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.

My sister sent me a quart of New York maple syrup for my birthday. Do these people know me or what? My dad once tried to make maple syrup on the kitchen stove. It was a mess and oooh, was my mother pissed. You have to tap all the trees and gather a buttload of sap. Then you boil it for, oh, a month or something. There is a lot of foam you're supposed to skim off. Well, dad wasn't home all day so that chore fell to good old mom, which did not make her happy. It usually boiled over and then became a hardened rock-like substance which I think she had to chip off. THEN the stuff burned. Yeah. After that, we bought maple syrup from road side stands. Sugar houses are a whole big deal and if it boils over, you haven't created sculptural forms on the kitchen range. Gawd, my mom was so picky. Sheesh.

Then there was the time my mother pressure cooked chestnuts. The pressure cooker blew up and there was this big KERBLAM on the ceiling. It was there for a loooonng time. Did I tell you that my mother was a terrible cook. When she burned the peas, she called them 'barbequed' and we ate them. Yum. I learned to cook out of desperation. And I discovered that scallops don't have to be rubbery globs, gag inducing.

today is my birthday and the cats are on a DIET. They are inconsolable. They lie in wait for us at dinnertime, meowing and tossing their starving eyes our way. I've tried to explain about diseases and diabetes but they could care less. Lola was out eating grass earlier. It was so pathetic. I have to write a poem for Thursday's group. I hope my writer friends can tolerate a few more suicide poems. It's all I can seem to write lately. For some reason.

My friend Jude took me to lunch at a fancy veg restaurant today and the food was beautiful. I don't use that word lightly either. It was so good we were sort of licking the plates. Discreetly, of course. I've already admitted to Jude that I have been using her meditation bench for several months. She left it at my house so I started using it. One day I turned it over and there was her name. oops. I told her and she said, aw, keep it. We figured out that we are sharing butt sitting practice. We might all go to India together at the end of the year. For a month. Whoa.

Oh, I almost forgot. Maya sent me TWO PAIRS OF SHOES for my birthday. Danskos, red ones and black ones. I almost passed out from happiness. The best present ever.

I got a therapist today. She's nice. (what kind of word is that, nice?) I spilled my guts and she sat there calmly. Ah, trauma.

Here is a thing. With trauma, I feel a sense of doom, like something else bad will happen, SOON. There will be another phone call, someone I know will have something bad happen. I don't know what it is, or where it will come from. It's an earthquake feeling, the ground bucking and heaving, the asphalt rising up and acting like a snake. Hissing.

Rebecca's satsuma is breaking open. Actually, it is wizened, a geriatric citrus item. It needs a walker and a crafts hour.

and I'm still pissed at my brother for killing himself. maybe he couldn't help it. my dharma teacher said this is trauma. it sure as shit is. I didn't even know what trauma was until now. not like this. this sucks.

the suicide book is called Silent Grief and I can only read 2 pages at a time. then I need a break. I am so grateful to Rebecca because she can look right in my eyes and she doesn't flinch. not at all. a lot ot people can't do it. they flinch. this pain is worse than knee surgery. worse than anything.

yoga part deux. Yesterday I went to yoga class again. This time it was a teacher with a red beard. All the other people in the class weighed about #12 and were made of rubber. Seriously. They could lick the floor backward. I still dripped with sweat. I sat out a few poses involving standing one one toe and kissing your own ass. The teacher came over a few times to 'correct' my posture. He told me to 'lift my heart' which is technically impossible. I tried, however. You would have been proud of me. He reminded everyone not to do a shoulder stand if they were on the first three days of their periods. Umm, so the blood won't run down their stomachs and their nice leotards??

At night, Patti and I went to Mimi's poetry thang. We were late so we missed some of the poetry but the end was reserved for a performance artist. Ok, I am so not hip. No way. I don't get it. So there is this lady lying on the floor with her face covered with a piece of paper. All around her are clothes pins, blue plastic dowels, poker chips, chunks of wood, ball bearings, round wooden coasters and two light boxes with photos on them. She sits up and starts talking about garbage, it used to mean something to someone, the discards and she's walking about and picking up stuff and looking at it like it's the holy grail and sometimes she steps on stuff which is, I think, an accident. Then she tells a story about a sweater she wrassled from a snow bank and she washed it and now she wears it even though it is a little stained (eewww) and we should love our junk, our garbage and the dump. The dump. Well, I have some serious garbage in my basement and sometimes I go down there armed with garbage bags and my intention to CLEAN IT UP, DAMMIT and after a few hours I come back upstairs defeated. A trip to the dump is cathartic, a divesting, a giving forth, it ain't precious anymore. And I can recycle and feel righteous.

So.

After, Patti and I went to her house and drank wine. She was a real sport about the performance artist. She might even go with me again sometime. We talked about suicide and trauma and it was the end to a perfect evening.

yesterday I took a walk around Seward Park and the sun was out and many people were riding, jogging, running, strollering etc. As I rounded the last turn, Rainier was shining in full snowy splendor and a guy on a bench was playing the accordion, music stand and everything. Reminded me of Mrs Federico, my old piano teacher who also taught 'accordeen'. She decided I was too skinny and would feed me spumoni ice cream after my lessons. Spumoni ice cream had little green and red bits in it and it was gross. Sometimes it was peach ice cream, also very exotic.

My writing group read too and we were so good. Once again, Martha was totally angelic (in turquoise this time). Even her FOLDER with her poems inside was turquoise. And once again, she had memorized or mostly memorized her poems. The last one was a sestina and it was truly gorgeous.

