After I get a cold, I cough for, o, weeks. Last night, in the midst of a coughing fit in bed, I staggered to the medicine cabinet and downed {{{codeine}}} cough syrup which works because it makes you unconscious dead never moving until morning so you don't have the strength to cough. But all the gunk in your lungs is still there, waiting to start bubbling and wheezing in the morning AND you have a wicked headache and you feel...drugged. I sound like Linda Blair. I need an exorcism. Be gone, evil lung gunk!!!

My midwife partner thinks my sicknesses are from my vegan diet. I wonder if she's right. Although I can't see eating a few hamburgers as a cure. Besides, yuck.

I purged my closet. The rule is, if you haven't worn it in 1 year (Ok, maybe 2 years), out it goes. I have this little black dress, cut on the bias that I looked HOT in about, um, a lotta years ago. I would look ridiculous in it now. So I've been hanging on to it for the sake of memory. And my former hot self. With high heels and stockings with seams. Oh yeah. Farewell, former hot self. I'm sure I have a current hot self. She hasn't arrived as yet. Deb thinks I'm hot in my green ratty bathrobe. She is obviously blinded by love.

I forgot to put out the garbage and the outfit I wore in haste ahead of the garbage truck was stunning. Pajama top, dirty pants that were on the floor and aqua gardening shoes. Yum. I bet the garbage people have seen everything. And Deb still thinks I'm cute. I'm so glad she's delusional.

FOR TODAY AND THE SUN AND ALL THE BRILLIANT

JABBERWOCKY

Lewis Carroll

(from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought --
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

dshaw@jabberwocky.com

---

Return to Glorious Nonsense

My girlfriend just put a bowl of strawberries in front of me. They are so beautiful, I want to cry.

Downed trees in Seward Park, trilliums coming up in my yard and a ton o' weeding awaits me. Light and shadow, bring an umbrella but bits of sun and an eagle calling out of sight in the treetops. The camilla is thick with pink flowers, wholly over grown. I'm a wimpy pruner. I make little snips here and there. My stout hearted girlfriend will wade in with giant clippers and give the camilla a proper grooming. When all appears dead, green mites appear ground level where I despaired of any plant living through the winter, especially a fickle winter of snow and warmth and more snow and ice. Plants in their dumb glory.

One lone daffodil but many more coming. I forgot how many tulips I planted last year but they are everywhere under the bushes. I will never vanquish the grape hyacinths but I always try.

The dogs in the park are, for the most part, delirious. Especially the blondes. They run all over, their owners calling in vain. I miss Yogi man and his barrel body. He was quite polite and above the frolickry.

Got a nasty sore throat. Here in bed with the blue sky and puffy clouds. No gardening for me.

PLEASE AVERT YOUR EYES

If you're squeamish. I'm waiting for my g'friend to arrive because she has to help me. Seriously to g-d. Lola has a giant poop matt under her tail and try as I might, I can't pin her down to wash/cut/slash etc at her bottomside without significant damage to myself. I tried. Last night. My hands are bandaged. I left her in the bathroom because she smells, well, like cat poop. And she knows something is wrong. She limps down the stairs. She's taken to lying flat on her back with her back legs wide apart, something I've never seen her do before. Occasionally she tries to clean herself but, yuck, even for a cat. In the meantime, the house smells real bad and no amount of incense is helping.

ARGAA.

I just wanted to share. Thanks for listening.

My hunny and I went to the Gem and Jewelry show at the Seattle Center today. I got a piece of amber, still in my pocket. Amber is magic. Lots of 'jewels' are fake, apparently. I saw a lot of rocks which should have been left alone where they were, like geodes that people saw in half. Most of the people selling were Chinese or Korean. Most of the people buying were East Indian. I don't understand this. There were two men sitting by a polisher machine that whirred around and around. This is how you make facets. I asked how long it would take for a rock to be polished and the one with the glasses said, "about 800 years". I believed him.

My neighbor downstairs is having sex VERY LOUDLY. It might be time for me to go upstairs to bed. Oh, now it's quiet. Sometimes, I wonder if I am really a human being. Like other human beings.

It is blowing winds about 800 miles an hour. I rolled up the awning and a garbage can convention is skittering down the street, can lids everywhere.

In Wisconsin, the farmers are gonna drive their tractors to the state capitol. Go farmers! What's happening is truly horrifying. Tonight I'm gonna eat sushi with my honey, go to a movie and hunker down in our liberal corner of Seattle while the world goes to hell. I'll dust off my protest signs for the coming street demos. Or the space ships to come get me and my friends.

While swimming today, my lane partner was a sleek young man who mostly swam underwater. I'd look down and there he was, fish man in his little black trunks and wavery hands. I though I might be dreaming. Swimming in the pool is not like Hawaii and the Pacific. I know this because there isn't any salt or blue neons or parrot fish. Just a merman.

Back to the forest for split pea soup and a bread crust a crust some sparse butter from a butterfly bush last summer we had no thought of the winter calamity but here it is the sorrowful hand signals a darning egg we frolicked in our flouncy trousers the beetle queen adorned her many children with spun sugar all colors I liked the purple ones cavort you may=nonesuch=honeysuckle birds in their feathered bower.

I'm on O'hau right now, looking out over the town and the mountains and the ocean. With my baby. In the sun. It is paradise. I can hear the mourning doves. The mountains are sharp and pointy and VERY STEEP. I thought today was my birthday but it isn't. It's the day before my birthday. Ha! We're going to go down to the water again and see and swim with more fishes. I saw puffer fish and neons and parrot fish and multicolored fish I don't know their names. The land here is temporary because the volcanoes pushed up the melted rocks yesterday and then the seeds blew in and grew palm trees and hibiscus flowers and orchids and many other houseplants. And here they are huge and they grow up things, like your car.

I could just go over and jump in the pool but I'm saving myself for the ocean. Which is everywhere all around.

The moon is a melting lozenge, a fuzzy cough drop, a liquid blind eye. In two days I fly off to Oahu where I will put on a mask and a snorkel and fins. (After you put on fins, you have to back into the water because it is way too hard to walk in fins while the waves mess you up). Then I will spend as much time as I can watching beautiful fishes. It is MAGICAL.

I won't want to come home to face my real life.

Angel fish. Clown fish. Sea turtles.

I will not eat poi, however. Poi is nasty.

One of our babies was born last night. I would have too, with the full blowsy moon lighting up everything like it did. And a daytime rainbow. I was gardening, raking last year's leaves and whacking away at the fallen. Oh, and digging up the grape hyacinths. They are impervious to eradication, try as I might. Now there's four bags of yard waste by the curb. I wore a beautiful new (thrift store) shirt to garden in. Why do I do this? It is covered with mud which usually doesn't come out. I also do this with shoes even though I have several pairs of gardening shoes. No, I wade out into the garden in a new pair of shoes so I can get them irreversibly caked with garden mud. Why o why? Maybe I think Home and Garden is coming to photograph and I want to look my best.

Off to my teaching job. Maybe we'll go outside for the afternoon and contemplate the huge herb garden.

Not one, but two rejections. Both with 'comments' about sending more and good luck and so forth. Piffle. How hard is it to publish one leetle poem/chapbook/ magnum opus?

I mean, really?

I am effing sick of rain. Bletch! Feh! Snorf!

I'm going to Hawaii next week. I'm not kidding. Oahu. Take that you rain clouds. Kiss my grits.

