adding steam

I'm telling you: I can get high off of being one of 99 on a stage in a park, playing Sousa marches and watching the old men in the audience cry.

starting off slowly

I think I will devote an hour of my morning trying to figure out where the bruise on my elbow came from. I don't have high hopes.
I'm scattered this morning. I keep laughing to myself at the memory of the cat, mid-hairball, in the middle of the kitchen floor. I picked him up telling him 'not in the house, mister!' and as I hustled him out the back door, he kept gacking away. And with every wheeze, I saw his toes splay out. Front paws and back paws, waving around, toes stretching every time a wave of hacking hit. 'I shouldn't be laughing at you' I told him. Oh, but I did.
Sometimes I start a week off by asking myself : should I give into whims this time? I don't think I will this week. Well, I don't think I will after I satiate my Cheez-its craving. Hello, vending machine breakfast.

nothing much

I read this phrase in a book today: 'a doomed, Octoberish oboe of a voice.'
Maybe a bookmark inching through a book is the only visible progress I've made.
I did, though, notice that there are four identical houses in a row in town. I could have said 'yes, I know where that is' if you'd shown me a picture of just one. But I couldn't have told you it had three neighbors that look just alike, except the fourth has red trim.
It's about that time of year when I start hankering for an orchestra again. Oh, and scarves.

Duck

When the neat white
Duck walks like a toy
Out of the water
On yellow rubber-skinned feet,

And speaks wet sounds,
Hardly opening
His round-tipped wooden
Yellow-painted beak,

And wags his tail,
Flicking the last
Glass water-drops
From his flat china back,

Then we would like
To pick him up, take
Him home with us, put him
Away, on a shelf, to keep.


-Valerie Worth

balance

Spring was a challenge for me, and I was dealing with the patches of haze and rain and uncertainty by keeping myself held very still. I have had a series of doctors appointments that haven't been leaning enough in one direction or the other enough to actually define, so I won't yet. And I dealt with that, and with a few other unexpected things, by setting all these rules for myself to keep myself tied to that wall so I don't fall off the ledge. You know? I'm not talking about the same sort of rule that was my January thing, when I made myself wake up a half hour early and go running. God. I kicked that habit in February. My new rules were things like a prescription for how I spend my Sunday evenings when my brothers are gone, and the order in which I eat my lunch. And sitting down at the piano during appropriate hours and playing inappropriate things--I mean, things without words and without anything else dictated beforehand. And I fricking started flossing by teeth every day. I realized, 25 years too late, that following rules is good for me and it was keeping all the WHAT NOW at bay. Oh, but this evening I am home alone and having no plans for this weekend and the WHAT NOW has come back. It kind of feels like panic, the kind you keep swallowed but that doesn't mean it's not there, it's just stuck in my chest. I am all of a sudden losing my balance, and the entire month of July is looming over me and it is heavy. I should probably concentrate on picking up the little things again. Flossing. Don't ask me to go for a run, but I might surprise you and do it unannounced.

You just don't forget

Today is the day I didn't pay my bills, and the day I bought three 75¢ paperbacks at the thrift store but just set them aside in favor of chicken wings and wine and the number two guilty pleasure in my life (number one being marshmallow fluff)--So You Think You Can Dance.
Yesterday, as we were heading down out of Canada, on the wrong highway--sad, but true--we stopped for one last visit to Tim Horton's, because I had the thought a few days earlier that I will crave a Tim Horton's iced hazelnut cappuccino for the rest of my life. We were down to our last Canadian pennies--sad, but true. Actually, we were out of our last pennies. About to tell the cashier to cancel the order. But a man in line behind stepped in and said 'oh no. Don't do that. How much do you need?' Do you know how much a difference 70¢ can make? It made the difference between one last iced cappuccino and one smaller last iced cappuccino. I'm glad we were on the wrong highway for those few kilometers, because at a different exit, would someone have spotted us the gap in change? This little bit was like the shadow of the overarching Big Generosity that let this trip go through as planned. I'm not just talking about the generosity of the uncle who had a cabin with open doors and my best friend paying for the gas and almost all of the food because, well, let's not worry about my finances tonight, maybe later. What I mean by Big Generosity is that the car died halfway there, and a family friend let us take--TAKE--her car for five days and 800 miles while Sarah's was in the garage. I want to be that person who PAYS THE 70¢ and I want to be that person who HANDS OVER THE KEYS. That's what I learned.