I really want to feel better. I am seeing a therapist on Monday. I have taken to sitting in my car and listening to the same song over and over. My friend Martha lent me a suicide book. I'm sure it will be a jolly read.

lunar eclipse, copper penny in the sky. everyone driving while looking up. a bunch of 'burners' in the park singing 'total eclipse of the heart' a clump of them. tomorrow night a poetry reading and I have nothing to read or wear, not even new shoes. I want red shoes or purple shoes, something with flowers or polka dots. my heart hurts so much I can't write about it. it all comes out as barbed wire and oil spill.

My next poem on qarrtsiluni is now up: http://qarrtsiluni.com/2008/02/10/sequence-5/ and you can read it, listen to it and MAKE COMMENTS. I welcome comments, honest. You know who you are, you who read my blog and never talk to me. Not that I am keeping track.

I went with my daughter to a record store, a place I don't go to anymore and I spent a lot of money. A lot. We also went to Goodwill and we entertained ourselves trying on clothes over our clothes, a la K-Mart style. Apparently, we have great thrift stores here, much better than LA. Well, I sure hope so. It is perverse, what is called 'fashion' for the ladies. High heel pointy toed shoes and sweaters with fake fur collars. In pink, yikes.

I did get Dusty in Nashville, brilliant. But the other music I bought was, well, an impulse buy. Can I just say that when you go in a music store and you go to the little place where they have headphones and many selections, don't do it, just walk away. Because the music sounds GREAT and interesting and edgy and you end up with a pile and the clerk at checkout is looking at you because you are yet another sucker who fell for the headphone thing again like they always do.

Then we came home and I made an enormous pot of minestrone soup and we watched an '80s Agatha Christie set in LA with Sue Grafton as the screen writer and horrid wooden acting and '80s hair flips with lots of product and the women in those rayon dresses you can see their underwear through and chest hair on the men. Blue mascara on everyone.

We also went for a bike ride yesterday on a trail that is used by everyone, bikes, skates, strollers and so forth. We got yelled at by a line of agro bikers who were obviously pretenders to the Tour de France throne. ONE LANE, ONE LANE...LEARN THE RULES BEFORE YOU RIDE!!!!!!!!!!! They were ridiculous and we were hysterical. Then there were those guys without helmets riding single speed bikes with no brakes...What is that? You stop by running into a tree?

Sometimes I don't understand my species.

I'm back from retreat and I don't think I can talk about it. In fact, I can't. But as soon as I got back, I went to a birth, had an open house at my clinic and entertained my daughter who was unexpectedly in town. Sheesh, no easing back in or anything.

Lola and Wishbone are, according to the vet, obese and at risk for diabetes and other dread things and they have to go on a diet. Ok, they are rather big, in a nice rounded kind of way. They are not going to like dieting. And they will become those annoying kind of cats meowing at 4 in the morning because they are hungry. Sigh. I haven't told them yet. There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

tomorrow I leave for a week long retreat, no phone, no laptop, no reading, just sitting, walking and going to bed early. In the woods, with oatmeal. But today I took my first yoga class in, oh, 20 years. Oh my gawd. I was there at 8Am with a borrowed mat made of some weird rubber stuff. The teacher strode in, all ropey muscles and white teeth and WHAM, we were twisting and hauling our legs over our head and building our 'core' and making whistling noises when we in and ex-haled. I was dripping with sweat and my hands kept sliding forward because they were WET. I wasn't sure I was going to make it. At one point, I thought I might just tip over and land with a crash but with a supreme effort of will, I stayed aloft. I signed up for a month because I am nuts. I have to do something about my back so if this doesn't kill me, it might work. I actually went for a walk later and thought I would have to call a cab half way through. I'm going to bed now, I'm exhausted.

I sent out work yesterday. Rebecca is right. Send out work often and sometimes it gets published, duh. Then I want to publish a book. Of my poems. Just me. Yeah. I am going to write a poem about dolphins, unicorns, dew drops, mauve and death. Oh, and snow flakes and snakes.

My dumb cat Lola licks me like a dog. Then she bites my sleeve and shakes it. She has a mysterious inner life.

Suicide group was, er, fun? Well, we sit in a circle and wring kleenex. I am actually pissed at my brother right now for offing himself. It has wrecked my health and it has been really expensive, what with the plane trips and visits to doctors and therapists and extra supplements and bottles of port consumed and so forth. I am so not ready to forgive him. I may be there one day, I'm sure. When I was driving tonight to the meeting, I was thinking "I don't need this group, I'm fine really, I just have a little back problem and I can't sleep and I am angry at almost everyone." So I told them and they so got me, they nodded and wiped their eyes and laughed in this weird, comforting way. The uses of grief. The novel.

I also realized that I cannot write in a crowded coffee bar. Some people can, I don't get it. I'm afraid someone is looking over my shoulder and reading my half-baked stuff, the stuff I write when I am getting wound up. And I took my new mac which is all white and shiny and I am such a dork because I don't know how to use most of it. Which reminds me, I am going back to the apple store VOLUNTARILY tomorrow so I can have a session with a blue shirt person who can show me what all the little hoppy icons can do, whohoo. Maybe I'll see my savior Evan. Maybe one day again I will write a poem. For now I read my stuff. I like to. I'm pretty good. And if you want, you can go to qarrtsiluni and hear me read, way creepy.

Today was super football something or other and I watched for 5 minutes or so. I don't actually understand football or the national interest in sitting on the couch eating snack foods and yelling at the television. Profoundly a dimwit about it. It feels unpatriotic somehow but I would rather watch some BBC Jane Austin thing with my cat. Lola is watching tv right now. She really likes nature shows, of course. If there are birds or lizards, all the better. I do believe she is getting smarter and may begin to speak any day now. Football just doesn't hold her interest and I can't say I blame her.