Recipe for heart-brokenness.

Take your favorite sweetheart to breakfast, then to the hot tub place with a sauna and steam bath. Marinate and sweat. Cry on her shoulder. Make a huge dinner with lentil soup and roasted garlic and homemade apple sauce. Watch the latest Sherlock Holmes from the BBC. Imagine you are a high-functioning sociopath like Sherlock. With zero social skills.

Pet Lola, the dumb but beautiful cat. Go outside in your bathrobe and allow the wind and moonlight to wash you. Clean. Sit in your bed and watch the radio towers on Queen Ann Hill blink on and off.

I "cleaned out" my office today. It's a dreadful kind of task. I pile up many piles of photos, poems, books, check ledgers, cameras and more books. Then I go away for a while. I don't write in there. I write on the couch downstairs with the cats draped around me. By the pink and green plant I just got and the big one with the long leaves I fuss over all the time. There's a buddha carving in here too, for ballast. The upstairs office has a forlorn light. One of the cats sits on the desk and sheds cat dust. Today I found bits of bird on the window sill so I think there have been bird murders in there too.

But.

I went in there last week and made an awful mess, the kind I loathe. And I let it sit there for several days to marinate. This morning, my contractor guy called and said he was coming over to work in that room. Gawd. So I had to wade in and begin.

Here's the problem. I sit down with a packet of photos and then I'm lost. Lots of trees and water and mountains and skies and children, all different ages. And there are boxes of photos. Then there are the check stubs and statements. How long are you supposed to keep those? Forever? What about the homemade cards from the children? And love letters from people I no longer remember.

Mostly though it's the stacks of poetry, mostly mine. It's a giant pile, clipped and scribbled on and sorted and unsorted and manuscripts and loose and untidy, a gawdawful tangle. Busted notebooks and scraps of paper.

Besides, my sweetheart is moving in. Moving. In.

I haven't lived with anyone for the past three years. I have forgotten how. I think it's like riding a bicycle. A big beautiful bicycle that goes real fast along the lake. With streamers. And a bell.

My daughter was here for a few days so I could help her buy a car. She's my whirlwind daughter-taking over the kitchen, opening all precious jellies and artichoke hearts and throwing things away past their sell-by dates. Sheesh. And then she cooks up a storm.

Raw kale salad:

2 bunches kale, stem removed and cut into bite sides pieces

Marinade

1/2 lemon juice and/or orange juice

2 TBS apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp corinader

2 cloves garlic, crushed very fine or through a garlic press

a bit of agave

salt

olive oil

mix all together and taste, adjust. Toss with kale. Oh yum.

Oh, the car buying business. Gawd. We put down $$ on one car and then tried another, way across town. She was set on a VW and she test drove one, liked it, sped through a residential area and thought that was it. Then she drove an older Acura. Ha! As she sagely observed" Mom, the Jetta is shite." I agreed so we went for a 2000 Acura with heated seats, electric everything, and I mean everything. A sun roof that opens and closes. Seats that move around on their own. Way more fancy than my car and less money. The miles were OK and the tires were not down to the rims.

She drove off this afternoon with her girlfriend and I fell into a funk. It will never be different. No matter how much or how little I help her, there will always be the feeling, the yearning to do more... I even made her go to the tire store this morning to be sure the tires were alright. No late night calls that they're stuck somewhere in Oregon with two flats.

Nerd universe

I just ran around Seward Park without stopping. This is a minor miracle. Granted, I was not fast. I wasn't even slightly fast. From a distance I probably looked like I was limping along. But I wasn't. I had 'running form'. And the sky was blazing with a sunset and the mountain was shimmering in the distance and the babies were all smiling and the ducks were quacking Beethoven's 3rd.

No, wait. I made up the last part.

Oh, when having a hair day like today, just put on a hat before you go out. So you don't scare the horses.

I have the whole day, THE WHOLE DAY, to lounge in my bathrobe, the green long one, on the couch or in bed and drink tea out of real bone china and read the NYT, except for the sports pages and the finance section and the travel section. I don't read the travel section because I always want to go everywhere they write about, like Tuscany and Aruba and Borneo.

But.

I might go to Thailand or Burma this year. I can do health care there and visit/be in monasteries. Specifically Buddhist monasteries. I haven't been in a Buddhist-dominant culture before. I bet the people are the same. But with incense and bells.

I just started Season II of In Treatment on HBO. The first season was so good, I would watch immediately when I got home from work. I wouldn't even take off my coat. I'd sit on the edge of the couch, chewing my nails and watch. Gabriel Byrne is brilliant, so's the the dialog and it's sick because I'm in therapy and I'm watching a show involving actors playing therapy clients and the effing sexy Gabriel is their therapist. If he were my therapist, I'd never miss a session. Even though he's a guy. He's got that cute accent and earnest lovely eyes.

My real therapist is a woman with curvy hair. She doesn't let let me get away with anything. I don't think she's the slightest bit sexy, probably an important thing. I wonder if she could fake an Irish accent. It might help me.

Nah.

Tonight I went into the dark garden and picked collards. I sauteed 'em in olive oil and hot sauce and salt. I have no need of anything more. Except for a brisk walk in the dreadful wet night. No one will bother me because I am fueled by cruciferous vegetables that survive the winter.

Today I'm taking my house apart. Old paint cans, half-used fluids and solids, a major pile of old 5K, 10K bibs (why do I have these?), random empty boxes, all the detritus that has a way of accumulating when you're looking the other way. My mother would be so proud. She threw out everything and I mean everything.

I'm gonna make a pile in the garage in anticipation of a U-haul trip to the dump (the dump!) in the near future.

I went to an open mike recently. Gawd. How could I have forgotten what they're like? I could say some very unkind things here but I am metaphorically biting my tongue. And my friend Maryann taught me to be polite and not walk out because I would want the same consideration when my turn came. Yeah, but sheesh.

I once read at Red Sky, a Paul Hunter thang on Capitol Hill, now defunct and a guy came in with a rolled up notebook. He sat at the piano and attempted to keep the notebook from falling on the floor so he could YELL and POUND on the keys in no apparent order, rhythm, etc. It was excruciating. Paul tactfully asked that he finish and no, we didn't want to hear any more. I miss that reading. There was some talent here and occasionally Paul would sing and play a harmonica.

Yes, I'm still in love, in case you were wondering. It's tiresome to have to go to work and live in different houses. I think we should work about 5 hours a week and play the rest of the time. Then I could get everything done, like writing more and painting and playing outside in the mysterious Northwest. Mysterious you say? Ha!

I'm gonna go biking in the freezing weather. It might be good for me. I'm not sure. I do know that I went dancing last night and it was wonderful. I was dripping with sweat, I'm sure I've shortened my life as a hearing person and I drank one alcoholic beverage. One. Honest. Well, I had some sips from a friend's drink. Over three hours.

But. I jumped around like I was a young person and waved my arms in the air and the girl on the platform wiggling and wearing VERY FEW CLOTHES came and danced with me a bit. And there were people grabbing each other and smooching in corners ((((sigh))) and it reminded me of the good old days when we went out every weekend and had (well drugs and alcohol may have been involved) a party. I behaved in an unseemly fashion. Then. Now I'm pretty tame. Dancing to loud music is fantastic and I'm gonna go again.

