At's graduation redux!

At is in graduation robes again, the sibs are wearing ties, we got grandparents and family on FaceTime/WhatsApp...

It was a bit chaotic and didn't go completely as planned, but this international photoshoot is the closest we're getting to a graduation party this year.

out in the world

The right to be angry, be anechoic...
Cool: a quiet, erotic, irate interval
Do you know what that was about?

Am I willful? Were you not warned
of fracture and ephemera and erasure
What if I expunged my loud laughter--

Would you still call me an emergency?
Would you call me into queer songs
fold me into arms, siblings-in-arms?

If not, why do we come here then?

Can we only come through like pain

--or can we walk into welcome again?

[Pic: Patch of blooms--from yesterday. Today is cold and rainy and I got into my pajamas right after I showered because I'm not planning on leaving the house.]

baby story

I was just admiring the wild phlox growing everywhere (and the path I raked) out back...
 

when along came Falkor Scout!

at tension

petition that pinch of admiration
tighten this twinge of distraction

pick dimensions of your denial:
arms are a bow, fingers quarrel

I think you may hit or miss now 
I think you may miss... this love

far is not unlovely, come beloved
fling open my arms and this exit

whisper confidence(s) like a seashell
maybe send postcards, wish us well?

* The bittersweet task of getting the eldest ready to leave the nest.

[Pic: lilacs and wild phlox from LB and TB]

not/normal

 

It's close to 2 am, and I'll (have to) be up again at 6 to get Nu ready (chat, cuddle, breakfast) for (online) school. 

I know I fell asleep with the puppies (and Big A who was writing up charts) just after Nu said goodnight. And then I woke up not twenty minutes later, heart pounding and panicky--for no reason I can think of. This happens A LOT. At least when this happened during the teaching year, there were deadlines and notices and tasks and grading. Nothing now--I've been consciously trying to vacation. I can't do much about the pandemic. What's up, monkey brain?

Anyway, at least I got to finish Olive Again. I'm feeling the lines Olive typed up: "I do not have a clue who I have been. Truthfully, I do not understand a thing." The second half of the book made me yearn to talk to my MIL and some of the older friends from UU, whom I haven't seen in a while, right away.

[Pic: Under the fronds of a huge tree--a European Weeping Beech--on the riverwalk yesterday.]

quiet

The kind of quiet time I usually don't expect on a Monday... I used it for a midday hike with L and reading what she's reading (Olive Again).

easy like Sunday afternoon

For decades, the best summer afternoons have always been about lemonade, chatter, cards, snacks, sunshine, novels... Now I have puppies underfoot to make it even better. (And it's not even officially summer yet!)

(I needed this interlude today--I made an impulsive grocery trip to get some ingredients for Big A's Boss Day dinner and OMG all the unmasked people.)

Over on Scroll, a shortlist of seven philosophers who can help us build back a better post-pandemic world.

passing/passage

The blue blob is me with Scout's face wedged into my hip and what seems to be his preternaturally elongated body is actually part Huck. 

At went to Alma to visit friends (he's post vaccination and also an adult ¯\_(ツ)_/¯); Big A went to work; Nu had been irritable and took themselves off to bed early.

So this was me for the rest of the evening as I started and finished a novel--Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half--in one long gulp. I read the parts about passing breathlessly--racial passing + gender/trans passing. And it began to feel like being an immigrant is also somewhat like passing--in the sense that you leave an old self behind, propelled as much by necessity and accident as by some form of selfishness/self-centeredness. 

conflict

Sometimes it's called a "conflict," but it may look like people asking for their right to live.

[Pic from At's protest outside Rep. Elissa Slotkin's office this week.]

scene

these flowers are alight
opening in hemispheres
my mind skips out of context
out of focus, a confused state

I am eaten by the earth
I am circled by the eddy
my breath swells with longing
my heartbeat meets in collapse

[Pic: MSU Walled Garden, 5/17/2021]

context

breath is a hymn 
accomplishing joy
surfacing tree brown
I come back to my body
through the sacred,
absurd landscape
of patience

[Pic: Scout and Huck hanging out with me in puppy pose.]