Tomorrow is suicide support group, part II. Can't wait. I don't think we had homework. I just wonder if I have to tell my story again. I might be tempted to embellish a bit. My friend Patty told me a whole bunch of cannibal jokes tonight and then she wondered if it was appropriate. I think cannibal jokes are perfect for most occasions even though I don't personally know any cannibals.

Exxon/mobil is scum. The largest profit in history??? Gawd.

peace on earth

and good will toward certain people that work at the apple store like Evan who fixed my problems, well not the bad hair problems but I was so pitiful because I dragged in the offending printer too and said basically I was going to sit on their little black stool until everything was fixed. And he fixed everything and I felt so grateful I was driving home and the sun was out just a bit and I realized the feeling I was having was happiness. Whoa.

Then I went to Martha's house and she has a watsu pool in her back yard and she did a watsu session with me. The water is body temperature and you get in and she swirls you around and sometimes takes you under water and she bends you all up and then she cradles you and swooshes you around some more. It was amazing when I closed my eyes and the sun burst out behind my eyelids and I thought about the whole amniotic thing which is, I think, the point. Martha wanted to know how I was doing and I told her I was OK and during the swooshing and floating I thought about my brother. He will never get to do watsu. I imagined him in the water floating around and crying and letting all the sadness go out. Then he could just worry about having pruney fingers. I don't always know what to say when someone asked about my 'feelings'. I think they are in a safe place for now. Monday I can go to suicide group again and I'll see how I do.

I personally recommend that in lieu of killing yourself, you have a bath until you are wrinkly and you've gotten the newspaper all wet and the tea is all gone.

It is a kindness to the rest of us.

Jack Straw said nyet but you can hear me read on qarrtsiluni.com. And my lovely new apple won't print anything from WORD. It WILL print from my email so maybe I should email my poems to myself and print from there...GRRR. So back to the apple store and the blue shirts.

I had my hair ironed today. I'm in the growing-it-out stage, so right, I have the recently released look and I have been trying to pretend I look, you know, dashing and debonair, however my hairdresser person disabused me of that idea pretty quick. She said, "I can fix that." Now I have actual bangs and really straight hair that is all swingy because she ironed the whole thing. I will not be ironing my hair any time soon. I would burn myself and end up looking like Edward Scissorhands after a laundry accident. So for one evening, I am going to walk around my house swinging my head and pretending I am John Lennon in the first Beatle's movie. I think I look smashing. Maybe I'll have a little glass of port too and put on my fleece bathrobe, ol swingy haired me, la la.

whenever it snows in Seattle, all the inappropriate-type drivers in their inappropriate cars try to go down the road VERY FAST, especially on the interstate. We cautious stay-at-home types enjoy the evening news, therefore.

Where I learned to drive, it was cold and icy for 6 months of the year, with large intimidating piles of snow to boot. You HAD to have snow tires. You LEARNED to turn into the skid. You were in an inevitable roll-over at least once. You drove VERY SLOWLY, especially when there was zero visibility and all you saw were the little reflector things by the side of the road marking the miles. You wore many layers of clothes, in case. You carried flares, in case. It was just life, man.

Then I moved here and what the f---??? In rain, drivers slow down and squeek along, whatever. But, hey, snow!!! We own a 4 wheel drive!!!! We can go VERY FAST, even though our wheel base is 14 feet in the air!!! And we look so stupid hanging up-side-down from our seat belts by the side of the road. On the evening news, yeah!

What I really wanted to say is that there was a guy on tv last night who was 'stretch man' cuz his skin was waaaaayyy stretchy. He could pull his neck skin over his face, yikes! There have to be some possibilities for him, I think. He could wrap his arms around his girlfriend 2 or 3 times. He COULD pin his ears to his lips for an interesting costume. He could, literally, be beside himself. ( How's Andy? Oh, he's beside himself on the couch and I'm having to get out the vacuum.)And inagine his other unmentionable features, I'll let you go there.

I'm so happy I got 2 more books of poems by Dean Young. When I read poems I like, I am extremely happy. Hooray for the effort. Continue with quirks! Staple your lips to your ears, listen up, harp seals! Forge the palaver! Announcement is immanent.

I am writing on my new apple and it is ok for right now. I'm afraid I actually have to go to the apple store and have a 'session' with a young person who will secretly scorn me for my ineptness. I DO like the way the little icons jump up and down when you put the cursor on them. However, I am fearfully ignorant of most of the functions...

Still contemplating a satsuma. It is hard now, like a walnut or a doorstop. I could hurt someone with it if I threw it. It is no longer edible, so technically it isn't food any longer. Fruit is supposed to be alluring and juicy. The plant strategy to continue the species. We're supposed to eat fruit. If you're worried about taking life, fruit likes it, it says, yeah, bite me. And scatter my seeds. Oddly comforting, if you think about it. Cows, apparently, have a different reaction if you bite them while they are just minding their own business out in the pasture.

I bought a new computer, an apple. I feel like I have gone to the other side, the side with the groovy 'design concepts' and the perky 'geniuses' in their blue shirts in the apple store, yuck. But I gave them my pc and it has all my poems on it and I sorta backed them up, mostly and they are supposed to transfer all my stuff to the apple laptop and it will be all pretty and appley and shit.

