India

I just took my second typhoid pill (one hour before meals, two hours after) and it came with a lot of warnings. *If you feel nausea, dizzyness, derangement, etc, you may be having an allergic reaction. (ha!). Drink with a whole glass of cool or lukewarm water. If you miss a pill, take as soon as you remember. Keep refrigerated. Take every other day*. Sheesh. Good for five years, well, thats a relief.

Everyone says I will get diarrhea. Great. So bring some anti-diarrheal meds. And some cipro for the respiratory infection I will get too. Plus India is hot, really really hot. But you gotta cover up because of mosquitoes and sunburn. Okey dokey. Don't drink the water, not even in the shower. If we get showers, that is. Laura said she took two bucket baths a day. Dump a bucket of water over your head twice a day to cool off. Take clothes that cover but are cool. With UV protection and insect repellent. How did anyone travel before REI, I ask you? I mean, John Muir climbing around on glaciers in wool pants and uncomfortable boots with a huge heavy box camera. Christ.

I got a catalogue yesterday for body parts. It's a fake body parts catalogue. You can get eyeballs and hearts, also budget eyeballs and giant eyeballs. You can deconstruct vaginas and testicles. And brains, my favorite. The brains run anywhere from $50 to $200. The expensive brains are sliced in pieces and fanned out, like you would arrange a cantalope for a picnic. Very pretty. There are a bunch of skeletons too. When I took Anatomy a million years ago, I got 100% on the bone exam. I would lie in bed next to my girlfriend and name all her bones. Maybe that's where I went wrong, the worst kind of objectification, "the shin bone connected to the ankle bone, etc".

I went to a wedding yesterday. It just made me feel sad. All those high expectations, all that alcohol. And a great view and some people I really love. I snuck out early because I couldn't take my bad self any longer. Sometimes I am better off being alone with my evil thoughts.

I once hid under my mother's bed while she sat on her hope chest waiting for me to come out so she could spank me. All the kids told me to ask her if it was OK to jump on the beds. So I went and stood in the doorway of the bathroom waiting to ask her. She was changing my retarded cousin and looked harrassed. Angry even. I decided to make an executive decision and ran back to the bedroom and said, yeah, it's OK. We were having a hell of a time, jumping from one bed to the other when she came in. Uh-oh. She was pretty mad and I was fingered, of course.

So I ran and hid. I think she was very patient. I looked at her shoes for a long time. I finally came out and got spanked for lying. Years later she asked if I was having it off with my boyfriend and I told the truth. So she threw me out of the house. Permanently.

Where is the justice in this? I now see that it involved beds amd jumping on them. I mean, teach your kids to tell the truth and punish them when they do? This might be the source of all my maladjustments. It is why I have futon beds. You can't jump on them. I also have a pathological fear of being homeless. I still imagine being able to put everything I own in a backpack. The cats would have a hard time being in there together. At this point the backpack would have to be pretty big. I would include the wooden Quan Yin, all the poetry books I own, my lucky penny, some underwear and extra glasses, in case I lost mine.

There is still a dent in my finger where my wedding ring used to be. It sucks.

Today I picked up a plate and dashed it to the floor. My therapist suggested this as a way to express my anger. It scared me and the cats. It was really loud. I was afraid to break any more dishes after the first one. When I get a new set of dishes, I am sure my old dishes will meet a similar fate. If you ever have an ex living directly under your living room ( with a new lover), you may feel like smashing dishes with a resounding crash, sending the cats skittering off to the basement.

I like my therapist right now. She has some good ideas. And she is keeping me from being self-destructive, well mostly.

I leave for Nepal and India in about 5 weeks. Egad. A big adventure. A friend wants me to ride an elephant for her. I' m not sure that is technically possible. She said elephant skin is tough and the hairs are thick and spiky.

Cool.

I'm way too tired to be up still. Only one thing. Without you, I can't wear the red shoes. My bathrobe is unappealing. I haven't the heart to break any dishes. I want to sleep on the floor.

Restore me to my former glory. I might have to wander the heath.

I'm supposed to submit poetry today. It's Saturday and that's the rule. I don't want to, too disspirited. Besides, I'm going to the train station at noon and that's all I'm going to say about that.

I submitted to Paris Review and they sent their rejection on an itty bitty piece of paper. Sheesh, they can't afford a whole piece or what, lots of scrap paper to get rid of? At least Handsome Journal sent a whole piece handwritten with beautiful handwriting. I put it up over my computer with Kelly's poem. Kelly's poem is called Boxtalk and I missed the workshop she brought it to. She sent it to me and so I encountered it straight on, noone reading it to me. I wish I could publish it here. It is so brilliant and shivery and brutal. I still use it for inspiration.

*

If we are to build the future from fireflies
Start with mortality
Or morality, you choose one or the other
Not both, my heart

Find yourself on this compass
You are here, I am there
We meet in the middle, which
Houses a few cedars, an occasional cattail

An ocean in between, a tunnel through the ground
Sailing ships and candlesticks
Darkness random flavors
Cinnamon portabella lavender

Here, give me your hand
Or the body part you wish to relinquish
I have need of a familiar
For this turbulence

Shake a vessel barrels roll into the sea
Fish tangled and gutted
A mountain crashed down on us
Sharks, aluminum foil, cherry pits

What I mean to talk about is smothered
Pressed against your breastbone
With every breath you collapse into a levy
While I float tethered to the mast

Shipwreck, home to bottom feeders
Lions , butterfly bushes
All camphorated handkerchiefs
Your grandmother’s ghost perfumes the sheets

*

Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah breaks my heart. Every time.

I realize that sunny days are all the same. I was so bored in LA. There weren't even any seasons. Sun edges everything, the leaves and grass and rocks. Overcast, that's my kind of weather, blurry outlines, indistinct borders and boundaries. Comes from upstate New York, land of lake effect cold, ice, mountains of snow. They say the Iroquois cursed the settlers for stealing salt so rain fell all the time. Like Seattle. Plus we gear up here, sunglasses, sunscreen, whathaveyou. And the serious sun lives elsewhere.

Los Angeles has a texture. New York City has a texture. You can shower at night and wash off grit and dirt and your top layer of skin. New York is full of skin cells. All those people.

I'm procrastinating. I don't want to write poetry. Well, I do but it will all be bad because I'm in love and the poetry is dreck. Love and/or sex poetry is usually bad. Not that all the good ideas are taken, exactly, but there is Anne Sexton and Richard Siken and Shakespeare.

I'm also angry so I could write some anger poems. Maybe I'll combine anger and love and/or sex. Then a dash of ennui. Perfect.

Yes I will. If you ask me to. Oh yes. Horses run through the house, looking for gold.

D-I-V-O-R-C-E

When you get divorced, you have a tendency to wake up really early, staring at the ceiling, thinking that the light will come in and the day will start at any time. Not so. So if your laptop is right by the bed (not a good idea according to my psychic-don't sleep with electronics), you can start writing emails and poems until the cats come in and slide around on the floor while fighting.
At least they have not had a repeat of the poop/pee fest of the weekend. Such delicate creatures, so sensitive. They are asleep on my bed right now, looking all innocent.

I think I should wear my red shoes today. I have a collection of shoes. My daughter is my pusher. She brings suitcases full of shoes and I can pick. I have green, red, black, purple and teal. I have ones with swirls on them. I have strappy one and plain ones. I only have one pair of high heels which I haven't worn for a long time, no opportunity. I also have a slinky black dress which I might still be able to wear, with the proper accessories, of course. I might actually have an occasion to wear it and someone to wear it for. When I wear my slinky dress and high heels, I feel fabulous. I think a limo should drive me around and I will drink champaigne from my high heel shoe and I can toss my head back and laugh, a sound like bells.

Then divorce is a distant memory.

revenge of the cat people

I once had cats who could be LEFT AT HOME b'y THEMSELVES and they didn't self destruct. No, they ate their food and USED A LITTER BOX and didn't barf on my bed.

I was gone for 3 measly days and I came home very late last night, ie. 2AM. After unloading my kayak, no mean feat and getting all my gear into the house and knowing I had an 8AM client, I began to notice a 'smell'. First there was the rug by the front door all balled up and as I approached, I noticed many poops all over it and much pee. Ok, a moment of unhappiness. Then there was a dab of cat barf on the big rug in the living room, alrighty. As I climbed the stairs to my room, I was seized with fear. Approaching my room, ok, a larger pile of barf on my bed, whew, not poop. But the guest room, aha, another balled up rug, much more poop and pee AND pee ON THE BED. On to the bathroom, another balled up rug and, you quessed it, more pee/poop combo plate. What the fark? Did the cat door become stuck and they couldn't get to the basement and the litter boxes?? Did a burgler get in and traumatize them so they completely forgot their manners?

I stripped all the beds, put massive poop into the toilet, took the rugs outside and left them on the porch and got jolly 4 hours before work.

Obviously, they cannot be left alone. Or they will gang up on me and turn my house into one giant litter box. I wanted to strangle each one of them but I was too tired. Strangle.my.cats.yes.