As long as my knees hold out. Oh, and my low back. And I promise I won't go home on the back of someone's motorcycle, no matter how much I want to. Unless it belongs to my sweetie. (And I will never do drugs in the bathroom again) So not Buddhist. Besides, you feel like doo-doo the next day. Horrid doo-doo.

Cauliflower mashed poatoes

Steam a head of cauliflower. Mash in a blender with (fake) butter, salt and pepper. Voila! Mashed potatoes which are really a cruciferous vegetable so you can EAT THE WHOLE BOWL. No guilt! And sometimes you can even fool your friends because they don't know they are eating a vegetable and not potatoes. I know, potatoes are vegetables too but not in the same category.

I think I'm allergic to my cats. I sneeze and cough and blow my nose whenever I'm home. Either that or I have the dread mold. Maybe the cats have mold...

My mother always told me I am too sensitive. Whatever the hell does that mean?

I'm so relieved that I can still be a Pisces after all the kerfluffle about the zodiac adding a 13th planet named Okechobee or some such. And don't you dare take away my Leo rising even though pride goeth before a fall, as my mother would say. Without my Leo thang I'd be a pile of Piscean mush all wishy-washy and stoopid in the head. As of this moment, because I saw a rainbow ring around the moon, I have dedicated myself to unseen forces behind potholes and candy corn, which is not candy or corn.

Tonight while driving home after my writer's group, I contemplated the meaning of life and I have rediscovered that there is no meaning really, an argument I had some years ago with an ex-lover. I stand by it. Life=no meaning, not in the usual sense. Josh has a 10 month old baby and he says that life is bliss and effing crazy, all at once. Exactly. Babies make you insane with their incessant demands and their total control of the situation. They scramble your few remaining brains. Muttering and stuttering ensues. And we all started out the same way. A baby, drooling and pooping. Gawd. That's why babies are cute and look like us. So we don't put them in a basket on the steps of the municipal building down town. With a note.

I don't know why I'm writing this. Probably I'm avoiding talking about upsetting current events. Don't get me started about the polar bears. I'm going to listen to the Fleetwoods sing 'Mr Blue' and drift off to sleep.

Goodnight dear indigo. You know who you are.

I want you all to know. Sometimes I rite real good.

I know what I said about skiing. I don't take it back but in the Northwest it rains. A lot. So this weekend, with friends, we went to Rainier, my home mountain to ski/snowshoe/play and sing. And it rained.

A sad day while snowshoeing in a spot called "Paradise" because it is, to be rained on. Sodden women in the car back and hissing of drying clothes steaming up the windows and so forth.

I bought a blackberry pie at the famous blackberry pie restaurant. Ruby licked the plate so we all did. It helped the rain situation.

Homemade blackberry pie is surely one of the seven wonders.

This is where I was. I love to ski. I love everything about it, the quiet, the white, the shushing sound of my skis on the snow, the cold on my face, the taste of a peanut butter sandwich in my mitten, the ache in my muscles after I'm done. Because I wasn't an athletic kid, the discovery that I could ski into the woods by myself and fall down a dozen times and get up and continue, that it didn't matter that I wasn't any good but I was good enough and I could stay warm and bright on the coldest days in the Northeast was a benediction, a kind of blessing. I've been on Rainier by myself when I had no business being alone, I've skied down pretty big hills without falling down and no one to witness, I've been standing in the forest catching snow on my upturned face.

Maybe I'll never be too old to ski. Just strap skis on my shoes, stand me up in the snow where it's perfectly flat and give me a little push. The joy pierces my heart.

I am teaching again, o lord, and I want to go into the classroom and insist that we play loud music, maybe Nirvana or Jimi Hendryxx and howl. Because the class is called 'Grief and Loss' and I don't want to talk about it anymore, I just don't. Because my personality is sucked into automatic grief and loss whenever I read a paper or watch the news or go outside and, lo, the sky is still gray (duh, the Northwest, I know, I know). I cry easily, the weepy overflow just waiting, always there to pounce.

What was I saying. Oh yeah. Tomorrow I'm going back to the snow by myself. It will be fine, I'm not going on any hilly trails where I might fall and break all my bones and lie there until the wolves find me. It's flat and pretty and long and groomed. So. I'll take snacks and hot tea and I'll drive carefully. I promise.

I just saw Johnny Depp in Alice in Wonderland, a real mess of a movie but he is so beautiful. ***sigh***

Kittens and puppies. Baby animals of all kinds. Unicorns. Rainbows. Dewy morning. La-de-da.

Without a lot of vitamin D, I deteriorate into hell and madness. So as you see, my vitamin levels are okey dokey.

I'm going to the dump today. It is the most glorious place. It truly is the maw of hell. There is a smasher truck on top of the garbage with a cage over the windows and it rolls back and forth smashing and crushing. (((shiver))) And you stand on the precipice throwing all manner of detritus in so the masher can run over it.

I once was going through a break-up and I went to the dump with several gallon glass jars. I hurled each one down where it made the most satisfying crashing explosive sound. Ah. I could have done this in my kitchen but this way, no mess to clean up.

Besides, in winter, the dump doesn't smell so, well, like a dump.

I went skiing today in the beautiful sunny blue and diamond-y snow and many children sledding and the enormously fit stake skiing individuals. Holly decided to let me make decisions, o lord, and we skied about 94 miles. going in one direction was fine, cold and bright. Then there was the issue of coming back. We, rather I, miscalculated a bit about the distance. Coming back was fine until it wasn't. Then we were trudging, then creeping, then crawling with much silent screaming of various muscles, some of which I didn't know I had. For instance, there are muscles in the back of your neck that somehow have something to do with skiing, poling, I don't know what. Also there are these little muscles in the inner thigh which begin to twitch and slither amid howling and weeping.

When we returned to the car, I could barely walk. I made hopping steps to the bathroom after leaving my car keys on the roof of the car. Of course, we looked for the keys for twenty minutes in the cold and so forth. Then I gracefully concussed myself on the hatchback lid that was still up.

Somehow we made it back to the city. A large amount of ibuprofen and a bath have helped some. Actually, I passed out in the tub. I fear I will be crippled tomorrow. I can hardly wait.

This is the consequence of exercise.

I have a smart house. I turn off the heat at night and the furnace ignores me. It says, 'Nuh-huh, idiot, your pipes will freeze." Oh. Everything is creaking.

And then there's the cats. They are acting very mentally ill, even for them. They run around, smacking into walls and careening off the rugs, which end up bunched and askew. Then there's the stalking thing they do, arching and puffing up and behaving all menacing with each other, as if they have never seen each other before (except for the last seven years). If humans behaved this way when it was cold outside, well, the work environment would be difficult.

"Stop stalking me, I'm trying to work here!"

"Don't you puff up your fur at me, young lady!"

(during a trip to HR)

"And then she slid all the way across the room, banging into the filing cabinets and knocking all the xmas cookies to the floor. She made the crazy eyes at me and ran out of the room sideways. I think she needs professional help."

It's New Year's Eve. I bet you already knew that.

Just realized I am exhausted. Clinic today and the new birth center ready to move into. Sheesh, I haven't even seen the finished product.

Working is incompatible with my artistic life and my love life. I need to be two or three people.

I think I'll sleep on the couch. It's freezing out there.

Because my manuscript wasn't published in 2010, it will be published in 2011.

And that is all I know.

Meanwhile, I will continue to write many unbreakable poems.