I just finished reading The Sun, which I read from cover to cover every month. I love The Sun, I love the black and white photos, I love the interviews with doom makers, I love the depressing short stories. My goal is to be published in The Sun. I am thinking about sending flowers and candy, maybe that would work. Or a stripper-gram, that might get their attention. This month, the interview is with a mushroom expert guy, honest. The whole earth will be cured by fungi and slime mold eating petrochemicals and slag heaps (what are slag heaps anyway? like when they remodel a 60's house and take out the carpet, no that would be shag heaps). And mushrooms are intelligent, they 'communicate' with each other and they scrub the air and so on. Ok, the guy did do some psilocybin during his research, didn't we all? And there are like about a million kinds and we don't even know what most of them are up to.

and furthermore

Coach Holmgren of the Seahawks said that the 9 mil had 'nothing to do' with his signing a new contract. Right.

illness

is a thing, for sure. I went on retreat and we were at Crsecent Lake at the Olympic Park Institute, so gorgeous, I mean really gorgeous, eagles and deer and mountains and nature everywhere. And we got to sit in this beautiful hall, so quiet, dim lights and the usual squirming and pain in the knee and so forth. Then, I got really sick, fever, cough, nasty snot, the whole tortilla. And we are staying in little cabins with plastic on the matresses. We're not supposed to read or anything but I brought Dean Young and I'm trying to read him and with a --pfffffft--the ceiling light burned out so true misery set in. Like any good Buddhist, I left as soon as I could. Rats, actually, but I thought I might die during the night. Ok, so it is just a cold, you say. Yeah, but it could have gone into my ear and into my brain and KILLED ME. Of course, my teacher told us that Ajahn Chah, a Burmese teacher, had to have his teeth extracted so he walked to the neighboring village and had them pulled out WITHOUT ANESTHETIC, ow-ey. And I'm whining about a lousy cold. Anyway.

Today the sun is coming in the windows and illuminating all the little cat nose smears where they sit and look out and make that jittery cat noise with their mouths when they are watching birds. Maybe they think they are sounding like a bird and 'calling' to birds. Hopeless, really hopeless.

I found a new poet

well, not new, but new to me. Dean Young and I am reading Skid. Please read him, you won't be sorry. He makes me laugh and gasp. I live for good poems and he wrote a slew. Of good poems. I need to read all his books. You can listen to him read out loud too. It's weird, listening to your laptop talking in a deep male voice. Like people walking around talking (you think)to themselves. The schizophrenia phenomenon, with a phone thingy in their ears.

Why, when the sun comes out, do you see massive dust and cat pawprints on everything? I think it is some kind of black arts. Your eyes are affected by the light rays and smudges, smears and fur leap up and attaches to windows, picture frames and the couch. Because after the sun goes down, all is normal again. I have another theory about cobwebs involving malevolent thoughts and eating ice cream after 10PM.

Those 6 poems

I sent out yesterday, I think they weighed more than 13 oz which is the limit for the post office....sheesh, so they will return to me and I have to mail them in person so the post office person can see me?? and the fact that I am not wearing any incendiary devices around my waist?? or the envelope is shaped like...an envelope and not a bread box or??? Cripes, I didn't even know the rules.

I got accepted into quarrtsiluni and I have to record myself reading the poems. Gawd, I hope I can figure it out. Dana did it, she recorded herself reading her poem and it was brilliant, because it was kinda monotone and cool and creepy. I loved the way it made me shiver.

I think g-d is mad at us in the NW. It was pouring, THEN HAIL, THEN SNOW. I drive an Insight hybrid which weighs about 3# so any ice, snow etc makes me extremely nervous, plus the visibility factor. I am not returning to the streets until this current weather action calms down. And I am swearing off cookies, as of today. I might need cookies anonymous. My name is Beth and I have a cookie addiction.

I did it

I sent out 6 poems tonight, before midnight so it counts. And I am sitting on one of those blow-up ball chairs that are SO DORKY and ugly but my back has been giving me fits and maybe it will help. I got my site meter to work and Dubai is on there and someplace in Korea. Kinda freaky.

I got together with a friend yesterday whose mom killed herself and what a relief to talk to her. She says that the feelings are like a beach ball you try to hold under water but they just pop up randomly, like in the supermarket when you are staring at the gum section and suddenly you remember when your brother went to bed with gum in his mouth and during the night it got in his hair so he had this really funny messed up wad on one side of his head and you had to cut it out with cuticle scissors so he had a hole place in his hair. Then at breakfast your mom gets all mad because he has a chunk taken out of his hair and there is gum stuck to his pillow case which she hasn't seen yet...and now he is dead and you can't call him up anymore to kid him about gum-head.

So I'm sitting on a beach ball chair and my brother is still a goner. I think Monday is the next suicide support group drama meeting. Now I have friends who want to go to so I have company. Then after we can have a drink. I want a mixed drink but I never know what to order. I feel so unsophisticated. What is a grasshopper drink anyway, squeezed grasshoppers? Or electric tea, little lightening bolts? Maybe I'll just drink a scotch. And think of the moors and lichen and sweaters and the like.

Sometimes

you go through a whole day thinking it is Tuesday and actually it is Wednesday or Sunday. I did that yesterday so I get to have January 10th again because I thought it was January 10th yesterday. It might be a new strategy to redo a really bad day, just have it again. Correct the mistakes, don't drive too fast through a school zone, wear your seat belt and eat a lot of vegetables.

Tonight I had my writing group and we are hilarious. We shriek with laughter. It is so loud I think we rile up Rebecca's cats. We eat cheese and bread and grapes and we drink tea from real teapots and you would think we could be polite but we just refuse. And everyone brought a brilliant poem. And Rebecca sat with her feet on a chair because she has some serious problems with bones and burns and the like. We might have to fashion some accident proof footwear for her so she can no longer damage herself. But fashionable of course. And then we ragged on Laura for wearing homeless person Laplander clothes so we went out the door shrieking. I hope Rebecca's neighbor doesn't leave an evil note.

