gaze

I begin to unpin guilt like it's hair
hold my own hand as it trembles
a stare still lies a bit out of reach
grows into a new part of my body

my body goes old young indifferent
time folding across like a clock-face 
and hands clap for what comes next 
texting alien syllables from my name

analog clock, digital face, so partial

to opening my heart all the way like

I once said I would in a secret place

we know where it stays dark all night

ablaze

This person I am--capricious, 

madness layering my mouth
breaks strangle words
swallow all loneliness

For nothing here is really mine

foreign country... alien tongue,

the lift in my heart merely

a mad end to a depression

Swimming lightly into this mirror
I become my eternal reflection

--cinders fly like insects

--their love a cartoon net

[Pic: Pegasus at Pegasus Critical Care Center]

newcomer

 

our day is burning,
silence like smoke

light seems machine
in interim and enters

anyway, opens the door
to our histories of hope

in arrival--we are blessed
death is certain someday 

we get to live out survival
tithing... tiny happinesses 

what's going on

I don't get it.

Is hand-washing a group activity now? Why does Sparty look so horrified? Is it because there's a ghostly Sparty in the background? Why is he peeping out from behind the bushes? Is he required to wash people's hands for them? 

Help me, MSU.

a two-hike kinda day

I needed TWO hikes today.  

First was the usual one with L, getting to the MSU gardens just as the sun was beginning to skim the tops of the waterlilies and set off the frogs like blobby, plopping fireworks. 

Later, I managed to somehow ruin the stove when some lentils boiled over. Now I wouldn't be able to make the raw mango dal, a summer staple from my childhood. I made do by microwaving the chunks of mango and adding it to some canned cannellini beans. A heaping spoonful of turmeric, the tadka I'd made earlier, and a good potato masher... and I could imagine it came from a kitchen long, long ago untouched by canned beans, a potato masher, or a microwave. L showed up like a lifesaver bearing an electric skillet she had in her basement, and I used it to make aloo parathas later. 

I'm glad I made it to Ted Black Woods with BS after all that. The woods were lovely and deep--as was talking to B. I needed that.

(L doesn't mask outdoors, B does; I am ok taking my cues from whatever my companions are comfortable with now.)

what's up

Behind me, Nu and L are intently listening to our neighbors give them a crash course in raising chickens. I guess what's up... really is chicken butt (and a significant amount of chicken poop). 

It seems like a A LOT of work, but Nu and L are determined to make it work. I've already politely excused myself from from mucking out the chicken coop, which will live in L's yard. I guess I'd feed the little babies whenever there's no one else to do it. 🐣🐥

"food for thought"

 

The wonderful ladies of "Food for Thought Book Club" down by the Red Cedar River in LB's backyard...

Vaccinated, unmasked, outdoors. 

I handled it.

I *enjoyed* it.

I'd forgotten how lovely communal joy can feel...

sorry...

I have to go. Someone loves me very, very, very much, and I need to go pay them attention.

(Oh. Also: In a post-pandemic first, Big A and I rode our goofy tandem bike downtown and got a pitcher of margaritas at a new--to us, anyway--restaurant.)

interlude

I found this fellow at the waterlily pond in the horticultural gardens today. The colors here remind me of the first edition cover of Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things--which At is reading (for the first time) currently. I hope he likes it...

Decades ago, I used to find it impossible to love anyone who didn't like Roy's novel. 

I'm so much mellower now. 

minding the gap

I think about this a lot; and I feel a lot of guilt and sadness. The panic some of my school friends in India are feeling about their kids being ineligible for vaccinations (because too young and thus unprioritized in the face of vaccine shortages) hurts even though I can access vaccines for my own kids.

I'm also dismayed--“In an interconnected world, none of us is safe until all of us are safe.”

my *every*thing people

 The fam does their thing. 

🏡🏕

Also: we watched Tim Robinson's I Think You Should Leave over a year ago at least, and we're still using so much of its dialogue as a shorthand for family jokes.