Back from Cal again, this time with the family in a wee house and even wee-er kitchen. We ate mass quantities, laughed and played and, in general, had a merry xmas. Yesterday we went to the SF MOMA and viewed marvelous photos: Warhol, Maplethorpe, Cartier-Bresson, and many others. The exhibit was voyeurism, all kinds. Over the shoulder, above, hidden cameras, from far away; lovers, hookers, children, war criminals.

I bought one of my daughter's photos in the gift shop. A polaroid.

My neighbor gave me her annual plateful of cookies. And I went over with a bottle of local port because no grape jelly this year. None. The grapes were small and sour and nasty because we had no summer at all. A tragedy. Didn't stop the raccoons.

My clerk at the pet store where I buy very expensive cat food told me why cats bring in dead, dying or still kicking creatures, mostly smaller and mostly with feathers. Are you ready for this? Apparently, they are trying to teach us how to kill. They never see us drag in a dead deer so how can we possibly know how to procure food. We can open cans and shake out bags of kibble into their bowls. But we are woefully inadequate in the killing department. So they're showing us how, like they show their kittens.

Aw, wasn't that heartwarming?

Delicata squash are the best squash in the world today. Eat the skins. They're good for you. I promise.

Returned from a retreat in rainy windy Northern California, land of wild turkeys, deer, bunnies and birdies.

My bank called to tell me I haven't yet paid my mortgage. Huh? I'm sure I did, even though love has thoroughly scrambled my few remaining brains. So I apparently sent the mortgage payment to my zero balance CREDIT CARD. Duh, what a dope. But the bank guy was very grumpy, having to tell people all day their mortgage payments are late and they're facing collections. To no avail did I protest that THEIR BANK had my money, cashed and all. And the nice credit card people won't have a check to me for 10 days. Great.

Merry X-mas and good will toward (ahem) men. Even though I've been a good customer for, count 'em, 15 years. Off to collections for you. Off with her head. And while you're at it, paint those roses red, little missy.

Glad I got that out of my system. Back to being a Buddhist. Where I'm kind to everyone, even the poor suckers whose job it is to threaten people they've never even met.

Can't harsh my bliss, nothing can. I'm getting to know my paramour and I like her even more now. This is a very good sign. We played in her studio and made presents and listened to Nirvana real loud.

The divine abodes: Metta, karuna, mudita and uppeka. Lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. A beauty. I might get used to being happy, after all.

I have a terrible problem. I haven't read last week's NYT and now there's another one, fresh from it's blue plastic bag, oh and the book review and magazine section from 2 weeks ago. Even when I weed out the sports, financial and travel sections, there is still a towering pile of unread NYT. And I'm leaving tomorrow for silence and next week there will be ANOTHER NYT to read next Sunday. More than any other backsliding, not keeping up with the paper is a dread sin. Because I hardly know what is going on in the big world, the NYT is my source, my family friend who comes over to tell me I really must get out more and stop wearing those awful baggy pants in the yard and why o why do you insist on not bathing. I mean really, why bathe if all you plan to do that day is muck about in the garden, getting mud inside your gloves and sweating all over the mashed leaves and dead morning glory while trying to wrassle them into those stupid paper bags just for the purpose of 'green' waste.

So.

It's the new lover. Besides being all confused during the day and not knowing what day or time it is or if you're supposed to go to work or not, there's the issue of non-sleep and having someone else beside you when you wake up, stealing the covers and making you laugh so hard you fall out of bed. All the cats come up and want some of the mirth. All three of them. They feel neglected and you know what. I don't give a shit. I deserve this. We all do.

Besides, the NYT has the most ridiculous ads in the world. An article about starving Haitians next to an ad for a 5 zillion dollar fur coat draped over an anorexic 16 year old. It's a perfect mind fuck.

I'm off to yet another retreat, this time in northern California where they have polite rain and sun. The deer graze on the hills and wild turkeys wander about acting ridiculous. They, of course, don't think they're ridiculous. They think they're handsome and fine. If I had a face with bright red wattles hanging off it, I'd wear a bag on my head. Just saying...

I have to pack, something I loathe. Whenever I get to where I'm going, my packing seems so inferior compared to others. On retreat, I want to wear stained sweats and floppy shirts. I think in Northern Cal this type of dress is illegal. We're not supposed to compare but I can't help it. Especially when the persons sitting all around me in the beautiful dharma hall look so put together and calm. I'm a seething mass. I bet there are snakes and beetles and popinjays swirling around my cushion. (I always wanted to use 'popinjays' in a sentence).

Six days of silence and a lot of vegetables. Live oaks on the hills. I'll visit them every day. They are womanly trees. They are massive and ruggy and they lay their huge limbs on the ground. I always miss them.

I start teaching in January. I approach teaching with caution. It's a lot of effort and students tend to text, email and behave distractedly. We didn't have multiple devices when I was in school. We had pens and notebooks. I got there on horseback. Or I walked 10 miles in the snow. And I was grateful.

That last bit was all lies.

This one's for you.

I had a 1954 dinner with some of my favorite people last night. I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. What is a 1954 dinner? What you'd expect: baked potato, peas, iceberg lettuce quarters with Thousand Island dressing, salmon and an amazing relish contraption-actually a red cabbage stuck with toothpicks on which were impaled olives, cheese, leetle onions and radishes. AND rice krispie treats, gack.

It was beautiful. I love you, James and Richard and Deb. Let's grow old(er) together. You are my people, you know. In so many ways. You're irreverent, queer, tender and deviant. Blessedly deviant. Thank g-d.

I just made a gingerbread for my love. I put in too much baking soda and had to scoop some of it out and I added a wee bit of sugar and walnuts which weren't called for. But.

I'd do anything for her, my darling. Because she won't ask me, I can say that. She offered me her house. I offered her mine but hers is a better deal cuz it's paid for. I still owe about a hundred million dollars on mine.

She'll eat my fallen gingerbread and declare it the best she's ever tasted. I can't worry about when this will wear off. Maybe it won't though I can't imagine that. I've been depressed for so long, the snake keeps talking in my ear.

Fuck you, snake and your hissing. Fuck you.

Watching Nirvana at Redding. Jumping and twitching. An antidote to the Christmas ships down the street. There's a guy on the stage who's only job is to thrash around on the stage and dislocate his entire body. That's me.

Kurt, effing genius.

The bright sun in the bright sky. One of my katz has taken to peeing by the back door because I am in love right now and my head/heart are in the treetops floating down the Skagit walking through walls seeing into beauty everywhere. So.

We've spoken, Lola and I. Because she is my favorite, she needs to understand that I need this time to be untethered from the real world, whatever that is. Poking daisies into gun barrels and lyiing on the grass watching stars move across the sky singing o singing. Happiness.

Here. There's enough for everyone. Even you. Especially you.

Beth, eternal love muffin zippety-do-dah, Coyote

Back from retreat. I'm moving to Canada. People are nicer there and so are the dogs. Plus they have health insurance for everyone. Even their road signs make sense. The only thing is the kilometer issue. And centigrade. It was 15 degrees centigrade. Whatever does that mean?

This morning I saw a pileated woodpecker. And snow geese. And an eagle. In the beautiful Canadian woods. Where I will be moving, if they let me and if this country doesn't stop misbehaving.

Thanksgiving is not a happy day for turkeys.