I am still contemplating the satsuma. It is getting rather hard. When I was meditating the other morning, there were 3 chickens crossing the road by my house. Like the joke. I'm not making this up. I would not make up stories about semi-wild life. Cars were stopping so they could cross and then the people were just staring because there were chickens (surrounded by pigeons, I might add) pecking around in the yard in Columbia City. The rooster was really pretty but man, are they dumb.

Ok, when I was trying to peel off my running tights, I kinda stepped on my right index finger and there was this crunch sound and now my finger is sore and swollen at the knuckle. It's too embarrassing the way I did it so I'm going to make up a story about how I rescued a bunch of people from a ledge 8 stories up and sprained my finger. Then the mayor will give me the keys to the city and I will be in the paper and famous and my finger will sport a big bandaid and the guy at the coop will carry my groceries to my car and I will be rich but generous and my poetry will all be published and I will buy all my friends some great shoes. The End.

more

in the way of bad poetry. I get a newsletter from my national organization of midwives and this month the centerfold (ha!) is a truly dreadful 'poem'. I am going to write to the editor right now and complain. There is enough suffering in the world. We don't need to add to it. I am so grateful to the good poets out there for continuing to write, even without big awards and fame and the like. I thank you from the bottom of my weasly little heart. Or gallbladder, which ever is the more appropriate organ.

many things happened

today and I feel like I've been in the dryer with the sneakers, a lot of banging around. But first I have to say that my daughter rocks and these pictures are hers and they are beautiful and I am so grateful that she has a restless eye, roving and checking and eliminating. We went to Yosemite together and I watched her taking photos and I began to see what/how she sees the world. Like when Rebecca says I am always thinking in poems, Eden is always thinking in light and dark and color...

I'm still watching the satsuma until my eye breaks open. This is a poem exercise. Try it. Don't use any words like orange, citrus, fruity, etc. I'm thinking Nepal, where I'm going in the fall. Really. A satsuma as K2.

I am drinking a glass of tawny port and it makes me think about the queen. I watched Jane Eyre last night on PBS and it was a good Brit version, Jane was actually pretty plain and Mr Rochester was appropriately tortured but the mad wife in the attic wasn't quite crazy enough. It made me think about antipsycotics and the story wouldn't work today because she would have a diagnosis and medication and it would be so...civilized. None if this setting English manors on fire and throwing yourself off the parapet. Anyway. After the glorious ending: a family portrait with a bunch of kids( they did have the hots for each other) and Rochester sitting there all gnarly but happy (still handsome in a ruined sort of way), they ran a docu on the queen, you know, Elizabeth, the current one.

Whoa, OK. What a life. One scene she was presiding over the Court or something and she is wearing this CRAZY crown and it was flashing like little flashlights every time she moved. And she has 12 crowns, for different occasions. And then there is the frickin' ocean liner she rode around on, her 'home away from home'. Then there are the HUGE crowds that come out to see her and sing happy birthday and god save the queen, etc. All because she is in a royal line, what the hell. Those Brits, who can understand them? And I can make fun because they are my people.

So I am going to toast the queen, with all her Corgis. She has a bunch of them. They are ridiculous. Yogi was a Corgi. I have his ashes on my counter besides a Buddha statue. Yogi was a bodhisatva with really short legs. Do dogs have Buddha nature? Of course they do.

furthermore

I am beginning to understand some things. It's like this, when the weather is this gross, everyone stays in and eats a lot of cookies because if you go outside the ground is actually MELTING. I am not kidding. I went for a walk by the lake and there were these drainage things and the earth was all collapsed from the 457th day of rain. I imagined going over to them and seeing if I would just sink down out of sight and it scared me so much I had to comfort myself with chocolate chip cookies. That, and a lot of tea. And pajamas. I got these pajamas for Christmas and they might be the best pajamas in the world right now. They are fleece, which is, I believe, a miracle fabric and I don't use that word lightly. They have snowflakes on them and they are blue. I could wear them all the time. I could wear them to work and maybe I will. I think all my clothes should be made of fleece. Sometimes, it is a real disadvantage not to have fur. I do wonder how the deer are doing all dripping wet right now. Maybe they have deer lounges out in the woods where they go play pool and drink mulled wine.

I actually sent poems to 2 different places today so maybe I don't have to next week. Rebecca is making us send poems in EVERY WEEK, gawd.

Further Instructions From the Fallback

Begin again (slip knot) to tell me what you are (heaving line bend)

Trying to say (sheepshank) where was he (thief knot) found and

When was this (clove hitch) anyway

First he tried a cowboy bowline too loose

Then an alpine butterfly his fingers didn’t work right

A Portuguese sinnet eluded him as did a lark’s head and a dog shank

Too complicated for a monkey’s fist tried a blood knot yes

A diamond knot closer a grief knot would do just right

One more thing

When Holly and I were coming back from the monastery in Oregon, I started making jokes about suicide. She thought I was being tasteless but I realized that I can make jokes about suicide if I want to. I GET TO IF I WANT. Sometimes people say something like, " If I have to hear that song again, I'm going to kill myself", then they sneak a little look at me to see if I'm gonna get all upset, like, how insensitive can they be??? But it's OK, honestly. There is pain and weeping. Then there are moments of brightness, like the house around the corner from me that is completely covered with lights. They need a generator so the neighborhood doesn't blow. I always go see that house this time of year. It makes me happy to see Santa, reindeer, the baby Jesus, candy canes, stars and spiral Christmas trees all in one big kitschy lighted up mess.

That's why the shrink guy I saw last week isn't too worried about me. He thinks I'm resilient, I'm not going to crack up or try to off myself. It was reassuring to be with someone who had confidence in me. A hopeful sign.