I feel mentally ill this morning. It's because of no sleep. I sleep about 4 hours a night. This is a poor situation for a midwife. I listen to a 'calming' cd and I think that is the problem. The cd makes me want to scream. Not sleeping makes me want to scream. The skylight makes me want to scream. My anger that recently surfaced makes me vibrate, a kind of high pitched whining sound, which makes me want to scream. I have been listening to the sound track from Mamma Mia! nonstop and you say, aha! that's why you feel this way. Mahler might be a better choice. But I am compelled. Every time I get in my car, I put on the damn cd. The songs are so bouncy and trite, they don't even use real instruments fer chrissake. I don't think the piano is real. The issue here is that I am driving to Portland today and I don't want to fall asleep at the wheel. Woman found today in overturned car, kayak smashed into the roof, soundtrack from Mamma Mia ! blasting.

Gawd.

My anger-this ain't no righteous indignation, baby. This is a flame thrower, Mount St Helens, an eternally burning lake, a nuclear explosion, stings from a million bees, a tsumani of papercuts. Seattle has been raining, at least if I spontaneously combust, the rain might put me out. I wonder how long I can a.) be this angry b.) be this sleep deprived and c.) listen to Mamma Mia! every effing day?

Without you, I am an incubus, a mini-bus, a blunderbuss.

Amen

It's too late to eat dinner. Does a banana count? I'm driving to Portland tomorrow and my kayak has been on top of my car for TWO DAYS collecting the proverbial downpour. I bet there are fish up there swimming around. I'll just slosh my way to Portland, how's that?

I packed Sarah Vaughn and Dead Can Dance and Beethoven's 9th and Astral Weeks, Van Morrison's finest album, made when he was 12 or something. The guy is a genius with zero stage presence, none at all. He stands there stiffly, like someone has a gun pointed at his head.


Last night I had a rageful dream. I was lava, the red haze, about to explode. When I woke this AM, I went for a run and with every step I was thinking,'I hate you, I hate you.' Whoa, I didn't even have anyone in mind, and then my brother floated in. So I hated him for a while, for killing himself, for being a jerk and killing himself. Then I started crying so by the time I got home, I couldn't see very well. It was raining but I threw myself face down on the grass and hollered for a while, clutching the dirt. Neighbors were walking by but I didn't care if they heard me. Finally, I sat up, wiped the snot off and went in the house. Time to start the day!

A bee stung me on the upper arm and it itches like crazy. I put ice on it and that helps. I think the bees are mad at me for making a scene. I like bees! I come in peace! I'm not mad at THEM.

brilliant Skagit. I rode up to JoAnne and Jim's house yesterday to retrieve my kayak. Jim pointed to a branch high up and an owl peered down at me. This morning, quail ran ahead of my car when I left. Jim has planted an abundant garden and many dahlias in all colors. They live in a log cabin with half sawn logs as stairs. I woke during the night to rain on the skylight. Jim fell asleep in front of the Olympics and JoAnne and I watched a bit of trampoline, wha the heck?? I would never, ever bounce that high on an unstable surface AND do flips and back bends etc. No, I would not. Not ever.

It is hotter than g-d, hotter than a hot pocket, hotter than a penny driven rain. and my bedroom is hotter than all of that, hotter than the center of the earth in a red high heel. I have a painting of a coyote wearing red heels, that would be me in my animal incarnation. my tail is fluffy and my ears are large. I eat cats (sorry) and I stand in the road at 2 AM with attitude.

today is a day for total immersion in a large cold body of water. even with weeds (shudder).

because of my busted mac I am bringing an old used poem to the writers. they don't know it is old and used. it will be our little secret. the mac person had the nerve to ask if I had backed up all my data. do they take me for a fool? of course not! harrumph.

This time I had port and cereal for dinner. The cereal had walnuts in it so there was protein. My mac is busted, kaput, squirrely, etc. First it behaved badly with earthlink then the arrow cursor stopped working, it is stuck in the corner of the screen, back to the store with the blue shirt people, give me strength.

I have fallen far below. We have fallen far below. I turn to you.

I have a fever. I think I'm in love or maybe I have allergies. Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference. Today I am planning to use Rescue Remedy for mood swings. I went to bed with paint on my fingers. Red paint. I used feathers and I glued them down. Perhaps the painting flew away. I have to go look and see if I left the window open. Love makes me anorexic. If I start losing weight, I'll know it isn't allergies. Sometimes, Job's travails come into my thoughts, unbidden.

I had toast and Scotch for dinner. Tomorrow I will have some vegetables. I am a good vegan. Except for the cheese.

I am recently arrived from Westport which, if you don't know, is on the coast of Washington where the BIG ocean is, not the little Puget Sound. I was there with my family and friends. It poured torrents. You wake up at night and the rain is bearing down on you and you are hoping you are not lying in a trough where a large puddle will be forming any minute. The only large guy person, Brian, built a fire with lighter fluid and that, apparently appeased the rain gods and it was sunny today so we could leave on a good note. Milo was in fine form in his Superman pjs and Hazel, the 3 year old wonder girl was there too. She swims in the NW ocean and she is FEARLESS. I believe the world will survive because Hazel is here and she will see to it. My friend Judith played Scrabble with me and whipped my ass. I hate that when someone says, "ah shucks, I don't play this very well" and they proceed to kill you.

In the morning, I could hear the kids singing songs about ducks and then they would get up at some gawdawful hour like 6 AM and stick their heads in the tents so we would get up, start the day and help them find and catch frogs. I told them they were poison dart frogs but they didn't believe me.

Children eat constantly. I had forgotten this fact. And they leave partly chewed apples around and the mothers finish them off. I remember that part. I did not have any s'mores. S'mores are gross, so sweet they make my teeth hurt. I remember liking them as a child, yuck. Sitting around the fire was our favorite unless it was pouring, which it mostly was. I smell like wood smoke now. I like it. It is a friendly camping kind of smell.

Tonight I will sleep in a bed with sheets and no one will be singing duck songs in the morning. Drat.

further operations are postponed
if you want to investigate call first
the phones are all turned off
no reason annoying rings sound
like cats fighting
so if you want to visit
bring money chocolate
even though I have stopped eating
the money is for the fire
I no longer feel cold
here hold my fingers against your chest
I cannot refuse your attentions
rubbed out even in this light
your outline is faint porous
the broken moon lies in the dish
knife fork spoon

Milo, Maya and Eden are all here. Milo came in this morning in his Superman jammies, complete with cape. Last summer he was Superman all day, changing to Spiderman only when Superman's duds were too grungy, like when Superman turned bad and didn't shave. He also has Superman dolls with long capes for 'flying' around the house. This involves launching them from the bed or down the stairs. The result is 'broken neck Superman' and 'splatto Superman'.

Eden and I engaged in a cooking marathon yesterday. I forgot what it is like to have my family here. There is luggage and laundry everywhere. Friends come over to visit. We went to the store for provisions because, god forbid, we should starve. We made lasagna (with special homemade sauce, of course), African peanut stew and a giant salad with spelt berries in it. Who knew you could cook spelt berries. They brought a huge drippy bag of blackberries for a crumble but they are still in the fridge, making a puddle. On Thursday, we're going camping on the coast where Milo can fly from the dunes in his red cape.

my new theory:: cats kill birds because birds were once dinosaurs and sabertooth tigers were leetle compared to brontosaurus and T-Rex. They probably just kicked those sabertooths to the curb, metaphorically speaking, or stepped on them or whatnot. So this is kitty revenge, many years later.

The poem below is a collaboration between Dana mygorgeoussomewhere.org and me. Please read her description of our evening together. I had to hide the feather boa from the cats. They thought it was a giant bird and wanted to destroy it. I love it. I want to wear it to work. I am going hiking today and I think I will wear it on the trail. No hunter would dare shoot me.

Facebook says my name doesn't exist. It's not true. It does, it does!!! Perhaps I need a middle name. Any suggestions?

suddenly orange roughy strewn across laps embarrasses nobody

Lester tinkers with minute follicles, abrasive contrarians.
Pedunculated litter lapses into shameful barrage, indecorous swills.
Storm drains allude to seasonal variations while sex devours facial territory like pleather. Not to mention fireflies, random harbingers.

Understand less than blue. More intemperate banalities.
Why is the fanbelt flirting with Dorton?
Mechanics gesticulate martyred fragrance.
The spillage weeps mistaken parts and ravishes labor laws.
Feather boas plunder certain boundaries. Obsequious margins blur.
Razzle-dazzle, he says, Lieutenant Gov’ner.

Don’t it, Zollie. Gimme that caulk gun. The roof bounces light.
Red tiles recoil underneath. Discriminate horizons multiplex flicker-code.
Hesitate. Stutter. Secure granulations, mild exfoliants.
Gravitate on stilts. Abandon all deliverables who obstacle.
Brace the fortress (obviously).

Slap the sturgeon. Slide the tongue toward water.
Gape at everything. Morse holds hooks out slant-wise.
Rudely black affections least obey.
Entangled surrogates respond in mime. Port of call.
Squinting, wide apertures demand compensation.
Seasick. Motionless. Stale. Drop the body.
Vessels demonstrate drag, waft occult moths.

Dana Guthrie Martin and Beth Coyote

understand less than blue martyred fragrance razzle dazzle - thanks, Dana for the poem and the feather boa. I am wearing it now.

Seafair is horrid, great big noise in my neighborhood and millions of cars. Ug.

Um, a composer contacted me about using a poem of mine in a composition she has been commissioned to write, omg. She's even paying me. More than a dollar. I'm gonna go to the premiere. In Denver. In January.