I just made chocolate vegan cheesecake from heaven. Heaven and the angelic choir. And I restrained myself to licking the bowl, spatulas, countertops, etc. Now the Queen of Glory cake sits in the fridge waiting for the actual Thanksgiving day where there will be a drizzle of raspberry syrup.

I also made an African peanut stew, also divine and blessed by the finger of the baby Jesus. I did add additional peanut butter because, well, it needed it. My tenant brought me cookies so I'm gonna pay her back with a bowl of stew. We might as well get fat together. She's in love too so there's a lot of loud music at certain times so we won't, um, hear each other. TMI, probably.

Cold and crunchy on the back stairs. The cats haven't ventured out because they are essentially weenies.

My yard

Today at Firestone tires I learned these things:

1. On Days of Our Lives you can get married and keep the children, even the autistic one.

2. The older people in DOOL wear earphone things which probably are giving them line prompts.

3. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread when snow hits the highways and the fools have 4 wheel drive and think they can go REAL FAST and they and their big-ass cars flip over causing massive back-ups for all the other cars, especially the ones running out of gas with little kids in the back.

4. Sheesh.

5. The nice man at Firestone showed me how easy it is to install chains on my car except that when I am actually installing chains on my car, it will be 23 below zero and dark and I'll be kneeling in the slush while semis thunder by, making my little car vibrate and my hands are frozen blocks of ice and I'm cursing a long string of expletives and wondering why, o lord, why.

6. My brain is permanently in angelic time, time where laughter and chocolate and music and art live.

7. Howl is one of the most heavenly poems ever written. I read it when I was 15 and had no idea what I was holding in my hands. Bless you, Allen.

---I'm with you in Rockland

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-

journey on the highway across America in tears

to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Allen Ginsberg

Because I am mad flattened with love sickness, my car has had ANOTHER flat tire. No more am I going to try to appease the car gods. Fuck the car gods. I'm gonna go over to Brenda and Pete's house, eat chips and salsa and watch purloined Dexter, my darling avenging angel.

It SNOWED in my yard. The cats came in sparkling with flakes on their fur.

Speaking of cats, my three (count 'em) love bundles ate through a bag of cat food I foolishly left out. They then drank all the water in the house, toilets, yard etc. and their bellies were huge balloon-y fur pockets. Serves them right. I have no sympathy. I feed them precise amounts of very expensive food and this is how they repay me. They act like such...animals sometimes. It's appalling.

Meanwhile, I'm unsafe at any speed. I can't walk or think or pay bills. My brain is bathed in oxytocin and endorphins and I'm stoopid. I don't care that my house is a mess or my hair or the food in the fridge is growing organisms. My thoughts are x-rated. Actually, I have no thoughts. None. I think all my brain cells have exploded. Now my head is a super nova.

memento

O Winter! bar thine adamantine doors: The north is thine; there hast thou build thy dark, Deep-founded habitation. Shake not thy roofs, Nor bend thy pillars with thine iron car. 
William Blake

fast you approach

my heartsore

for this to bewilder

scrambled scatter

we huddle at the fences

you drag us under

wet slap

tongue swaggle

still

I wait for your talent

your long finger

while lights flicker and shush

where else can we pursue realms of virtue

when the herald carouses

amber and bend

time for a brimful stranger

a portion to harken

an amulet

pale cross stitch

pricked palm crease

hush

So this time when I heard how much my car was going to cost to repair, I didn't do a perfect Scarlett O'Hara imitation and fling my hand over my eyes and succumb to the vapors. I had a moment of clarity because I didn't do it. I didn't cause the smash. I was PARKED. The other person has to pay. For everything. And it's going to cost about five hundred thousand million more that my back window.

AND. I am driving a decent rental. It's red. I understand the dashboard. It's Japanese.

By the way, the adjuster guy and the repair guy and I are now best friends. He did suggest that I could be t-boned next but I think that's a bad idea all round. My car doesn't need to be repaired on every side. Really, it doesn't.

The dark season has come again. An anniversary I despair of. It doesn't get easier or better. We don't 'get over it'. When someone you love takes his life, the wound never heals. You forget it's there until the dark wakes up, this time of year when old wounds ache. And bleed. Again.

Geoffrey, I fear you are a hungry ghost.

Off to the collision shop ***again***. Just say no to Impalas. Impalas suck eggs. Ford, Chevy, Pontiac? Whatever. I'm insisting on a reasonable rental car. Is there such a thing? As a veteran of multiple car smash-ups, I want a red carpet, a driver and champagne in a silver bucket!

Her Highness, The Queen

Dear car gods,

As you know, I recently had a bit of a run-in with a school bus. I picked up my car from the collision place Friday afternoon, all washed, shiny and smelling like new car smell. It was wonderful to be reunited.

Then today I was parked in front of the house where we had a baby (you know, the midwife thing). One of the friends invited smashed into the FRONT of my car. Her foot slipped and she hit the accelerator. Oh, and I apparently parked under the thousand pigeon power lines so my car was also covered in pigeon shit when I came out to go home.

Have I done something to displease you? Do you want offerings of cracked corn (no, wait, that's for pigeons). Ok, offerings of motor oil, wax jobs, uh, high test gas? If you could let me know, I'd be eternally grateful.

Your faithful servant,

Beth

Waiting for another baby. Tonight in the Thai restaurant I saw a young family with a wee baby with no hat and bare feet. The grandma took them to dinner. They're exhausted and dazed. I almost got up to tell them to go back to their warm house with their babe and go to sleep, in a cave of blankets. Sometimes we're not intuitive. That's where I come in, all bossy and scold-y.

Sweet dreams, all you babies and your parents who have no idea what they're doing. No idea. And that's just the beginning.

Off to my bed where I'll pass out until the pager goes off again.

I will not blather about my new love interest. I'm just here to let you know that we have changed the weather. The sun and clear days are because of us. The sunrise the other morning-us. So when you think Seattle has gone mad with brilliant beautiful fall days, you have us to thank.

You're welcome.

Love, Beth

Chris Pureka-my obsession

While backing out of my driveway this AM, I apparently ran my back window into the big black mirror thingy sticking out at right angles from the front of a BIG YELLOW SCHOOL BUS which I didn't see????? WTF? My whole back window collapsed in an explosion of glass and crashing. At least I didn't run over any school children. Then I would have been on the evening news with my coat over my head. I wasn't even going that fast. And I was humming away, being all smug that I would arrive at clinic on time or even a wee bit early. Nope, a trip to the body shop, a rental car (an Antelope or Cheetah or some animal). A Cougar? The seat is electric. You can push a button and it goes ((brrrrrrr)) up and down and back and forwards. I still couldn't reach the gas pedal very easily.

Then they called to tell me about the bill. I almost fainted. Actually, my mouth formed a perfect 0 and I was rendered speechless. Even now I can't tell you how much a new window is going to cost. It's between 50 and a million dollars. Closer to a million. At least I can feel good that I am employing more people to work for me.

All because I am, ahem, falling for someone, a person. A human person. And I'm in a daze. I feel happy, which is a very weird feeling for me. And my evil twin is chattering that I'm delusional and it won't last and I'm just mental. So, anyway, I back my car into busses. What next, a building? Hey, I have an idea. I'll drive into an elementary school. After the kids have gone home, of course. So. I hope this new thang doesn't lead to any more property damage.

Sheesh.