By the way. At the Zen place, we learned to make origami lotus blossoms. It was like crafts hour at the home.

so I was wrong

about the Zen people. They are actually human beings who happen to take a million vows and shave their heads and wear long black dresses and pants. And they eat chocolate and really good cookies. And they let us stay in their monastery and use their zendo, which was pretty generous of them. We were not so tidy so I thought they were awfully tolerant, considering. We had a fair amount of hair and we wore colors and we were all weepy and huggy. Although we did some hugging with them at the end. I cried so much but it was so acceptable. I didn't even have to talk about my brother or my dog. We did sing and dance too. Sandy Boucher and her partner Martha were our den mothers and they were very kind, like older post menopausal bodhisatvas in big wool socks.

On New Year's Eve, we all rang the HUGE bell by the altar. I would live there so I could do that again. There are all these other noisemakers too, like clapper things and a hanging wooden plank you hit with a big mallet while you wear earmuffs, whoa. I think there are a lot of rules but they didn't expect us to know them, thank goodness.

OK, so taking a shower was a bit complicated. The shower room was in the gym area, outside the dorms. So you go down there with your towel and soap and you have to turn on 4 showers in a row so the water gets hot. This means that you get your clothes wet so you take off your clothes, but the room is about 3 degrees so you are hopping around until you see steam rising up after about, oh say, 5 minutes, which is a really long time. Then you get wet but the air is so cold you don't really care that you got the soap off, you run over and get your towel and get dressed as quickly as possible. It was definitely a deterrent to the cleanliness thing.

Yes, I meditated a lot. It is the Balm of Gilead, whatever that is.

I love you, Lotus Sisters. You know who you are. You rock my world. Thank you for helping to save the world.

sing-a-longs

are annual fun for me. Because this month has sucked in such a big way, I forced myself to go to the Handel's Messiah sing-a-long as I usually do. You know, no rehearsals, volunteer orchestra and the Unitarian Church provides MOUNTAINS of cookies and hot cider. I sing all the parts, well not the soprano. It is too high. The bass is kinda low at times. I pretty much poisoned myself with a wide selection of cookies (and I ate a few grapes, 2 to be exact so I could feel like I have eaten fruit today) during the intermissions.

Tomorrow I go to a retreat at the Great Vow Zen Monastery with Holly. We are staying there until New Years. Fortunately we are not adhering to their schedule. I looked it up. They get up at 3:50 AM to sit, oh my gawd, and they go all day until 10 PM or such. Those Zen people, yikes. We are going to be singing and dancing and writing and doing theater. I'm not sure about the theater part. I feel so unstrung and wobbly, I might start throwing up or something. I think you can die from grief. I don't intend to do such a thing, however.

Holly's birthday is tomorrow and we are going to make her a cake with frosting. I think we should put sprinkles on it and wear paper hats.

I figured it out

Last night Dana and I visited Dante's 7th Circle, inner ring of hell, ergo:

· Inner ring: The violent against God (blasphemers), the violent against nature (sodomites), and the violent against art (usurers), all reside in a desert of flaming sand with fiery flakes raining from the sky. The blasphemers lie on the sand, the usurers sit, and the sodomites wander about in groups. Dante converses with two Florentine sodomites from different groups: Brunetto Latini, a poet; and Iacopo Rusticucci, a politician. (Cantos XIV through XVI) Those punished here for usury include Florentines Catello di Rosso Gianfigliazzi, Ciappo Ubriachi, and Giovanni di Buiamonte, and Paduans Reginaldo degli Scrovegni and Vitaliano di Iacopo Vitaliani.

So there you have it. Art violence, and we witnessed. They stuck a knife in art and killed it. We barely escaped with our lives. Whew.

poetry readings

beware. Tonight Dana Guthrie Martin and I went to a reading in my neighborhood. It was a kind of poetry hell, some featured readers and an open mic. Sounds tame, you think. Not so. Cody Walker was a featured reader and he was entertaining and thankfully, not full of himself. But the open mic, lord help us. Especially the lady who basically was preaching about Jesus saving us in a poem that went on for FOUR pages. I thought I might have to pass out and cause a commotion so she would stop. And then Dana, bless her, got up and read a poem about Jesus encountering a condom, reservoir tip and all. I was afraid we might spontaneously combust from the blasphemy. It was SOOO wonderful. Other readers felt compelled to read about thankfulness and praying because of the season. I just wanted to garrote them. I'm not in the mood right now for smarmy holiday remarks. Actually, I can't go to a reading ever again unless my friends are reading. At least I know they will be bearable.

Oh, the best part. Dana and I were reduced to passing notes. One of the other 'featured' readers read interminable confusing poems and every time I sneaked a look at Dana, she had that glazed look in her eye and a bright little smile on her face. Then he tried talking to her and he asked her out for coffee. Ha! She replied, " No, I don't think I can do that." It was a brilliant moment of evening theater.

I'm not sure Dana will ever accompany me again. And I can't say I blame her. It's the type of evening that gives poetry a bad name.

The movies

are so important. I remember when I was breaking up with my first husband and it was LA and I stayed up all night and at 3AM Sunset Boulevard came on and it was wonderful with Gloria Swanson and a dead guy floating in the pool. I totally forgot my whole life was messed up at 20. Movies are the panacea for so many things. Today my friend and I went to see Juno, an indie film and it was fantastic, funny and about pregnancies and how wrong they are sometimes in the right way but the music was written by SOMEONE I KNOW, Kimya Dawson. So great to hear songs I know in a movie. And so great for her to be famous. The script is by Diablo Cody, pure genius.