You may kiss my ring. Oh, I'm not THAT famous. But I am excited. Way.

seethe

my brother came in during the night
he had no head
he had no arms or legs
he dangled his feet
first he was laughing
then a bit of shouting

you are not allowed to wrangle with mace
if my brother were here he would beat you up
he would chase you away
we left the orange out until it became a boat
we found some oars and paddled to the middle

my brother swam after us
he couldn't catch us because of his feet
he didn't have any feet
confessional poetry is humorous
that's why we are mute when my brother appears

can you wrap this up for me
I want to take it home
you are really very smooth
you remind me of my brother when he was sober
references to heaven or purgatory have been redacted

honey, I never told you about my brother
there was nothing to tell
he had my father's hands
he wore braces when he was 12
can you see him now?

I'm going to have a whine fest and then I will get up and go to work, which I love, I know I said it here but I am so freakin' tired right now. So we had some more babies and last night just as I was contemplating my sweet, new, slightly squishy futon bed with the soft wool topper, the pager went off again. ARRRGGGGA. The momma couldn't tell what was going on so I got in my car and went to her house to check it out. She was not in labor, thank all the birth goddesses of all time, and I came home again and fell into a sleep coma. I think I didn't even move all night. Chronic fatigue is the reason people lose their minds, go crazy, see visions, etc. New parents can testify to all this. Midwives have sleep deprivation sometimes. And if it persists, we turn into scary monsters like in Ed Wood movies, Bela Lugosi on morphine, lurching around and drooling. Fortunately, I slept ALL NIGHT and I plan to do the same tonight. When I am fully recovered, I will go hiking in the mountains, twirling in my dirndle and singing, "The Hills are Alive With the Sound of Music", which, if you think about it, would make a fine horror film. Little music notes crawling through the hills, devouring all in their path. They would be humming The Ring cycle (all zillion overblown hours of it) and gnashing their bitty pointy teeth. **shudder**

Go here: http://sundress.net/21stars for my latest poem. Formatting a bit weird. Not my fault.

Bring down the rains. Crispy grass, even in Seattle. I have a new bed, nearer the floor with a wool topper, very squishy and soft.

Without any provocation, I believe I will gather enough poems for a book and become published, by a small press. I will use a painting I am fond of for the cover or an old photo from my daughter. I will be modest but proud. When they send a car for me, I will refuse because I would rather ride the stallion.

With forgiveness comes freedom.

My partner and I of almost 7 years are separating. The feeling in my body is like an electrical current, a jangling, whistling sound, ragged and raw. Sleep is difficult. I sit in my bed in the morning and wonder about 'groundlessness', where the edges don't hold. How is it that we push away pain, welcome delight as if both were not in each other. All the time.

Patti fed me heirloom tomatoes, aged cheese and good Scotch last night. She has a couch now and we sat on it and looked at the water from her living room window. I don't scare her. A Portland friend is coming tonight to stay the weekend. I hope the babies will give me a break and not want to be born in the next few days.

Gratitude. For those who can approach without fear. I'm not toxic. Not really.

write with a pencil. write with a special pen. write with chalk. write with invisible ink. write with epoxy. write with ground bones. write with grasshopper spit. write with strawberry juice. write with smoke. write with salt. write with a quill. write with sea water. write with a dog jaw.

write 3 poems when you are really tired. revise when you are rested.

Yesterday I actually had a day off so my friend Patti and I had a delish dinner and we headed to The Dark Knight. Blech! I was pumped cuz it was the 'sequel' to Batman Begins, a brilliant effort, I thought. Our waitron even approved our choice. He said "the best movie in a long time.."

Two and 1/2 hour slugfest with some cool stuff like the Batcar and a Batmotorcycle with ridiculous wide wheels. Heath was a great Joker but I tired of him too because there was just too much slamming and punching and blowing buildings and people up. And the girl lead, whatzername, chipmunk cheeks and pouty lips in place of acting, which was in short supply. I am not a teenage boy, or whoever likes this kind of thing. Ironman was much better.

Just say no to summer blockbusters. Blockheaded is more like it.

I am going swimming NOW, before anything else happens. Way busy week, seeing all manner of pregnant women in my clinic. My partner is is Mexico, the nerve. She will be back in 10, count 'em, days. Then I will toss the pager to her and leave town for any area where the waves smack against the shore. I will drink some alcohol and read trashy books.

I watched a man in a large red t-shirt doing an interpretive dance in front of the hospital yesterday. He was talking and waving his arms in the most fluid way. Then he stopped and talked with himself. He leapt in the air after,apparently, receiving an answer. More arm waving, occasional glances skyward. I think he was expecting his people to return to earth and carry him away. The red t-shirt and arm waving were signals. Perhaps I need to wear brighter colored clothes so I am easier to spot. I already talk to myself. The conversation goes like this:

"Oh, good morning, it's effing bright in here."

"Well, you had these skylights put in. What did you expect?"

"I think my leg is paralized, no wait, it is a cat, the heavy one."

"They're all heavy, even with diet food."

"I wonder if it is the same fly as yesterday..."

etc, etc. Brilliant stuff.

To the pool to immerse myself in silence.

I drove all the way to my workshop and it was canceled WAAAAAAAAAAA. Page came out and told me. He was so kind partly because he is used to writers and the strange metallic glint in their eyes...esp when they are thwarted. I am working all the time, every day and it so sucks. +++whine and complain horn section+++ I am going for a long walk now to contemplate 'Bird' Parker and John Coltraine and Billie Holliday. If you have never seen all 20 hours of Ken Burns 'Jazz', rent it and wonder about what you have been missing.

Even I, a woman with no identity, can feel the humble.

Oh, well, I do have a paper driver's license with a pretty good picture on it, better than the last one. Paper driver's licenses seem so...flimsy. I have a paper driver's license, a QFC card and a health insurance card. The rest is just piffle.

Wishbone is better and he is released from kitty jail. I was feeling almost normal this morning and I thought it was a brilliant sunny day so I should go to Seward Park and walk the perimeter before work and I got choked up and was crying a little being grateful and I saw a heron (yes, Rebecca, I did) and many people out walking and I smiled at them and I saw an eagle at the top of the snag and I got near my car and noticed people standing around and I thought, 'aha, they are wondering who owns the spiffy hybrid', but no, someone had smashed my passenger window and stolen my bag with my wallet, glasses, beeper, etc etc in it. Glass all over. Right.

At least my passport was at home.

A nice man came and replaced the window but the bank couldn't close my account without ID because of the Patriot Act. ARRRGGGG.

I will admit I had a moment of absolute freedom, no identity, no stupid debit/credit cards, no pager. Now I can get a new wallet.

Wishbone is really sick and he is in the kitty infirmary upstairs in the spare room. He got over his abcess but now he has an infection and one eye is all goopy and half closed. Plus he's blowing his coat and he's skinny, at least for him. I go in there and talk to him about life and how I wish he felt better and he rubs up against me and purrs. He really is the sweetest cat. Well, except for the murderous behaviour but that's normal.

I took him to the emergency vet yesterday and they were actually nice. I have been used to going to the mercenary after hours vet where they punish you for inconveniencing them by demanding your credit card BEFORE they even see your animal. You can come in with a half dead dog and they gotta have their lucre. Cripes. So this new place was such a relief. They were kind and inexpensive and told me I could bring him back, no charge, if he wasn't better. I'm not sure what better is but he is lying around on a fluffy cat bed with all manner of foods and beverages geared for his recovery. I am so not like him when I get sick. I get all dramatic and whine and moan. Although my father was the master of death bed scenes when he was sick. It was clear he wouldn't recover from his cold and we would be so sorry, standing around his death bed, wishing we had been nicer to him. Death by snotty nose. Maybe it's a guy thing.

Last night I stopped to see a friend who has moved into a cabin overlooking the lake. We sat on the only chairs and looked past the piles of boxes at the glittery bridge and glittery cars and drank cheap wine. She said she was so worried about me, she was going to come to my house and see if there was a grave-sized bit of disturbed earth in the yard. Sometimes I resent the sun coming up and being all pretty and shit. Maybe I am a wee bit angry because I am working every day for 2 weeks. I know, I did it to myself. But I got to sit in Patti's weensy living room and shed some self-pitying tears. Cathartic.

Mid-American Review sent me a copy of their latest journal. I was thinking, "Did I get a poem in there and I forgot?" Nope. And I won't either. My poems are too different from what they publish. Can you tell me why translations get published, especially when the translation is...lame? There are a dozen poems in the journal from a Slovenian poet and the translations are limp and tired. Wait, maybe I am limp and tired. Anyway, let me know your thoughts about this. I bet good translations are effing hard to write.

Bah, humbug. I am feeling Scrooge-ish, feverish, waspish, warpish, etc. Even though the skies are not cloudy all day, Trigger nickers so winningly and the corn is as high as an elephant's eye. I have worked another 12 hour day and I am still here, at work. I love what I do except when I eat cheese curds for dinner and get NO exercise. Home to scrounge a poem for the poets tomorrow night. A dirty poem, a soiled hankerchief of a poem, a ratty poem, a neglected poem, a poem squiggling crookedly across the page.

Perhaps I will eat strawberries in their perfection and the right answers will come. My anxiety will disappear, the heavens will send down shortcake and whipped cream and there will be peace on the land. And the trolls in the White House will dig themselves back into their grottos and crags on the side of Warlock Hill.

I wait for a sign.

