brilliant as hard candy

Through their flicker of doorway
our pour of elastic questions

How much might be washed away
before we are here again

Here if we're drowning, are we
reached by arms? By voices? 

24/7 Panic Snapshots

Gratuitous cute-goofy picture

I woke in panic several times last night:

Once because my mind was singing the chorus to MISSIO's "Wolves" and it was terrifying in the dark.

Once because I was imploring Mai and the macaque to run, run, run (just finished Ocean Vuong's beautiful and brutal On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous).

Once because I dreamed I had taken At and Nu clothes shopping and they were breathed on and almost touched accidentally a few times by other shoppers. (How extra stupid would this unease have been a year ago?!)

And finally, because of the reasonable, rational, familiar dread of the school year approaching and all the preparation that needs to be accomplished in the weeks that remain. It's here--July 24th... 24/7. In exactly one month we'll be welcoming students back to campus.

Cool Band Album Cover

We packed up a picnic and headed out to Point Betsie Lighthouse for the day. Long drive, gorgeous water.

Scout and Huck got overheated and anxious, so we didn't stay long. But Nu and At--I could (did) look at them all day. They always seem so effortlessly rock chic to me (Nu's light sensitive glasses help).

I've been giving my family's humans bird-motif shirts for years now, so it was only a matter of time before they all arrived downstairs synchronously wearing 'bird shirts.' Big A too (not pictured here as he was looking for a bigger bottle of water for the puppies who'd already slurped up  all we'd brought).

It was a welcome change from our pandemic ordinary, though At and Nu panicked about so many people without masks and wouldn't even go near the water. We saw lots of "Trump 2020" signs and a sign proclaiming "My governor is an idiot." I took some hope from a series of signs that promised "I'm a woman; hear my roar; watch me vote." Yeah.

I'm awake in the dream

praying silently, receiving silence
these are drugs, my thoughts drag
reciting pretty pretty pretty atrocities

something about zombie limbs
climbing, blooming
gift-wrapped in colorful skin

*

he surprised me when
he said his daughter
was an angel

I was really surprised she
wasn't as dead as
I imagined her

*

I'm dying to ask everyone
how is a six-year-old an angel?
what has been done to her?

Here We are

I feel like I've taken this picture every summer since I discovered the lotus pond near the formal English gardens at MSU. But the early morning sunshine and a very busy bee tweak this picture into being a bit different. The flowers aren't as profuse this year (maybe because there seem to be fewer garden workers overall), but they're still a  high point of summer.

Days, weeks, months have blended into a jubilee of mindful living, serious journalling, busy work meetings every weekday, A LOT OF reading... and not enough writing. This really spoke to me yesterday: 

I figured that there was a magical sequence to daily activities and if I could just get the sequence right, the writing would follow. It was a helpless feeling: oh, no, I've got the sequence wrong. Too bad about today!

Still and all, hoping to do better tomorrow.