It took my mind off suicides and Yogi for 2 hours.

Last night I went to a suicide support group, kinda like AA but different. I felt normal there. I cried so much there was snot on my shirt and nobody minded. I told them everything and they didn't freak out or anything. It was such a relief.

My cat Lola has been on my desk in a serious way. There are cat prints on everything and the papers are rearranged. I think she is trying to steal my ideas. Except that she isn't very smart.
Or as they say in Juno, she's not the brightest bulb in the tanning bed.

Only 12 more days until this month is over. Nothing else bad can happen. I mean it.

Relentless

It's hard to take this personally so I'm going to try not to. My beloved dog, Yogi, is dying by degrees and I'm taking him to the vet tomorrow for the last time (euphemism-put down, put to sleep, etc). Shit. I just want something to lighten up already.

So a few years ago, I was having a very bad day so I put on Beethoven's 9th, very loud, got some cigarettes and some Scotch and lay on the floor in the living room with the windows open in October. It was cold, it was loud, it was pretty much of a drunken misery moment. Yogi came in, took in the whole scene, and left. I disgusted even my dog, old loyal friend. And HE had attitude with ME, the nerve, when I have seen him eat duck poop and roll in dead salmon.

God, I'm going to miss him.

For New Years I'm going to make some burnt offerings or something. What do you burn in those things anyway? Clothes that don't fit? Old love letters you were excited to get 25 years ago and upon recent viewing are rather stupid and lame? Boxes of horrid poetry you wrote in high school?

For my birthday next year, I'm going to have a Bad Poetry party. Everyone has to bring a bad poem, preferably one they wrote in college. Lois treated us to a poem about walking along the shore and thinking deep thoughts. Profoundly bad.

Last night

my writer friends and I read at (untitled) Intersections and we were brilliant. Rebecca Loudon, our mentor and guiding light, introduced us and she said kind and flattering things. We are from her two writing groups, The Foundry and The Wallingford Irregulars. I did not know but she has hosted writers since 1998. She began hosting writers as an experiment, to see what could happen in a non academic setting. Because she is an excellent poet and teacher, we flourish. Really. I was so happy to hear Martha's poem, Indigo, again. And she was angelic in pink. AND she had practically memorized her poems. Cripes. Rebecca has suggested that we memorize a favorite poem so I chose a Jorie Graham poem that's about 4 pages long. What was I thinking?


I bought shoes yesterday, with spirals on them. If there was a perfume called 'shoe leather', I would wear it. Kinda like 'new car smell' for guys. I HATE the whole shopping thing, especially right now, except for shoes. Then I can have a Fran's chocolate, the kind with salt on them.

Did I say how much this time of year makes me SHUDDER. The relentless christmas songs in all the stores, the towering piles of crap for us to consume. I even went to a toy store for Milo, who is 5. Holy mother of god, plastic, as far as the eye can see. So I got him 2 superhero dolls, they look like androids on steroids but they have capes, a very important fashion accessory when you are a 5 year old boy, apparently.

I admit it, I slept next to my new shoes. I can see them from the bed. They are on a little platform, like an altar. So maybe they are my version of superman in blue tights and a cape. So put me in jail.

So

when someone in your family commits suicide, you can stay in bed all day with the cat and call the crisis line for the suicide group. The person on the phone has to make sure you are ok, you aren't also suicidal too so they ask questions about your friends (yes, I have some), are you sleeping (no, of course not) and they tell you they are sorry. Then you call for an appointment with a therapist and they ask the same questions except they don't say they are sorry. They want to know if you need an emergency appointment. Wow. It is all so banal.

I feel like a pariah, being stalked by the suicide gene.

I read with my writer friends this Friday. Not suicide poems. Sylvia Plath did a damn fine job with Ariel.

Allentown, PA

where Annie and I stayed. We drove a lot. We talked a lot. We looked at a lot of pictures of my brother and his friends, mostly drinking. The weather mostly sucked. We went to a brewpub for dinner, the waitress spilled drinks all over me, and there were no vegetables on the menu. At all. People in PA smoke and eat fried food and iceberg lettuce. Between Scranton and Allentown, there was a billboard with a picture of the Dalai Lama on it. It felt like my friends put it there so we would see it. He was smiling with his big ole glasses on. I love him and he loves me back. I don't think he would ever kill himself.

leaving

for NY tomorrow, to see my sister who lives on the St Lawrence, practically in Canada. Our youngest brother committed suicide yesterday. How do you tell people this? Everyone gets the horror eyes. How do you live through such a thing? It's the 9th most popular reason people die in the US. I didn't know this. I wish I didn't know this. Don't Google suicide poems. They're awful, in a different awful way.

what to do

when it is cold out and you are wearing the bathrobe with the threads hanging out and stains on the sleeves.

Hot chocolate recipe:

Some milk in a pan
many scoops of organic unsweetened chocolate
some sugar

Whisk all together and heat up. Don't boil or burn so keep stirring. Add some vanilla at the end. Put in your big French cup, put your feet on the coffee table and savor.

thanks

For everything, the wide blue sky, the cold, my old dog who is better with medication, for Buddhists and artists and writers and Milo for turning 5, for mothers and the babies within them, for the turkeys who lived through another year, for the whole mess, may everyone have enough to eat today and a warm place to sleep.

Manifesto:

A written definition of intent or principles

Absurdism

1. A philosophy, often translated into art forms, holding that humans exist in a meaningless, irrational universe and that any search for order by them will bring them into direct conflict with this universe: "True absurdism is not less but more real than reality" John Simon.

2. An act or instance of the ridiculous: "This strained conceit never quite locates screen equivalents for the stage absurdisms" Village Voice.