Welcome back to the USA and proud owners of really big cars. After a week on retreat in Canada, Nanaimo to be exact (means hill with 7 potatoes in Japanese, apparently), I came back to land of the free and home of the fearful, by the looks of things. The garden is still growing and the NYTimes was still delivered to my door so all is well. An article about suicide was cheerful and the economy situation...well, Hummers get 8 miles a gallon! I can feel righteous putt-putting along in my eany hybrid.

Canada has weird things, like red lights on the freeway. You are whizzing along at 90 K and whoops, a flipppin' red light,and you fling your hand and arm across the chest of your passenger as you screech to a stop. They have national health insurance, can you imagine? And KD Laing, who I am listening to right now because she can belt "One cigarette in an ashtray". There were quail that sat on the roof of the building and tut-tut-tutted to us. I thought quail couldn't fly, it must be the Canadian water. Oh, Canadians don't do July 4th, brilliant, as they say, just brilliant. No sounds of gunfire all night for 3 days, scaring the horses.

A friend told me recently that she is feeling happy sometimes. I am not sure I know what that experience is like. I don't do happy so much. I swam in a lake every day when I was away. I could call that happiness, stroking out to the middle of the lake, floating on my back and knowing if I couldn't continue to swim, I could float. That's why grief takes courage, the getting through it part. And nobody can do it for you. Like having a baby, you gotta do it by yourself.

Impermanence, that's what Adrianne reminded us, all will pass. Even this sorrow.

This morning I read a review of a Frank O'Hara compilation. I am awful tired of the top 10 poets and the deconstruction of their lives/work/drinking habits, etc. There are, apparently, no decent women except for the usual Bishop or Emily footnote. Women do better if we are a. crazy, b. suicidal, c. "write like a man (whatever that means), or d. some combination of the above.

And don't get me started about poetry readings, the small local kind. It is discouraging.

Ok, moving on. "The morning is bright and clear (and hot as hell)". We are in a bi-polar weather pattern; cold, expecting snow or 95 degrees. The lettuce doesn't have the good sense to bolt. Not yet anyway.

Last night Pat brought an incredible poem, spare and gorgeous. She is a soprano. And Martha's poem made me cry. I don't choke up when I read poetry. It was vivid and there was longing and loss and stained glass and ritual and Martha was wearing lavender and white, even her watch had a lavender band. Oh, I am so happy to be in such company. Rebecca was delightful, as usual, and she could probably open a restaurant. I would come and eat crunchy bread with tapanade, basil, tomatoes and goat cheese. And all the other things she makes for us. We missed Kelly and Laura.

Today in yoga, the teacher had a silent class, no talking. Every time we were to change position, he rang the bell. I had to keep looking at him to see what he was doing. We were all sitting cross legged and we were to bend over. A few people could actually put their foreheads on the floor, including the old lady beside me. Sheesh. But when we were doing shoulder stands, when she came down out of the pose, she ripped a very loud fart. It was beautiful. She may be able to bend in half but sphincter control, ha! I know I'm being petty but I don't care. The vinyasa lady from my very first class was there and she was ridiculous. Show-off. She did a head stand and some impossible thing tilting her body sky-ward while bending and balancing on her ELBOWS. And she didn't fart. Not once.

my downstairs neighbor is getting louder and louder. her voice comes up through the floor. I think she sits by a vent and talks real loud so we will be driven insane. it is working. I go on retreat next week, a silent retreat. Pure bliss, silence, except for the voices. Usually on day 2 of a retreat, my mind entertains itself with old show tunes and entire scripts from movies. Really.

"I love Maude"

"And I love you, Harold."

(throws trinket into the water)

"Why did you do that?!"

"So I'll always know where it is..."

****sigh*****

I live in the walls. Between the studs. I stay away from electricity.

Love,

Sigmund Freud

My downstairs neighbor is moving out. This is very good. She has left a burner on and I came home to the smoke detector going off and all the animals had wads of toilet paper in their ears. Then after we told her we were giving her notice, she mentioned that some sparks came out of an outlet after she plugged in her ancient toaster. No wonder it was on the curb. And only a little smoke up the wall. Now she moans and bangs around down there, punctuated by yelps and cussing.

I like the word 'cuss'. It has a friendly sound to it. Different from curse or blaspheme. You can cuss and belch and drink beer and snort a luggy.

All my house is disordered. I can' t find anything and I don't seem to have any energy to make any changes. I have to clean out my studio, my closets and throw a lot of s**t away. A lot. I think it would make me feel better. And I could paint my office. The yellow in here is too aggressive. Where are my mother's pearls? Where is the jewelry I hid? If I take in a few more cats, it will be clear, I have lost it.

Lola peed on my meditation cushion. Why o why? What is the message o cat of mystery? See how tolerant I am? I didn't even throw anything at her. Truth to tell, I don't know it was her. Maybe it was a stranger cat who comes in and hides my mother's pearls and pees on stuff.

I survived the overnight walk. Along the way we were told we were 'almost there'. I hate that. Unless I can SEE the finish line, we are not almost there, for cripes sake. We walked along a lane of luminarias with pictures and letters to dead people, all suicides. It was difficult, more difficult than what we had just done. Marti and I sat down in front of Geoff's luminaria and she took out her bag with her sister's picture on it and we hugged and cried.

There were too many dead people, too many.

I slept until 3PM today. There are blisters on my left foot. Sometimes all I want is to be left alone.

Eden is going to Amman, Jordan for 2 weeks on a shoot. She goes everywhere.

Today I saw the man with one leg walking around on two legs. Maybe it is a miracle and he woke up in the morning and his leg magically appeared or re-grew overnight. He usually stands by the Safeway parking lot with a sign. I saw him sleeping in a doorway and later, there he was, two legs and two shoes, one for each foot.

No one in my family is missing any body parts or digits or anything. Well, except for appendixes and wisdom teeth. We were all taught not to stare. You know, the little kids that stand and STARE at you so hard you are sure all your hair has fallen out and you didn't notice or you have magic marker all over your face or you are hideously scarred but forgot to put your mask on like phantom of the opera.

The crows were looking morose today. They were hanging out on the garage roof, just standing around. They complain a lot whenever I am in the yard, minding my own business. They must have a nest nearby. I have never seen a baby crow, come to think of it. Are they cute in their crowishness? Is their cawing more high pitched?

I watched Harold and Maude yesterday with Holly. She kept saying 'oh, g-d, I hope they don't have sex, it'll be ruined'. I couldn't bring myself to tell her...and on the eve of the suicide walk, I thought, how appropriate, numerous fake suicides and one real one, all in an hour and a half. Nice going, psyche.

tonight I taught a class in a livingroom full of bunnies. there were 3 bunnies and they hopped around and nibbled on kale and an apple. the boy bunny was black and white and softer than Lola. they are litter box trained. I felt a little like Alice. I fell down a long way and never came back. now I want some rabbits. although Lupine would attack and eat them so I better not.

o moon o gimormous orb o plod yer way through the fizzy grapestems.

today was glorious so I went for a (sic) hike. there was so much snow the trails were buried. hilarious to watch the families with dogs and babies in backpacks struggling along. most wearing sneakers and tee-shirts. father's day and all. I fell down a few times but mostly slid along. here and there the trail was clear and there was a pool with a large chunk of ice floating in it, skunk cabbage coming up and ringed with trillium, so much later than the city. the creek was booming over the rocks. then I went to yoga and did a shoulder stand, all by myself. it seems wrong to be looking at my thighs upside down. however, the teacher was very nice to me while I wobbled around. I love my yoga teacher. she talks about Hindu saints and she sings to us. she didn't put eye pillows on our eyes today. I was a little disappointed but I got over it.

Apparently, underneath my brother's death is my MOTHER. gawd, not again.

Wishbone has gotten into an unhealthy relationship with a neighborhood cat. his ear is all bloody and he complains when I treat it. then I squirt antibiotic in his mouth. he hates me.

the wind is blowing a 100 miles an hour and it is SNOWiNG in the pass, ha! Mount Baker neighborhood is all dark too, I know because I had to drive to UW again because I left my glasses there, gawd. trees down, the whole magilla. weather is awesome the way it just arrives and we have to deal with floods, tornadoes, endless rain etc. and all the ways humans have tried to navigate or control the weather like we actually could. preposterous, really. except that we warmed things up a bit and woohoo, look what happened.

I sit in a little room and talk to people all day about babies. it is a bit odd kind of job. occasionally, I go out and watch a baby come out of a woman. crazy, I tell you. babies are pretty fine, all their equipment ready to go, they just have to get bigger and they start working on that right away, looking for things to suck on, fingers, nipples, noses, whatever sticks out. they are always on the hunt for milk that tastes very sweet and lo and behold, very sweet milk comes out of their very own mother, how convenient. I am often impressed with their singleness of purpose. go, babies, go.

Shhhhhhh, the s.u.n is out, don't say the word out loud, you'll scare it. I'm going for a walk in the s.u.n, with s.u.n glasses on, omg.

Today is the day I write a mint poem. It is going to be brilliant. And so minty.

I got two poems accepted to 21 Stars, yeah! This makes me pleased, happy, glad, life is worth living etc.

A nice person in my suicide group has offered to give me some of her checks to make up the difference in my pathetic fund drive. Then we're walkin' 20 miles, from Seattle Center to Seattle Center, wha? I haven't seen the route but I bet we will wander downtown aimlessly, wearing headlamps and camelbacks. Eventually we end up at the fountain. I'm supposed to decorate a paper bag for a luminaria. I think I will put sequins on it. My brother was so not a sequin kind of guy. I might wear a feather boa however.