there and back

Since I was here I've been to Canada and back and I have thing after thing after thing I could-should write to pin the last five days down. If the alternative is cleaning and a slow fade, yes I will. Here is something: what kind of idiot am I, to go skinny dipping in Lake Huron late on the first night of summer but forget to take my watch off? I noticed the moisture bubble under its glass face at midnight and the next morning it stopped at 11:15.
I am full. Of sunburn and shit and renewed hope for good news and in humanity. I might say more.

DING

I am mad. At the dirty dishes. And my body. And the heavy traffic on the way home. And not being ready for the vacation I'm taking in a few days. And because I should be tired, should be asleep! but I am neither, and I'm going to have to make an uncomfortable phone call in the morning and and and and

unwinding

I'm losing track of how many picnics have been rained out
and the number of times
the duck's quack sounded like
a sneeze
and at the same time, we both said
'bless you'

with apologies to the 12 year old me

Sometimes I find the word 'shit' very liberating.

looking up

"The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

-Eden Phillpotts

He smelled like marshmallows

Yesterday I was sitting on a picnic table in a park, swinging my legs, eyeing the clouds, trying to will the dark ones into turning back around, and because I was looking up it took me by surprise when a little curly-headed blond boy was suddenly in front of me. He was probably two, three at the most, and he had these gorgeous big green eyes. He patted my legs and reached up and said ‘up up!’ I looked around and didn’t see a concerned mother anywhere, and well, what was I going to do but pick him up? So I did. He was adorable. He flung his arms around my neck and buried his curls on my shoulder. I stood up with him in my arms and thought, oh dang, did I just steal a baby? and thought maybe I should have had my cell phone on me so I could call, what, 911? Lost adorable baby in Gypsy Hill park? If no one else wants him I’ll take him home? After thirty seconds of me hugging him back and asking him, 'where’s your mommy?' I heard a lady yelling ‘Ronnie! Get your butt back here!’ and there was a heavy, bored-looking woman 50 yards away over in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette. Is that your mommy? She hollered again, so I set him down and pointed him in the right direction. She finally picked herself off the hood of her car and walked over to meet him in the middle. In that minute I thought that if there was a way for me to pick him back up and run off with him, I would. Change his name, give him a bath, and keep him.

chastised

I had to pee all morning. And my pant legs were still wet from my rainy commute. I'd forgotten about the meeting. So I was already over a barrel by not being prepared. Pushed further by a greek chorus of you're doing it wrong. I know. I am, I guess, not a team player. I felt the--ouch--slings of judgement and disappointment and plans for the future that will make this all worse. And I really, really had to pee. Do you know how sometimes, like after someone rips up the flowers you planted at your home, you feel like just moving out? I felt like that today.

THIS IS NOT A METAPHOR

I always forget to put pants on before I paint my toenails.

wanderlust

It's become the best part of the week, when I'm driving north on the highway on a Monday evening, coming home from the park in the next town down where I've just played a community band concert. Last night I felt as if I should just keep driving, my windows down, Vanda on shuffle (I always give them names), night all around me. I thought, well, in six hours if I keep driving north I could be at my parents' house. I sort of wish I had an excuse to run away. Or a not-excuse. It's hard to flee from comfort. Besides, New York is clearly not the answer. I have a recurring fantasy of giving fair warning to boss and family and friends and then disappearing for a week. I wouldn't make plans, but I'd take maps, and I'd take granola bars and a tent and my brilliant little car and we'd just see what would happen next.