It's a raw day, an unfinished day, a day of possible tribulation. Pumpkins rot on the porches, their faces folding in on themselves. I insist on a walk because I need to see what the geese and mallards are doing, rocking about in the lake. No turtles today. They line up on the logs and sun. So November is not promising for them.

I sat at my writing desk where I don't actually write. I prefer to sit on the couch hunched over my laptop to write. Then I wonder why I have a backache. But. I'm up here and noticed that the window was open a smidge. In order to close it, I had to kneel on the desk and push/pull in opposite directions while brushing away spider detritus. Obviously I don't spend much time in here.

I loathe turning on the heat. Loathe it. Heat should be free. So should water and garbage. My NYT told me this morning that the top 1% own 24% of the wealth. I don't really understand this in real numbers but I do understand that greed has no limitations, my little greed and some really huge greed. Greed=suffering. I have the great good fortune to employ several people in my midwifery practice. We don't make a lot but we do make enough. The business makes enough to support us, more or less. I still want free heat for everyone, however.

Tonight I'm going to a concert where I'm sure I'll be the oldest person there. I don't care. I have been listening to this artist obsessively since I discovered her. Tonight I get to see her move and sing. I might get her autograph. Gawd.

I'm learning to spit off the porch. The boys all learned it long ago. Not me. So I have some catching up to do. I'm gonna try peas, holding one in my mouth just so and ping! See how that works.

Took my shattered shirt to the cleaners. They said they could get the stains out. My peacock shirt. Please reincarnate.

If this is love, I want some more. Please.

I might be a hopeless shill. I read 'accessible ' poetry last night as a way to 'win them over' and 'please them' so I could slip in a few renegades, my darlings. Gag. Sometimes I don't know how to behave so I fake it. The wine and cheese table. The soft lighting. My writing partners. I'm an impostor in a gorilla suit.

Today is long walk in the sun day. Windy, leaves still falling. I made breakfast for James, my gay husband. We talked about the end of the world. Today, I'm not afraid to die. I think this is a good development considering that we will all die.

By the way, the best part of last night was that I put on my brand new shirt, accidentally splattered perfume all over it, had to go to #2 wardrobe selection but wore my new boots. I imagined myself fashion poetry queen. In my boots. With a swagger.

D-your response was perfect.

-little tomato

Tonight's the poetry reading and between my clogged wi snot head, my intermittent hearing problem and the omnipresent codeine cough syrup, I don't feel mentally well enough to face the public. And then there's the issue of what to read-accessible or 'other'. Maybe I'll mix it up. I have my horse poem.

My cough is IMPRESSIVE. When do you know you've moved on from a cold to bronchitis or pneumonia? Do I have to break a rib coughing?

Finally, there is the question of what to wear tonight...because I could be a credible tubercular Chopin, what with my symptoms and all. I'm pale and anorexic-there's that. So I could go with the white shirt with big cuffs and black everything else. I could waft up to the podium with a hanky, stained red, and cast my soulful glances about while I read. Then I could slide slowly to the floor, artistically crumpled while my pages float off.

Then there are the new boots. I could build my ensemble using them as the base. So many decisions.

It was freakishly warm here today in maroonland. I insisted on gardening while coughing and snorting. Now I sound like Linda Blair with many devils inside. I made Deb laugh. I had the good sense to return to the Group Health Constabulatory for codeine cough syrup. The label clearly says: Do not operate heavy machinery while taking this medicine. I asked the lady who gave me the bottle in an plain brown bag what heavy machinery they could mean. She said, "A car."

Oh, I replied, and got in my car and drove away.

I made it home safely too. Sheesh.

Lola is lying on my arm making typing impossible. Well, difficult.

I married a couple today and they gave me a bottle of special brandy made from apples. It's delicious, especially on top of the cough syrup.

Without night, we' d have no illicit activities. Illicit activities are just not as illicit in the daytime.

Yes, I'm a Buddhist. So?

While walking around Seward Park in the sunny sun, I'm smiling at babies, petting dogs and listening to this:

It's the day after our National Nightmare before Christmas elections. The sky and sea and leaves and grass are brilliant in the sun and I intend to go for a walk. And not think about politics and big business and corruption and greed and hatred. And lunacy. Peace reigns on my tiny patch of terra firma. Well, except for the usual cat battles. At least I didn't find any vomit on the furniture this morning although Lola climbed in with me at dawn and drooled on my arm. Drool I can deal with. Dino Rossi being a Senator I can't.

Even though I still have a dramatic cough that people back away from, I might walk for miles, with kleenix. I always wonder what 'resumption of normal activities' means. I usually overdo it and extend my illness for another week. I still can't hear out my left ear, except for a few minutes upon waking.

This Saturday is our reading. My writing group. I'm not sure I can find the location because it's a studio space on the water in Ballard, which from my house is about 437 miles from here. Not as the crows fly, but over train and light rail tracks, by the sporting arenas, and over the hills and through the woods to grandmother's house we go. So. And then there is the ticklish cough that signals the end of a cold when you try to suppress it and your eyes water and you eventually have to leave the room to hawk and spit. Not pretty but there it is. I'll be sucking lozenges and reading, attempting to be intelligible with a candy in my mouth. Although I have NEW BOOTS. From Ross. They were very cheap and they're not made of animal hide. My mother used to tell me I looked 'cheap' so I've been going for it ever since. Reverse psychology, right?

I figure no one will be able to understand what I'm saying while I read but they'll be looking at my boots and thinking, 'How does she pull it off, that classy look?' Shoes really do make the woman and I'm not saying that because I have purple Danskos with French writing all over them. It's just simply true.

I made nutloaf and mango salad with avocados and grapefruit and baked gingersnaps today. I couldn't taste any of it. I'm sure it was good. I remember liking all of it. I ate many cookies to try to find the flavor. I have a friend who has no taste buds. A tragedy.

My head is full of fuzz, the kind of fuzz when your ears are ringing and your nose is disconnected and you've been lying on the couch with a large ring of used kleenix around you. My left ear is aching which makes me worried since my right ear is already damaged. I hear in mono anyway. Which means that I don't have directional hearing anymore. I hear a sound and don't know where it's coming from. ***coyote howl*** Is it in the living room or in the garage? Is that my smoke detector or someone across the street? Then there are the ghosts. And they could be anywhere.

Plugged up, fuzzy, under water, phased out. It's darker now so I think it's night. You can't tell during the rainy season.

We. Live. In. A. Rain forest. So if you expected sun, ha! No, it rains here 4535 days a year. It doesn't get light out. You wake up from a nap and you don't know if it's 7PM or 7AM. That's how it is here, Your fur is always damp. So grow a thick coat. And bring lozenges to suck on. For comfort.

I feel like absolute doo-doo. The cold is heading for my lungs where it will sit for a week as I hack into a hanky. Some people get polite little colds where they sniffle and emit tiny sneezes. Not me. I prefer to be alone with my volcanic eruptions and ratty bathrobe.

I always contemplate wellness during this time. My personal wellness is not presently in the room. It's out for a walk, scuffing up the leaves and having a grand time while I sit here moldering away with pills and potions, none of which actually works. And the chills are coming back. We each have our allotment of sick time. Some people are sick a lot, some not so much. I don't know how that gets decided. Maybe there are beings we can't see (((organ music here))) who fly around dinging people at random for colds, flu, broken arms and the like. Then depending on the reactions of the afflicted, there is a cooling-off period before the next smiting. SO. Perhaps I could adjust my orientation to my current plight, for example, at least I have cough drops and cats to sit all over me to warm me and soup and grapefruit. Does this sound too angel fairy dust-y. Yeah, OK, but because I'm delirious, I get to have this fantasy. At least no one has dropped a house on me lately.