Josh sent me a poem about mint. I might try to write about mint. I'm turning over a new leaf, so to speak. I'm going to write garden poems now. Nice poems, I can too, I can write some kind poems that are not full of razors and blackened fingernails. The ones you hit with a hammer, the hammer you used in the garden to smash the dandelions, no wait, that's not it. I'm going to try really hard, I can change, I can.

Tonight Rebecca fed us blueberry cobbler that was so good, I wanted to take the pan and a spoon and go sit in my car and eat the whole thing. Shamelessly.

Josh wrote a poem about fava plants and it was gorgeous, sad and wistful. I told him I am going to write a garden poem. I mean it, I am done with suicide/accident/trauma poems. Like the one I brought tonight. Kelly wasn't there and I missed her. I always miss her when she doesn't show up.

More tornadoes expected. Seattle just gets buckets of rain and glowering skies. We have been bad, very, very bad to deserve this. In Syracuse it rains this much but that is because the honkies stole salt from the Iroquois and they were pissed so they cursed the city with endless rain. Seems only fair.

I went to see Young @ Heart, a movie about old people in a choir, not just any choir either. They 'cover' Talking Heads, Coldplay and James Brown. When they did I Feel Good, the crowd went wild. Their average age is 82 or something. The oldest member (92) said if she ever died onstage, they should just haul her off and keep singing.

The suicide walk is in 2 weeks and I haven't raised all the money yet. I am so lame. One member of my support group has raised $13,000!!!! I can't even raise $1000. Gawd, why is is I don't have rich friends?

I watched Barack give his acceptance speech last night. We are going to have a smart, kind, decent black president, as I live and breathe. Unbelievable. He was even nice to Hillary. How is it that some people seem trustworthy and sincere? If John McCain gets in, I'm going to Canada.

I found a squirrel tail on the floor in the cellar, next to the washing machine. I think it is a sign. I wonder where the rest of the squirrel is. The cats are looking particularly pleased with themselves tonight.

I hiked Rattlesnake Ridge today. The green made my eyes water. There were many dogs, straining at their leashes. Whenever I heard choking and huffing, I knew another dog was behind me, attached to a human. At the top of the ridge, I ate almonds and squinted my eyes like John Muir must have done, off in the distance at all the fuzzy mountains and terrible trees. Then I swooshed out my primo walking sticks and caroused down again. I must make many more trips to the forest. Large pieces of nature everywhere.

There are cats on every surface. Whenever I enter a room, they look up and inquire, "what's for dinner? is it now? why not?" I have rearranged my room so the meditation altar no longer faces the window, way too distracting. Dogs in coats, chickens in the road, neighbors in jogging/rain/baby wearing clothes. I begin a story about them and off I go, no more meditation.

I went to Ikea today and I will not go back. The layout is henious. You have to walk through every square foot in order to get out. I had to pee and I became more and more irritated while walking by SVEN and LISSOT, geegaws I surely do not need and they are manufactured in China or Micronesia or the Antarctic besides. When I started to eye any wastebasket in a dimly lit area, I knew I needed to GET OUT NOW. Argg. I have bought stuff there you are supposed to assemble at home, ha! The directions are cruely wrong and you need to use power tools and you usually put some holes (inadvertantly, of course) in your floor or table because the drill bit you chose was too long or zipped through the fiberboard of the cd holder you thought looked "cute". And you put the shelves in backward.

Today I bought a rug, no assembly required.

It is raining just enough so I don't have to garden but the plants are happy. Especially the lettuce. I planted the varigated stuff, so pretty, almost too pretty to eat. Only 2 weeks left until the garden tour. Please let something be in bloom.

froth you said wait for the right
stretch the inner arms in shuvasana
bend at the ankle
put your paws against my chest
can you hear the sound of the floor
as we float among the revolutionaries
their impossible lairs
red mountains
sartorial mouths
can you understand reluctance
lightening perks up the remaining elephant
holly trees are a nuisance
I left your pockets full of pricks

Tonight Bev and I went to the Korean spa where the ladies scrubbed off all out skin. They make us sit in the sauna until we were delirious and then they lead us to the curtained area where they are all dressed in black underwear. They stood by white covered tables and up you go! they began attacking us with scratchy mitts until I start thinking I might be bleeding. The result is skin that feels like a baby butt. Then we went to the salt room and lay there until we were purified and angels began appearing on the backs of my eyelids ( or maybe I was dehydrated). We staggered out into the night air at the end and believed that gas prices would go down, world peace had been achieved and we had personally lost 10# and all our bodily imperfections had been forcibly scraped off us. Now to bed and no skin cells will be lost this night.

I cried a lot today and in front of people. I hate that. I just can't help it. I went for a run and it helped, wait that was before I cried a lot. The suicide walk people sent a long email about the walk, where, what time and so on. The closing ceremony is at 5AM. I don't think I will be inviting anyone to come on down and see me cross the finish line or whatever. Oh, I'm supposed to bring extra socks and a headlamp, such a lovely hair ornament. And a camel back water thing.

I called my friend Victoria today and told her I am not a nice person anymore. She said that was OK, she would still like me anyway. She believes there is life after suicide. She should know. She even has a house full of boys and she has a sense of humor. Her house is always full of noise and a big dog. They don't really have furniture arrangements, more like corridors for running around yelling and brandishing various implements. It is invigorating to go there, like being in a wind tunnel and your hairpiece has been sucked up the vent. You have that surprised look on your face. One of the wolverines in a purple and yellow letter jacket. Plush.

This morning Wishbone was flipping around the room at 5AM so I woke up and thought about some animal or bird he was torturing. He was only dancing on my pajama bottoms and watching a robin outside the window. I fell back to sleep for a time and in my dream he ran in with a baby mouse in his mouth followed by the mouse mother except that it wasn't a mouse, it was a NAKED MOLE RAT, ug, with buck teeth and hairless, yuck. The mother rat got her baby away from Wishbone and she ran down the stairs with her baby in her mouth. I woke up thinking, crap, now we have an infestation of naked mole rats, what next?

suspended animation. I kept waking up in a sweat, turned on the fan, then had to get the blanket, but didn't turn off the fan until morning. Watched West Side Story last night. Wow. I must have been 14 or so when I saw it for the first time. I think I went with my dad. It was/is incredible. Just the opening prelude, the Manhattan skyline in different colors, that lush Leonard Bernstein score and Jerome Robbins choreography--wow, wow, the first scene, there is no talking for 5 minutes or so, just dancing and finger snapping. I found myself grinning even tho I knew Natalie Wood can't really sing and it isn't her voice.

Today, I'm waiting for a baby.

My yoga teacher sings to us and puts scented eye pillows on our eyes when we are relaxing at the end of class. I want to stay in the studio all day. It feels safe there and I don't have to talk to anyone. She had us do a reverse twist triangle pose today and I almost fell over--ha, not quite.

My garden is busting at the seams. Busting, I tell you.

I walked around my entire garden this morning and it is bee-utiful. The weeds are quiescent for the moment. Of course the garden tour isn't for another 3 weeks and nothing will be blooming then. The clematis are out NOW and the hyssop won't quit. I just hope the people (read garden geeks) will forgive me when I say, uh, I don't know what that plant is, pretty ain't it?

It is one of those days when the sun lies on the leaves just enough to make you think life is a bit safe and the sun won't turn everything into a fiery ball and you will lie gasping in the brown and brittle grass, gasp, gasp. Even the turtles were lying on the rocks by the lake. Roxie, the bichon, had trouble with the distance we covered today but she made it.

the writers all ate a flourless chocolate cake with strawberries in vanilla rose sauce. They actually didn't speak for a while because they were having taste bud orgasms. A friend gave Ramey a week of her personal chef and the fridge is stuffed with deelicious food. I mean, oh g-d, we will never be hungry again. and that's where the chocolate cake came from. it was enormous and it could not live here, it really couldn't so I lavished it on the writers and eventually the neighbors.

when I listen to any music with words I get sad. especially Cat Stevens. And a lot of other artists. John Coltrane is perfect, complicated, smokey and sinuous. And no words.

Lola is snoring. I think the cats and I should have a spa day. They can get groomed and I can have all my skin cells scrubbed off. Then I'll lie in the salt room and bake. Then I will gas up the car and begin driving. I think Utah would be nice this time of year. Not too many people and the Great Salt Lake. I would be sure to bring binoculars and a bird book. And a few peices of flourless chocolate cake. with strawberries. I could change my name and disappear. It would piss off my kids. But I could write a buttload of poems and become posthumously famous. I'd live in a little cabin beside a marsh, cattails waving with redwing blackbirds, smell of bubbly muck. Waldenesque. I wouldn't go into town for dinner however when I was tired of the country life. I might have a few goats too. I could cultivate vertical eye slits and the townsfolk would leave me the fuck alone.

uh-oh

I have my writers group tomorrow and I have nothing to read. It's like having nothing to wear only worse. I can only write crap when I write at all. Weird suicide/hit and run accident/cat abcess shit. For some reason.

My brother was here last weekend, my living brother. Well, I have an older brother too but I never speak to him. Anyway my California brother was here and I don't want to talk to him. I don't want to talk at all. It's like a locked up kind of box, a darkroom with the red light on and papers floating in developer only the images never show up. The paper stays blank. And there is water coming in under the door.

Maybe I can find a poem to bring to group from my secret blog which Rebecca found somehow. She is a genius, I think.

