It's Monday morning and I'm hunching and I am timing my blinks to the off-beats of the flashing cursor and wearing my self-flagellating earrings.
But,
that doesn't mean this last weekend was rough because it wasn't--aside from muscle aches (mine) and chemo aches (mom's) and sundry other brain and heart disconnects, I could scribble off a litany of other good things I did taste and see and feel in my bones. Like, I don't know, bacon cheeseburgers and goalies and Big Ideas and garden dirt between my toes and Mexican food and thrift store skirts and atomic kisses and draped, cuddly naps.
And then I ended the weekend alone, on the couch in my living room that still smells like a basement (the couch, not the living room), watching a few episodes from the first season of Friends and eating mini marshmallows from the bag until I fell asleep. My 'well, here you are!' gift to me.
Funny how I'm saying the same thing to myself this morning and it keeps trailing off in to ellipses.
6.28.2010
6.25.2010
part II
The summer has changed. I don't mean the shifting of the seasons way, I mean that I've reached part II. Done with the settling into a new place, learning new grooves to shuffle my feet along as I walk, figuring out the way to balance my reduced hours and wider skies. I have down pat the times and the strength it takes to hop on my bike and get to the other side of town and back. I never drive past my driveway by accident. My life is slow--by choice. It's about to get slower. My cousin/neighbor has left to travel across the country for the summer and that wall will be empty and that garden will be mine. And my sister/roommate and brother/buddy are leaving for seven weeks, too. I've done this before and sometimes it has NOT worked, but this go-round I think I will be happy to be an only child and content to come home to an empty apartment. For a time. It's just part II.
I'll think of it like it's the calm before the storm. In another few months this life will kick up a gear. But for now the remission suits me. My droopy body will fit snug into this light blue July.
I'll think of it like it's the calm before the storm. In another few months this life will kick up a gear. But for now the remission suits me. My droopy body will fit snug into this light blue July.
6.23.2010
very home
I'm never more proud to be who I am when I'm the daughter of a woman who sat through three hours of chemo today and yet just a few hours later is smiling and watching soccer and beating me at card games.
The fireflies of the world are loving this new summer. As I drove home tonight the dark green of the twilit fields was glowing, all these thousands blinking out their codes. I see you. One smashed onto my windshield as I coasted down the biggest hill. It left a glowing schmear in the middle of my vision. An exclamation point.
I'm pleased. I found a wonderful pair of shoes at the thrift store. I had cucumber and melon and pork for dinner. I get to be the one to lace up the back of a dear bride's gown. The neighborhood I live in looks very home in this light. I am, as a body, going to get stronger, and I am, as a soul, continually loved.
The fireflies of the world are loving this new summer. As I drove home tonight the dark green of the twilit fields was glowing, all these thousands blinking out their codes. I see you. One smashed onto my windshield as I coasted down the biggest hill. It left a glowing schmear in the middle of my vision. An exclamation point.
I'm pleased. I found a wonderful pair of shoes at the thrift store. I had cucumber and melon and pork for dinner. I get to be the one to lace up the back of a dear bride's gown. The neighborhood I live in looks very home in this light. I am, as a body, going to get stronger, and I am, as a soul, continually loved.
COMPOST: AN ODE
The beauty of the compost heap is not
the eye’s delight.
Eyes see too much.
They see
blood-colored worms and bugs
so white they seem
to feed off
ghosts. Eyes do not see the heat
that simmers in the moist
heart of decay—
in its unmaking making fire—
just hot
enough to burn
itself. In summer, it
burns like a stove.
It can—almost—hurt you.
I hold my hand inside the heap and count
one, two, three,
four.
I cannot hold it there.
Give it to me, the heat insists. It’s mine.
I yank it back and wipe it
on my jeans,
as if
I’d really heard the words.
And eyes
cannot appreciate sweet vegetable rot,
how good it smells
as everything dissolves,
dispersing
back from the thing
into idea.
From our own table we are feeding it
what we don’t eat. Orange rind and apple core,
corn husks,
and odds and ends the children smear
across their plates
are fed into the slow
damp furnace
of decay. Leaves curl at edges,
buckle,
collapsing down into their centers,
as everything
turns loose its living shape
and blackens, gives up
what it once was
to become pure dirt. The table scraps
and leafage join,
indistinguishable,
the way that death insists
it’s all the same,
while life
must do a million things at once.
The compost heap is both—life, death—a slow
simmer,
a leisurely collapsing of
the thing
into its possibilities—
hollyhock and cucumber,
bean and marigold—
potato, zinnia, squash:
the opulence
of everything that rots.
the eye’s delight.
Eyes see too much.
They see
blood-colored worms and bugs
so white they seem
to feed off
ghosts. Eyes do not see the heat
that simmers in the moist
heart of decay—
in its unmaking making fire—
just hot
enough to burn
itself. In summer, it
burns like a stove.
It can—almost—hurt you.
I hold my hand inside the heap and count
one, two, three,
four.
I cannot hold it there.
Give it to me, the heat insists. It’s mine.
I yank it back and wipe it
on my jeans,
as if
I’d really heard the words.
And eyes
cannot appreciate sweet vegetable rot,
how good it smells
as everything dissolves,
dispersing
back from the thing
into idea.
From our own table we are feeding it
what we don’t eat. Orange rind and apple core,
corn husks,
and odds and ends the children smear
across their plates
are fed into the slow
damp furnace
of decay. Leaves curl at edges,
buckle,
collapsing down into their centers,
as everything
turns loose its living shape
and blackens, gives up
what it once was
to become pure dirt. The table scraps
and leafage join,
indistinguishable,
the way that death insists
it’s all the same,
while life
must do a million things at once.