((I promise I'll be good, really. Forever or at least for a few weeks.)))

I'm listening to the music of West Side Story. It's so beautiful I want to cry. I think I'm going soft in the head. Leonard Bernstein used to host a music program for children which I watched religiously. I loved him. He was my Jesus. With a baton and a orchestra. And big swingy hair.

By the way, I want to own the movie West Side Story too. Singing, dancing and swell music. I saw it with my father when it came out. I cried buckets. I also cried buckets when he took me to see Bambi. A movie critic I'm not.

But hey, poor orphan Bambi. Come on.

Instead of sleeping last night, I rolled from one side to the other, with frequent trips to gargle with salt water. My throat was killing me. Crap o crap, I don't get to go to a Halloween party dressed as a jellyfish, surely one of my most inspired costumes. Whaaaaaa. I DO get to have hot brandy with lemon and Kleenix with 'moisturizer' in it, a most ingenious invention so you don't wipe your nose entirely off when you're blowing it every 15 minutes.

Movies I have in my house: 1) Angels in America, all 6 hours. 2) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. 3) The entire episodes of AbFab (say no more) 4) 3 old Sherlock Holmes with Basil Rathbone-what a name. 5) The Philadelphia Story. 6) The Maltese Falcon. 7) a bootleg Avatar. Clearly, I don't collect movies. I had to have AbFabs-the Brits are my people.

What I wish I had: 1) Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. 2) On the Waterfront. 3) The Wizard of Oz. 4) The Nightmare Before Christmas. 5) All of Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren. 6) Edward Scissorhands. 7 White Palace (Susan Sarandon and a luscious young James Spader). 8) all Kurosowa films, esp. with Toshiro Mafune. I know there are more but I can't think of them now. And anyway, none of these films are in my possession so I can re-watch Patsy and Eddie make fools of themselves in that special British self-deprecating way. I only hope I'm well enough to catch the next episode of Dexter tomorrow night. I think it's a bit pathological, this concern for fictional characters, especially serial killers with hearts of (sic) gold. No matter.

KEXP has moved from reggae to rap. Ug. Just say no to rap.

I can modestly say I have a green thumb. Consequently, my house plants are ENORMOUS. I have been slowly moving them on, to larger venues as it were. When they start scraping the ceiling, it's time for the foyer of an office building. The garden is another matter. Richard says I have to prune, cut back. What is it with me anyway? But it's growing, I can't cut it, it'll hurt!! Except for wisteria. Wisteria = raccoons of the plant world. It wants to reign. It will come in your house to see what you're having for dinner. Then it will strangle you as you sleep. Raccoons want to sit on your couch with a bowl of popcorn and the remote. Making that churring noise all the time. Getting on your nerves.

(((((Chills))))) maybe time for a bath. Perhaps I will take this time to finish a quilt.

Nah.

Instead of frolicking in the leaves on such a random sunny day, I slept on the couch this afternoon. Lola has left a handsome scratch on my right cheek too. (I'm sure it's a love scratch but now I'm rethinking my Halloween costume to match). I needed a nap after a rather awful work week. Sometimes I make women cry and I have to make tough decisions and I DON'T LIKE IT. I feel helpless and mothery and sad too but I can't fix their problems. I can't. Mostly I love to go to work because I work with amazing people and we all love the clients and the babies and the happiness. But of course, it isn't always that way. Sometimes women get sick, really sick and sometimes they are scared or sad or depressed. And because I'm so mentally healthy, I don't come home and get numb in the variety of ways our culture has to offer. So I just feel terrible and tired and alone.

So this morning I had 1) therapy, always a good time to dig around in the muck and 2) a massage, which will loosen up anything that therapy hasn't. I DID retail shop at Cosco so now I'm stocked for Armageddon with enough toilet paper and cans of garbanzo beans. And I shared with my neighbors because I can't eat 5 avocados at once.

Then it was time to have a wee cry and a lie down on the couch where I still am. I only wish a catered meal company was coming over with a delicious vegan dinner, piping hot under a silver cover and a rose in a bud vase, like a Fred Astair movie when they ordered room service and I was sitting in a slidey long gown with satin mules on my feet, with tufts. And someone else (oh the servants) had fed the cats and the whole house was spanking clean and so on.

Sometimes I get tired taking care of myself.

I believe that's all I want to share right now. Perhaps it was a bit too much. Avert your eyes if you must.

I heard the most wondrous Patti Smith wail about Bagdad with drums and clashy music I had to sit in my car VERY LOUD until it was done then Sky Cries Mary I think I have to sleep in my car after a 12 hour work day and another tomorrow so I can fill up on noisy rustley heaven music even while I snooze. I give thanks for poetry rhythm guitars drums banging in my skull o yes o yes.

Sheesh, I'm one pooped midwife. And I left the heat on in my house all day. Grand. The cats were cozy. I wish they'd get busy and pay the bill.

No, I'm not on acid.

All my clothes feel too tight. I think I woke up in someone else's body. Tonight I get to go over to my neighbors and watch Dexter. Dexter is an obsession. You want him on your side, believe me. Otherwise it's portions of you in garbage bags. In the ocean.

Haiti, May, 2010

I ask you, why bother

when you’ve seen the smoldering slag

the numberless sorrows their faces in shadow

you know they will never count the bodies

widows pull themselves through with thin fingers

children kiss your hands as if you could reach them through the bars

all you have are empty pockets

your heart a walled cage

your eyes blinded by the sunlight

illuminating everything

I sent out a manuscript today. There it goes, on email wings. They want a hard copy too. This comforts me. Then I spent a long time at 3rd Place Books. Just to be around them. The smell. The feel of books in my hands. The lovely pages. I bought Ginsburg's Howl which I owned in aught '68. It was only 7.98. Just right. In the rain.

I was never this young.

I just finished reading Mystic River. After reading Gargoyles. Dark and scary and the things we do to get by. My new bathroom is sparkly and white. I don't know why I put those two things together but it makes sense to me. I can always go into my new sparkly bathroom and DISAPPEAR.

Our handsome brown president is coming to Seattle. I wish we would become sane in the US. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be happening any time soon. There are too many loonies in high places. Loonies.

I ALWAYS go out into the garden and pull weeds bare handed. Then I spend 10 minutes scrubbing off the dirt under my nails, ground into my skin, etc. I then put on gloves but there's dirt inside them. Why is that? And I have twelve pairs of gloves, in various stages of decomposition. My favorites have holes at the end of every finger.

I bought a Japanese gardening tool. You could kill a person with it. It's the only tool I will ever use again. I feel like a samurai in the garden now. Take that, you weed!

The room is freezing, there are three hot air balloons outside and we are four in this room. We're remarkably polite to each other. My bedmate snores but I'm sworn to secrecy about her identity. Besides, her snores are so cute and as my mother would say, lady-like. Very Southern, actually. Little snorts and sighs. I'm no longer interested in food. We went Italian last night. There were several bottles of wine and mountains of pasta. Mountains. We ate 'family style' so the platters kept coming. I can only eat so much.