The time has come to move the rest of the compost. This is to avoid preparing for two classes I am teaching in the next two months. In my new career as a misanthrope, it is very difficult to imagine classes of students all looking at me expectantly, as if I have anything interesting or intelligible to say. and me coming up with some wise and profound BS. to tell them the truth...I attended a meeting last week and all the people there were many years younger than I. Windbags, all. I am judgmental too, by the way. I can't figure out how to be graceful with my current life so I am cranky and angry and sad. And poetry sucks too.

I told my therapist I can't abide falsehood, I can't bear it. Not anywhere. This becomes a problem because so much discourse IS crap. I hear nonsense coming out of someone and I have to leave, like literally get up and leave before I say something impolite, so not good girl behavior. I've taken to spending more and more time by myself so I don't inflict much damage.

Someone will ask how I am, all solicitous, and my body starts to vibrate, the evil comments begin to spin in my head and before I say something I might regret, like, I feel crazy and murderous, and you? I extricate myself and leave the room. The cats and I get along just fine. They are unpredictable and so am I. Watch it, I might take out your eye.

Wishbone got his tubes taken out of his face yesterday. And he lost the cone, thank g-d. he looks like a feline John McCain, one side of his face all shaved with holes in it. Pretty.

more cat adventures

ramey is in my office in a hospital bed with her leg in a giant cast and a table with hundreds of pill bottles on it so wishbone, my big guy decided to get an abcess on his face, a HUGE ONE. in depair, we went to the vet so he could be knocked out and they could deal with his icky wound. now, of course, he is home with a cone around his neck and a tube sticking out of his face, yeah!! I'm supposed to give him medicine twice a day. meanwhile, he bangs around the house with his tail twitching. he even managed to get through the cat door to the basement. I have no idea how he did it. pure will.

I haven't written anything coherent for weeks. I wake up in the morning and cry for while. it is all too much, it really is. i just looked up my brother's obit. he 'died suddenly' at 51. Right. suicide is pretty sudden I guess.

i actually watered tonight. it got hot. tomorrow it should snow. I started to buy a watermelon at the coop and it was 4.95 a pound-worked out to a 25 dollar watermelon. Nope, I don't really need it after all.

I'm gonna go to a vedic astrologer. maybe he can help make sense of things. no more disasters, ok?

my cat is doing that thing where she kneads the fuzzy blanket she is on and she puts her lips on the edge like she is 'nursing'-clearly a case of premature weaning. this is why she is demented and horrible. she actually growls at me WHEN I FEED HER. then she hisses. she is also bipolar and not in a cute way. the sad fact is that cats will never leave home, they will never 'outgrow' their little pecadillos, they will never even vacuum!!! what the heck, I ask you. and we tolerate this. we indulge them with kitty treats and catnip.

mr cat, may he rest in peace, once found an entire bag of catnip in a partially opened kitchen drawer. in the morning, there was catnip EVERYWHERE, countertops, all over the floor, in the sink and in the drawers. AND there were long slide marks through the floor catnip, he had obviously been sliding through the rye and having a monster party.

still, the way they hook your lower lip in the morning while you are still sleeping, it's just so adorable. especially when you wonder where the blood on your sheets has come from. oh.

the lady that owns the goats says they slurp up blackberry canes "like spagetti". If I did that it would hurt extremely much. Barbs down the esophagus, ouch.

the ruminants are still at it. families are bringing their kids to watch. In my whole dreadful days, goats on the hill eating english ivy makes me delighted, makes me happy. Ramey comes home tomorrow. So does a hospital bed. Way fun. Frankenleg, part deux. In 6 months, she'll be good as new, yeah!

just drove home along 31st ave south and on the hillside, 'rental ruminants' were hard at work, a herd of about 30 goats. I am not lying, honest. I stopped and watched 'em for a while. they were munching on english ivy, not indigenous. All hail, goats.

I'm on the deck and the apple tree, the wisteria, the dogwoods are all going crazy. I feel a little drunk on the fragrance. The sun is out, which, if you are a Seattlite is a minor miracle. We write about our non-weather because we have many much grayness. So sun startles us and makes us think we are overdosing on Vitamin D. Run for the sun screen! Get out the shades, help!

Ramey got a rod in her leg so in 3 months, she can walk!! Whoa, modern medicine. I think in the old days they would have sawn it off. There will be many screws and plates and groovy scars and a wheely thingie she can motor around on. Plus the sexy hospital bed in the house, yea! and the walker and the crutches. The CSI detectives actually tracked down the type of car that hit her by matching the paint and figuring out what kind of car it was. Then they looked up all cars sold in WA to which people, a hopeless task. It is a felony, apparently to hit and run. Just don't do it, I say.

The sparrows in the stove vent in our neighbor's house is right across from the kitchen window. The birds fly in and out industriously with nest stuff and then eventually you can hear the baby birds. They show up on the roof when they are fledging, all wobbly. Imagine learning to fly, opening your wings and taking off. Hopefully the bad cat Lupine won't get any this year. natural selection, whatever.

Last night was writing night with Rebecca. her new book is beautiful, awesome and the cover is soooo creepy and perfect. I'm so pleased for her. She should win awards and someone should give her a bunch of money so she could write and not work at her 'other job'. Her book is called Cadaver Dogs and it is a rare and wonderful thing.

I am not letting any of my icky emotions get the better of me today. I had therapy yesterday and it felt like someone took the steam valve off the pressure cooker. I an so emotionally labile, almost anything sets me off. When I said I felt angry, she said, 'but you don't sound angry...' ooo, I hate that, when they try to get to you by being all nice. So I started talking and then I was weeping, then sobbing and gulping and blowing my nose on my hands. Definitely un-pretty but I felt cleansed later. There is just too much suicide and injury and bad diagnoses and pain in the world and it sucks to witness and not be able to DO anything about it. I can sit here in this splendor and write poems, my poems in all their terrible and flawed beauty, I can do that much.

in my last suicide group, I uttered blasphemy. People were going on and on about their beloved whoever and I blurted out, "but my brother was a shit". I don' t have fond memories of him, no I don't. He abused his stepkids, he broke his wife's nose, he was a drunk for most of his life. I can still be sad. I can still mourn him. But I don't have to make up some story about his wonderful life or what a great guy he was. He wasn't a great guy. He was a tortured guy who figured out the only way to stop feeling the pain was to hang himself and let the kids find him. And leave a 5 page suicide f-u note. Maybe I'm a little angry. Maybe I'm being truthful because there is no other way. To live.

I am grateful other people are coming over and taking care of Ramey. I would just like to go somewhere and be alone. Like on an island. Where there are no people. Like Alaska. Me and the bears.

today I have to make recordings of my voice (don't ask). I have to find a place where the phone won't ring....and I have been procrastinating by reading old blog posts and generally messing around. I'm gonna pack a little bag and RUN AWAY FROM HOME.

I want to run awayyyyyyyyyyyyy. I am so sick of the sick house, a million people call on the house phone which makes a gawdawful noise when it rings. Everyone want to help out so the fridge is crammed with food, giant vats of soup we will never eat and the like. When I escape, I come home and someone else is here. I think I have become a misathrope. My office is now the sick room so I can't even go in there to write. And I think I am a b.i.t.c.h. Ungrateful. Crabby. Bitter. etc. I get up and the whole day is devoted to going to the hospital, getting prescriptions filled, wating on Ramey, laundry, cooking, cleaning, bla, bla, bla. How the hell do caregivers do this, day after day? It is inconceivable. Impossible. I sit in my therapist's office and shred an entire box of kleenex.

And some day, I may be all crippled up and needing the same things. And someone else will be all cranky because of my incessant demands.

For now so I don't kill anyone, I work in the garden. Pulling weeds has never been so satisfying. Die, you stupid dandelions, die.

I totally fell apart writing a poem a day. I don't think my fellow poets care. I had an Acme safe fall on my head. And the roadrunner got away. He ALWAYS gets away.

I'm gonna sleep on the couch so I will hear Ramey if she needs me. She came home today with many drugs, many.

When I was healing from a car accident, crush injury (yuck) I took to taking a vicodan and leaving the tv on. I was sleeping on the couch anyway. I'd take my lovely vicodan so I would go to sleep or at least pass out because my arm hurt all the time, all the time. One night I woke up and there was a preacher behind a podium wearing a gawdawful lime green poly suit. He even had big hair and he was do'in some HEALING, DEAR JEAZUS. He said to put your injury right up against the tv screen so I did, I crawled up to the screen and laid my arm on it. He was yelling HEAL-HEAL IN HZ NAME!!! I would try anything and I was hallucinating from all the narcotics so it made total sense at three in the morning. Of course it worked, after about a year of rehab.

Ramey has these bolts coming out from her leg attached to some rods and screws. Frankenleg. When this comes off, she gets another surgery to put a rod IN her leg. Ouch.

the dog is on the couch with me, something I don't usually do. but Ramey is in the hospital and I don't know when she gets to come home. hospitals are gross. pain meds have limited appeal really, when you're all screwed up. every blue two door sedan with front end damage gets my attention.

is this the other shoe dropping? god, I hope so.

Ramey, my partner, was broadsided by a hit and run driver on her way home from work. She was on her scooter. She's messed up, at Harborview with a fractured ankle needing surgery, a lacerated liver, a broken rib and two lumbar vertebrae fractures. Oh, and a lacerated elbow. What type of person hits someone with their car and then takes off??? What type of person is this??? I really want to know.