The absurdist manifesto:

The intent is ridiculous. Put a paper bag over your head. If you can’t fight your way out of it, or you prefer the dark, smell of the pulp mill, crinkling and groaning of arboreal forest, continue your bag costume. Anonymity is comforting. Hold fast to your concepts. Sleeping dogs yip and mutter. Twitch. Cover your indelicate toes. Bite these pages.

My big vacation

I went to Oakland for the weekend. Try running in Oakland, near the Grand Cinema. I dare you. I left my friend's house and ran up the hill, which is a at a 90 % angle from her driveway. I am not exaggerating. OK, I wasn't running. I was kind of hopping a little and swearing. I got to the summit and the street plunged straight down to meet another enormous uphill. Crap. This is why there ARE NO PEOPLE ON THE SIDEWALKS. Why the hell would they want to go anywhere? They could just lie down and roll. Lake Merritt is flat, thank god, so I went there the next day. I saw a pelican by the overflow drainpipe. Weird.

We did go to the Grand Cinema twice, worth it to see old movie projectors and Tiffany glass in the lobby.

I can go back to the Wallingford Irregulars next week. I'm so happy my toes curl.

I had to buy another cell phone so I went to cell phone hell, the mall. At the entrance to the store there was a little girl ballerina in a pink tutu. Her hair was all pulled up into a little girl bun with pink fake roses. She was twirling and doing floaty arms. Her mother was right behind her in the store sitting at a card table with ballerina pictures on it. What is this, I said to myself. Maybe they are working on getting her over her fear of dancing in front of strangers. Or it is a prelude to Halloween. Or it is so surreal, the cell phone purchasing experience is somehow enhanced. Pink sticky-outy skirt, white tights and pink ballet slippers. And a hair bun. Yikes.

All the names of love: a pernicious manual

I never lie

I never said that

I have a plan

I have all the money you need

I can’t live without you

I can’t live without you

The bruises don’t show

I can quit any time I want

I have no secrets

I will never leave you

I promise

Of course, Seattle news is BIG WINDSTORM COMING. Tie the children down, get water, flashlight batteries and canned food!! And it was a bit windy, leaves pelting the streets, birds blown about. Thats it, no more. In the Northeast, we have some weather, frozen toes and winter forever and ever. This stuff is just so...mild, silly really. Only a few more weeks and I can rejoin my writing group. I am an amputated limb without them ( to steal from Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, or maybe The Lady in the Lake).

what to do on the weekends

Yesterday Judith and I went kayaking in South Sound. That is to say that Judith drove up from Portland loaded with gear and expertise and I showed up with gum boots and a kayak paddle that wouldn't go together (frozen apparently) and lunch and willingness. The day began foggy, so foggy we couldn't see across the bay. While trying to wiggle into her very narrow boat, I slid off into the water so I started wet, very wet. And cold. And I looked like I knew what I was doing, obviously. So we started out. It was...beautiful, quiet, lots of seals and sea birds. We stopped for lunch and by that time we were so cold we were hopping around like fools, hallucinating hot tubs, fluffy robes, big fires, etc. I took off whatever wet clothes I could. Then, miraculously, the sun came out and we were saved.

Today Ramey and I went to hear the Mozart Requiem. The lady next to me had symphony Tourrettes. She alternated between sighing, clutching her chest, tapping on her program, and groaning in time with the music. I closed my eyes and that helped. I realized that soloist singers get to wear big dresses that look like curtains. Where to they make such dresses? I don't know.

Today we made 67 jars of grape jelly, a long, messy process, much sugar underfoot and burned on the stove and the satisfying little 'pop' when the lids seal. Some of it is amber and some is pink, depended on the color of the grapes (of course). We ate a bunch with spoons, really the only way to appreciate the subtle flavors and so GRAPEY. Our neighbors said they opened their jar and ate it on ice cream. Then they just ate it plain, on their fingers. Now the counter is littered with jars. Oh, and there is still raw juice in the fridge, crap, and a TON of grapes outside on the vine. Just say no, let the raccoons have 'em.

Went for a walk around Seward Park. Wind blowing and rain, just right.

Busted

So I got a ticket for running a red light and it was one of those camera/video things on Denny and Fairview. I just got a ticket in the mail. Wha...!!! I don't even REMEMBER running a red light but, yup, there is my car cruising through the intersection. Crap. Now I feel all paranoid, like, whatever else did I forget last week? Did I rob a bank, have an affair, run naked through my neighborhood? I could feature the naked bit, cold air on my skin...

I have been called to jury duty countless times, even though I am emotionally unstable. The last time I HAD TO APPEAR even though I said, look, I'm a midwife, I have a crazy schedule, etc. You get these bus tickets and boy o boy, riding the bus to the courthouse, whew, many recently released persons having activities around the bus stops. Then there is the cattle call for juries, very unusual kind of experience. So I was an alternate for a guy accused of assault and battery. He was sitting there at the table with his lawyer, playing with a pencil and trying to look nonchalant. I said to the guy next to me, 'he looks so guilty" and he agreed, probably an anger management problem. Then the plaintiffs name was mentioned and it was an East Indian name so then we decided it was a hate crime too. We had the guy behind bars for years. Then the judge asked if anyone had a hardship and couldn't serve. I stood up and said,"I'm a midwife, bla, bla" and he said," get outta here".

Eden changed my pictures. I must convince her to continue to amuse me.

Dr Tesla's Grocery List

1. Dirigible
2. Salt substitute
3. Scabrous leakage stain remover
4. Milk, butter, eggs
5. Box of crosshairs
6. Breath mints
7. Milk of magnesia
8. Proper nativity set (with lights)
9. Mouthwash