It was all midwives, eleven of us. First we told the story of our name, then we went around and told the story of our birth. Then we told jokes, mostly dirty. We were making so much noise I'm sure it was a good thing that we were in a separate room far away from the main dining room. Besides being midwives we are an ocean of talent. We're writers, actors, musicians, painters and flower arrangers. This is important because we might have to retire and then we'll have something else to do.

And that's all for now.

Instead of sitting in the freezing room and listening to another speech, I'm going for a walk. There's a mall, a retirement village and a business park. Fortunately, there are birds and more crickets and sun.

I'm in Nashville, well somewhere outside Nashville in a Marriott, uck, where the conference is being held. There is bad food, nice beds, a weeny swimming pool and air conditioning. The outside is mostly concrete with small patches of grass. I went outside last night in the dark. I had to find some food I could actually eat. Like a bean burrito. The hotel gave us 'vegetarian lasagna', a gloppy hunk of carbos and a few whittled carrots. Today I tried a pretzel under a warmer thingy with squeeze bottles of mustard. Mustard, I thought, I like mustard. I got a pretzel and squished a whole bunch of mustard on top. One big bite and I entered a deep dark sad feeling of disappointment. It wasn't mustard, it was 'liquid cheese food'. Bletch. The South is grand and creepy, especially when trying to be meat free. If I liked barbeque, I'd be fine, I think.

BUT. There are crickets. All day, all night. I saw a few on the sidewalk. In spite of the food. Crickets cheered me up and helped to me live another day.

It sucks to be a food snob. It's stupid, actually. My friend Tommy had a theory. In the end times, if you couldn't eat garbage food, you'd die faster cuz you couldn't get vegetables and o, fruit. I don't care. I'd rather not eat than eat mashed potatoes mixed with bits of ham and dyed yellow. Under some flattened green beans. Ish.

Tonight we're gonna go into downtown Nashville and go to a restaurant. Maybe I can convince everyone to try a vegetarian restaurant. Otherwise I'll be reduced to the salad and some salted peanuts from the vending machine. Maybe I'll just drink heavily so I won't mind.

Nah.

Love from Your Travel Hostess

My eyes hurt and I'm not even on the red eye flight yet. It's an anticipatory scratchiness. Like flying to Hong Kong which is a circle of hell. Even if they give you a toothbrush and lettle white socks. At some point, you just want to start screaming. And punching your neighbors who are SLEEPING, ferfucksake. They let you watch a hundred bad movies though. It's a cosmic experience to watch Jackass while flying over the Pacific. I think the Pacific is about a hundred million and seven miles wide.

I'm hoping to take Nashville by storm, whatever the hex that means.

I discovered a CD my kids made for my big b'day party last February. It's amazing. I don't know hardly any of the artists. Except for Kimya Dawson. And a week later, J broke up with me.

Grrrrrrrr.

Um, maybe I'm not done with my anger. What do you think?

Yesterday I called an ambulance for a bleeding man. He whacked his head on a cut branch while running in the Arboretum. He had blood dripping off his sunglasses. After the aid car guys got there, he had a dramatic bandage on his head. Today I passed an elderly Asian woman as I walked along Lake Washington. She was digging mushrooms at the base of the pin oaks. She had a garbage bag full. She rejected the ones with the red bumpy tops. I trusted her on that. I passed a bunch of gardeners eating their lunches in the their trucks.

My dad used to bring wild mushrooms home. He'd fry them in butter and garlic, the ONLY WAY to eat mushrooms. And fresh caught trout.

Now I'm preparing to write a talk on grief and loss for the conference I'm going to. In Nashville, land of iceberg lettuce and country music.

Everything I just told you is true.

What do you do at night? I go out and hose the raccoons, why? Varmints.

Last night I saw a taxi driver kneeling and bowing on his prayer rug in front of the elementary school. His trunk was open. He was facing North. Isn't Mecca West or East, depending on your orientation? Maybe you can get to Mecca over the Polar Cap.

We don't see public prayer often in America. I felt tenderness for him. I wondered what his prayer consisted of.

The last time I prayed, I was involved in a medical emergency. Midwives sometimes have those. I was saying under my breath two mantras. One was fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. The other was Holy Mary, Mother of G-d. Many times. Swearing was theraputic. Calling on the mother of the baby Jesus seemed appropriate at the time. Fortunately for all, no one was harmed.

I meditate but that's different. An emptying out, an emptiness. Praying feels full, noise and cymbals and flashing lights. Maybe that was the ambulance.

what I saw Saturday night

I saw this couple dance on Saturday night. In SoDo. They were AWESOME.

Speaking of turtles. There was an article in the NYT yesterday about loggerhead turtles in the Gulf and the legions of volunteers who have identified nests and have shipped them very carefully to the Atlantic side so the baby turtles hit clean un-oiled water after they hatch. I wept on the paper reading the story. Baby turtles with their little flippers, turtles with wings. Mother turtles don't lay eggs until they're 30 years old. The volunteers listen to the nests with stethoscopes so they can tell when the eggs are getting ready to hatch. Then the turtles dig out of the sand and blast off to the water like wind-up toys.

I would totally be a volunteer if I lived there. I'd be a turtle midwife.

There's an angry man walking up and down outside my house yelling into his cellphone that he's 'gonna come and beat your effing ass...' Yesterday he left in his car, stared me down as he passed, did a u-turn and came back to his driveway. He'd driven a block. I think some people wake up angry and stay that way. Asleep--angry are their two modes. Or maybe there are three. Asleep, angry and drunk.

He better be careful. I have attack cats and they'll mess him up. They're patrolling the perimeter right now. In their little kitty flak jackets and wee sabers.

The wild kingdom and Christians

Part I. I went to the dentist this week. My dentist retired and sold her practice to a new guy. If I could take a helicopter to his office, I might be able to get there within a reasonable time. As it is, I'm usually held up by bridges, passing trains, earthquakes and the like. I mean, the dentist is a good time but I'm always late.

However, I went to the new guy. I had an appointment. I have a fear that if I don't regularly get my teeth cleaned, I will find all of them on my pillow one morning and then no one will ever date me again. Although the thought of dating makes me nauseous. Regardless.

I was waiting in the little office area after checking in with the receptionist (ahem) who was wearing a lot of make-up and many types of jewelry, especially a large ring in the shape of a blue bow. I sat with my Newsweek and it slowly dawned on me that I was listening to a Christian rock station. I just used Christian and rock in the same sentence. My old dentist listened to NPR. I debated. Should I just get up and walk out? Maybe it was just her radio and the (sic) music was not piped into the whole office. Will I be supporting a rabid whacked family man with sixteen children?

I allowed him to clean my teeth. He was a nice young man. And yes, the music was throughout the office (gag). I have a dentist within walking distance of my house. I'm thinking of switching. I might ask about their musical taste first.

Part II. I came home late the other night after a long difficult birth. I was pacing and muttering in the back yard under the quarter moon when I began to notice a crunching and smacking sound coming from the grape arbor over the hot tub. Then a raccoon head popped up among the leaves. I grabbed the hose and chased him/her out of the yard. Foe vanquished.

However. I went inside and found the big cat cavorting in the living room, that thing they do when they've got something to 'show' you. My foot touched a soft object in the dark and when I turned on the light I found a headless squirrel. This takes effort. Hugo had to drag the squirrel through TWO cat doors to get to the living room. I told the squirrel I was sorry and dropped it into the garbage.

Cats keeping the yard safe for democracy. Life and death under the big top.