I'll save the Harborview story for another post. I'm going to have a glass of Scotch.

We are seriously screwed. The weather went from rain to snow to brief sun back to snow then a smidge of rain and now overcast. I drove through 6 weather systems going to the store. Robins are acting like they aren't concerned but cripes, our carbon footprint is stomping all over all life on earth, if you know what I mean.

Tonight I'm going to the Jet Lee, Jackie Chan silly movie. They are both past their prime but what the heck. Lots of ridiculous stunts and dumb jokes and maybe some cheesy Chinese music like in the Chinese girl movies (the incredibles? the fantastic four?) where they run up walls, throw poison darts and ride motorcycles on telephone wires. Then the love scenes are so cheesy and sappy and the music is barfy. With pink lenses. Big tears s-l-o-w-l-y run down their faces. *sob*

can I just say, if you are a misanthrope, jury duty does not help. people do terrible things to each other. with ashtrays (?) or fire extinguishers. really. and the room you wait in has ugly swirly carpet and a bunch of tvs on the walls but not movies. at least they could show the sound of music or something. the only scene on the tvs are us sitting around. that is not a movie. that is boring. I might have to stab myself with a pen or start reciting poetry while standing on a counter. aside from the little trip to harborview, I bet they would not want me on a jury.

yesterday morning, my ginormous boy cat, Wishbone stood by my bed wrowing over and over. I tried ignoring him until he stopped and started thumping around. I got up and he was merrily flipping a dead robin around the room, feathers everywhere. I apologized to the robin and dropped him/her into the garbage. THIS MORNING, the dog was whining, not a good sign. I found that she had pooped on the rug in my office AGAIN. Why, Why? Back to bed and Wishbone was back, with a juvenile rat, under the bed. The rat was alive. It ran under the door to my studio but was too stupid to stay there. After throwing shoes at the cat and yelling at him, he slunk back up the stairs and waited so when the rat reappeared, he grabbed it and ran down the stairs. This time the rat was squeaking. GAWD.

I know PETA wouldn't approve but I am going to take them all outside and strangle them. I will leave their little dead bodies in a row in the yard as a message to the survivors. DO NOT poop in the house, DO NOT bring dying, dead or squeaking creatures into the house and play with them at 4:30 in the morning in my bedroom. Is that clear? Any questions?

saturday, HHDL at Qwest field, parade of cultures, a lot of children, hot sun. We sat behind him but when we sang he turned around and faced us. He still wears big glasses and he laughs a lot at himself. He held Christine Gregoire's hand and talked about women leaders. How we need them. How the men have messed it all up. The day was surreal, too hot, Buddhist monks in Qwest field and the CEO of Qwest field talking about compassion. The place was packed. I cried a lot. For everyone.

I am totally exhausted, three babies in three days and three days of clinic. Sheesh. All baby girls, yeah! And tonight is writer group night. Also the LAST night to rehearse for HHDL. The big day is this Saturday. I have rehearsed enough and I don't want to miss the writers. BUT I have been sitting here trolling for a poem to bring. I have many uncritiqued poems, like about 30 but they are in various stages of disrepair. I've been trying to spruce them up, sigh, and I have a few sorta respectable ones. I'm making cookies so maybe no one will notice that my poem is a retread.

I went swimming after no exercise in a week. Gawd, it was like swimming in jello or something. I wondered about drowning, quietly sinking to the bottom because of my fatigue and then the whole drama of being saved. Totally not worth it. They would probably put me on probation at the pool, like one of those notices behind the cash register about bad check signers.

I wonder if I can take my laptop to jury duty purgatory. Does anyone know?

Last night I sang with 600 people, many of them children. It was a blast. We are singing for the Dalai Lama in a week. At Quest field. In front of 40,000 people. Last night, our intrepid leader tried to get us to learn a new song. I don't think this is a good idea. I have learned the songs we are singing for now and another song will throw me off, will throw me down. I can't learn new songs like that. My right ear rings all the time, I have memory issues, the song was too high a register and too show-tuney even though I think HHDL won't care a whit. He will just probably smile at us because the children are so funny with their missing teeth and squirming and nose picking. I watched one girl, about 10 years old, actually take off her shirt underneath her dress, like you take off a bra while driving, dislocating your shoulders and then pulling the bra out from a sleeve, ta-da, with a flourish. And she was standing on stage, in front of all the adults. Insouciant, I say. She has a future in showbiz, don't you think.

Today I delivered a baby and drank celebratory Scotch at 4 this afternoon. 15 year old Glenfiddich. Some day I am going to the Oban distillery to see their barrels or whatever it is they distill Scotch in. I love Scotch and I rarely drink it because we could go right down the tubes together, Scotch and I. Occasionally I act mature.

I couldn't get out of jury duty. I am going to take my knitting and some good snacks and a notebook and write public safety building poems. Sonnets.

If I stopped eating everything that has corn syrup in it, would that be unpatriotic? Just wondering.

I got another speeding ticket today. In Brier. Which is a Seattle outpost where they still have mostly white people. I was driving and eating string cheese and trying to read directions backwards, you know, when you have to reverse the directions to find your way back to the freeway. And the cop was so pleasant, it was a brilliant sunny day and I mostly saw his wedding ring and the butt of his revolver and his freckled hand with reddish hairs. I didn't even get upset. I will never get the lowered insurance rate. I get close to having something disappear off my license and BAM, I get another ticket. I wasn't speeding either. I can't speed. I own an Insight hybrid powered by gerbils. But it is a weird looking car so I get stopped. When I am on the ferry, the guys wanna talk car with me. 'Hey, lady, how many miles you get?' etc.

Yesterday I went to St James Cathedral. Just to sit there in the sacristy, or whatever you call it. The main room thing. I always get a little nervous when I go into a Catholic church, like they will find out I'm a buddhist and throw me out for not using holy water. I wanted to go there because they have some really nice art and a big statue of Mary and her baby. I was thinking about all the babies in the world and feeling worried for them so I thought Mary and I could talk and she could do something, take some suggestions or whatever. This happens to me in the spring. I see all the green and tender leaves and want to protect them. I know summer will come and everything will dry out and the leaves will fall and the cats will eat a few birds and the whole catastrophe and I can't stop it, can't make it stop.

Got a poetry rejection today. I hate it when they tell me they considered a poem that didn' t make the final cut. Is that supposed to make me feel special?

At yoga class, we lay on the floor and listened to Hindu singing the whole hour. Bliss, and then my phone rang. I wanted to throttle it but because it is an inanimate object, I could't. It also wouldn't have been very nonviolent of me.

I lost my glasses today. Seward Park now has two pairs of my glasses. I was running and they slid out of my jacket. They are the practically invisible kind, I can put them down in the house and lose them so outside in the woods, it was hopeless. Do you know how much nature there is out there? Twigs and mud and dead leaves and new green things coming up. It was all too much. However, I had been looking for trillium and didn't see any. After I started looking for my glasses and going slowly, I saw them, trillium, under bushes and in the shadows. That's how they are, they hide.

Now I am wearing glasses I bought in the 60's at a junk store, round granny glasses, real silver and a prescription that is 10 years old. No wonder I have a headache. And I saw my therapist today and mostly cried the whole hour. I think they should give you a discount if you don't actually say anything. I mean, how much can a handful of kleenix cost? I realize that my brother is really dead and he will stay that way. And I believe that I could have saved him. Right. Even though I am walking 20 miles and raising money for suicide prevention, I don't really think suicide can be prevented, not like cancer or heart attacks. If you want to kill yourself, you will, you just will. But I persist in thinking I could have saved Geoff. By being better, more perfect, gawd. You jump into a hole and while you are falling, you realize the hole goes all the way to China and beyond. Actually, there is no end, you just keep falling. This continues to be not fun. Meanwhile, the cats are still on a diet and look no thinner. I think they are sneaking out at night and taking the car to Mc Donald's for fish 'n chips. They leave the empty wrappers on the lawn. Cat litterers. Then they sleep all day and give you those big round eye looks, 'what, us, we didn't do it, huh?' I'm leaving a camera around to record them, like at the ATMs. That'll show 'em.

I have been called to jury duty. Apparently you can be arrested or fined for not showing up. Totally unfair, I say. I went a year ago, very cranky about it too because I have always been able to dodge it before. Usually, saying I'm a midwife works. They have gotten more strict. They don't care and the guy behind the counter was unmoved, bored even. So was the woman. I got all steamed up, red faced and everything. They did not seem moved by my shenanigans. It was a giant room with a whole bunch of people sitting around, reading, knitting, sleeping. Once in a while, a bit of excitement when the clerk would call a bunch of numbers and people trooped out.

I was in one courtroom and the defendant came in with his lawyer. I thought he looked so guilty. And the charge was that he brained someone with a fire extinguisher, ouch. I told the judge I really couldn't stay, pregnant women were depending on me. He waved me away. Oh, and they confiscated my itty bitty swiss army knife at the door so I got it back when I left. My life of crime.

Why I Exercise

so I can eat cookies, chocolate chip cookies. I did stairs today, about a million of them. Now I can eat cookies and I don't care.

Sunday we weeded the garden in the pouring rain. I had huge clumps of mud on my shoes and mud on my face. All those stupid grape hyacinths came right out, bulb and all, ha!

I will explain about stairs. On Cap Hill there are stairs, serious stairs that go from 10th down to Eastlake. There are numerous stairs. You put on exercise clothing and an ipod , leave a water bottle at the top and pick up a handful of stones or twigs so you can leave one at the top after you finish each round. Like Hansel and Gretel. Stairs kick your butt. You do the first few rounds pretty well and by the 10th you are sweating and swearing. Then you eat cookies so it is all a distant memory.

alfalfa is often confused with atelxtasis which is technically not a word
per se which you have always wanted to find under the couch they are both green so therefore the continuing disorder among thieves spangles fleece sausages are harmless to fauna appropriate evening attire suitable for bed if the participants are both egregious or gregarious I have made this same mistake more often than I care to submit spectacular armpits in aisle four while we marveled beyond the Barcelona a beverage named for a permutation often found in the great sandbox beside a guillotine pity mary queen of scots and the other damsels they did not get a chance to use fluoride so they had bad English teeth however I think beheading is rather severe for poor oral hygiene what about the lack of feminine care products I bet you did not factor this into your calculations haha you loaded a blunderbuss with sharpened ginger snaps as if that would rout the cowards from their usual reception area their superfluous teaspoons and withered flanks pompy batshit fired away thus saith irrelevant monarch buttterflies

there is a guy in the house with a ladder and he is going to clean the windows. so I'm banished from the bedroom and my bed. I was in bed with my ratty tee shirt on, reading a Ngio Marsh murder mystery, perfectly fine and now I have to be downstairs with all the furniture rearranged and my apple computer is NOT WORKING. this is not acceptable. cripes, I've only had it for 2 months. it's supposed to be perfect and behave. back to the apple store AGAIN.

the camillia tree is covered with blossoms. and the magnolia we threatened with death last year has 15 blooms on it and they are open. flowers are an essential part of steady mental health, whatever that is. I might write a flower poem and not show it to anyone.

I am in sawbuck now, edition 2.1. take a look.

I have nothing whatever to say right now. I had therapy today and tonight I went to my suicide support group, not a fun day at all. I feel quite grumpy about spring because it is so beautiful right now with the budlets and daphne so fragrant and there are even slugs already but I am tired just looking at all the weeds.

Going to be on the 'garden tour' in June, the 14th to be exact. Gawd, why did I say yes? The side yard is a mess and everything needs to be pruned and those stupid grape hyacinths are everywhere. They are impossible to get rid of, apparently.

I want to eat a large chocolate cookie. I think that is the answer to all my troubles. Even though I swore off cookies. Maybe there is a cookie substitute in the kitchen. I can't even make toast cuz our toaster oven is busted. And don't tell me to eat almonds and raisins, way too healthy.

Oh dear, I'm watching a docu about the pope. I better go to bed. I'm getting choked up. Cripes.

I just signed up for an overnight 20 mile walk to raise $$ for suicide prevention. Fun! I'll be asking you up for dollars. I have to raise a thousand of them.

I sent poetry in tonight. And I tried recording myself on my MAC. Of course, a plane flew overhead very loud, dogs barked and the guy across the street started his junker, which he revs up EVERY MORNING FOR 20 MINUTES. So once again I went to the apple store for supplies, this time an external mic but they didn't let me in cuz they were closing. I think I can find my way there without looking.

OK, so to be a saint you have to have 2 miracles AFTER you die. Dang. How does that happen?? My friend Negesti was a saint, I'm pretty sure. Oh, wait, a nun was cured of Parkinson's so the pope has one more miracle to go. Wow.

I got rejected by Calyx and they had the nerve to solicit a subscription. What the hey??? I mean, publish me already and I'll maybe buy a subscription. The only mag I get is The Sun and some day Sy Safransky is gonna realize my pure genius and publish me. I can feel it in my vestigial tail bone.

My writing group is so fabulous. We eat cheese and groovy little crackers and drink tea and bask in our collective brilliance. Sigh.

don't see Pan's Labyrinth. It's gross, especially the guy with eyeballs in his hands. EEWW.

I went to a a place called Mr Spots Chai House and while I love chai, there were people using their laptops and eating veggie food and listening to music I couldn't think over. I mean, I go into a record store and the music is so loud I can't think, my brain starts to fizzle and all the sentences come unglued. I become an idiot. Today, I had to leave Mr Spots. There were also several youth with ear plugs that you can see daylight through. The first time I saw daylight through someone's ears, I had a moment. It was great because I am so seldom stalled out like that. Now daylight earlobes are everywhere and I just think about the stretched out lobes if they take out the thingys that are the stretchers. I once worked in the East Village in NYC in a veggie restaurant and Charles Ludlam and his company would come in. Wow. There was one woman who had tattoos all over her face, really all over. I was so impressed. The theater people can get away with anything. It was a macrobiotic restaurant. I was so hip and didn't even know it. All I do know is that I was pregnant at the time and the smell of brown rice made me want to barf. In fact all food that was organic or good for me was gross. I liked jelly beans, except for the black ones.

this week I am going to use something on my computer called 'garage band' which supposedly is easy to use. I have to make recordings of myself guiding people through a body scan, a meditation and yoga movements (since I am an expert now after 4 classes). I'll keep you posted.

I have a confession. I sent in a poem to an anthology a LONG TIME AGO, before Rebecca and the writers in my group. I got accepted and I have no idea what I sent except that the poem is probably really terrible and the anthology is so smaltzy but it's way too late to get out of it. Gawd. They said it is coming out before xmas so it would make a nice gift...double gawd. I am in another anthology that was so poorly edited, the fonts are all different, there are typos and the formatting is all messed up. Ug. But I'm in there, yahoo. I have an expanded appreciation for a journal like Borderlands, beautiful cover, very professional, etc. Oh well, guess what you'll be getting for a nice gift.

last night we rehearsed in the children's choir. They hear a song once and they remember it, even if the words are Swahili. Seriously. I have a bit more trouble remembering a few of those things. And we are singing in several different languages. And the leader made us stand up and sing without the music. This event is supposedly in front of 40,000 people and broadcast. If you see me, I will be mouthing the words and humming along, ok?

children are also more flexible than I am. Yesterday in yoga, the teacher had us do splits. This involved getting on your knees, putting one foot against the wall and sliding the other leg out into a split. Right. I didn't fall over but whatever I was doing was not a split, not even close. I was doing a 'sweating, wobbling, tripod while looking at my leg in front (nice pedicure, Beth) and breathing rapidly and making very small grunting noises' kind of pose. It was swell. Yoga is humbling. As if I needed more. Humbling.

I'm sitting here in my office with my coat on. Too cheap to turn on the heat. We're all going straight to hell, aren't we? Oil prices and little weird looking cars that will be TOAST if a hummer hits 'em. I'm just saying.

I'm going to rehearse in a volunteer choir that will be singing for HHDL (His Holiness the Dalai Lama) and Desmond Tutu. Holy mackerel, don't you think. Together on the same stage!! My writer friend is in a choir called Sparkling Clouds of Heaven Choir or something like that. I think if you're gonna be sappy, go way over the top. It's more entertaining that way.

I'm addicted to a BBC thing called The Duchess of Duke Street. It even has a Jack Russell Terrier in it and a lot of British accents. It's stuffy and silly and I love it. These are my people.

Today in yoga class, our teacher, a very nice person I'm sure, told us to relax our eyebrows. What is that supposed to mean??? Are my eyebrows tense? I had a periodontist once who was South African and his whole waiting room was an African motif, leopard print chairs and pictures of big animals with big teeth on the walls. It was scary. But the dentist had these CRAZY eyebrows, they were like hair wings and they stuck out about an inch from his face at the corners. Yikes and I spent most of my time wondering if he used product while he was doing gruesome things in my mouth. And his staff acted like it was normal to have monster eyebrows intentionally.

I think hair is a confusing subject and has gotten people in all kinds of trouble.

Big Nature

I am in Eastern WA and boy is there a lot of nature here. We are skiing in Winthrop, about a million miles of trails and I have not skied AT ALL this season so I am rather sore. Like crippled. But we are near the Sun Mountain Lodge, which if you have not been here is a gustatory destination, let me tell you. You ski all day until your ass and thighs and arms are going to fall off and then you fall into a coma by the fire and then you go to the lodge up the hill and eat a fabulous dinner while looking out over the whole valley. Oh, and you take a lot of tylenol and drinking wine helps too. We have seen eagles, woodpeckers, little rodent things, a whole bunch of deer and tonight heard an owl as we were staggering back to our 'chalet', an itty bitty cabin with a fireplace and a double bed to become comatose on. The stars are fab too, like I said, a massive amount of nature.

So I am a serviceable skier and there are groomed trails here so I plod along, falling occasionally. Everyone else is a 'skate skier' holy mother of god. They have skis that are about a centimeter wide and very pointy. Then they kinda run along the track. If I tried this, I would be in the hospital even tho I pretend I don't do it because I 'have the wrong equipment'. But there is hardly anyone here except for these white mountains all around and this crazy blue sky.

In the itty bitty chalet, I listen to a new CD a client made me of Tibetan monks singing or what ever you call it and bells and horns and lie on my face on the bed because my whole body hurts.

I brought along a bunch of suicide/trauma books and haven't even opened one. Instead I am catching up on old NYT book reviews. My theory: read the book reviews and pretend you read the book. It's almost as good.

My writing group rocks my world, even when I bring in a poem that 'needs work'. We are going to Burning Word to hear Rebecca read. I think we should make asses of ourselves but I might be alone in this desire. This desire. Ah, desire.