The compost heap is both—life, death—a slow
simmer,
a leisurely collapsing of
the thing
into its possibilities—
hollyhock and cucumber,
bean and marigold—
potato, zinnia, squash:
the opulence
of everything that rots.
-Andrew Hudgins
(in Poetry Magazine, October 1985)
(in Poetry Magazine, October 1985)
6.22.2010
6.21.2010
what it is
I have a lapsed biker's butt bruise, a coffee-soaked storage key, and plans for a picnic in the park tonight before an evening of Sousa.
6.20.2010
fireflies in the fields
I went to the funeral today of a man who on the first day I met him invited me and my family to his house for lunch, and that same afternoon, when I asked, described to me the disease that was killing him. It was hard for me not to cry when I saw the bowed heads of his grandchildren in the pew and when my father's voice from the pulpit began to swim with emotion. It's not fair, but I'm beginning to see that justice isn't heavy-handed.
The rest of today was sweet and in love. The fireflies in the fields beyond the firepit, the burning bench and the burning smile. Meatballs for lunch and pizza for dinner. Time in between for mourning and piano chords and snuggling flush into a pair of strong arms until the heartbeats speed and slow down and duet.
I felt so much bleeding-out affection today. I am so lucky to be here--HERE--with such promise and s'mores and a shrinking (shrunk!) tumor. It's life.
The rest of today was sweet and in love. The fireflies in the fields beyond the firepit, the burning bench and the burning smile. Meatballs for lunch and pizza for dinner. Time in between for mourning and piano chords and snuggling flush into a pair of strong arms until the heartbeats speed and slow down and duet.
I felt so much bleeding-out affection today. I am so lucky to be here--HERE--with such promise and s'mores and a shrinking (shrunk!) tumor. It's life.
6.18.2010
my truth on the line
I think I used to be an iceberg and now I'm a flock of starlings. I think I used to love you with your truth on the line and now it's mine.
I bet this means I'm growing into my version of reality, of ethics. This is the wine talking but it doesn't make it less true: I am real.
The wine, which is a reward because I've made it through a week and the dishwasher is humming. I had some scattershot days when none of my bones made sense. I think it's probably just hormones, but I really am pretty good sometimes at looking at a beautiful porcelain plate and only seeing the places a crack might form.
I tell myself I don't want to be fixed when I'm clumsy and irritating and volatile. I tell myself that I just need to pull inward, spend three hours, four, five, alone by the side of the highway. I tell myself the salt at the bottom of a bag of pretzels is what will help. I tell myself that turning the lock on the door and soaking up to my neck in the hot bathwater is the right choice. It's not. I won't say it doesn't help. But it's not going to cut my craving so much as changing its dimensions. Better that I sit in the late afternoon sun and tear down my defenses to let music sink into my soul. Better that I stay even when I just want to run and let myself be pulled 'round to burgers and fries and beer and I genuinely like you and you, well, you. And the ambush kisses? The reverence with which you view me as the most wonderful sort of challenge? This is how you take the shit that's clouding my mind and flush it down the toilet.
So I make it through the week. I end it with an evening of the best sort of family--all of mine is--and after a meal and a walk around the neighborhood and an under-the-moon talk I am here, with a clean kitchen that smells of onions and with a half glass of wine beside me where I sit on the floor.
Where was I going with this? I thought I had a thesis. I've... never mind. Cheese, tacos, Elbow, bleach, bikes, keys. I have put myself through a lot these last few days. I think I like the fact that I know this.
I bet this means I'm growing into my version of reality, of ethics. This is the wine talking but it doesn't make it less true: I am real.
The wine, which is a reward because I've made it through a week and the dishwasher is humming. I had some scattershot days when none of my bones made sense. I think it's probably just hormones, but I really am pretty good sometimes at looking at a beautiful porcelain plate and only seeing the places a crack might form.
I tell myself I don't want to be fixed when I'm clumsy and irritating and volatile. I tell myself that I just need to pull inward, spend three hours, four, five, alone by the side of the highway. I tell myself the salt at the bottom of a bag of pretzels is what will help. I tell myself that turning the lock on the door and soaking up to my neck in the hot bathwater is the right choice. It's not. I won't say it doesn't help. But it's not going to cut my craving so much as changing its dimensions. Better that I sit in the late afternoon sun and tear down my defenses to let music sink into my soul. Better that I stay even when I just want to run and let myself be pulled 'round to burgers and fries and beer and I genuinely like you and you, well, you. And the ambush kisses? The reverence with which you view me as the most wonderful sort of challenge? This is how you take the shit that's clouding my mind and flush it down the toilet.
So I make it through the week. I end it with an evening of the best sort of family--all of mine is--and after a meal and a walk around the neighborhood and an under-the-moon talk I am here, with a clean kitchen that smells of onions and with a half glass of wine beside me where I sit on the floor.
Where was I going with this? I thought I had a thesis. I've... never mind. Cheese, tacos, Elbow, bleach, bikes, keys. I have put myself through a lot these last few days. I think I like the fact that I know this.
6.16.2010
Wednesday morning
I am
struggling with paranoia and a desire for corn chips,
streaming soccer games at the back of my computer and
wondering how long this
rain
will hold off.
struggling with paranoia and a desire for corn chips,
streaming soccer games at the back of my computer and
wondering how long this
rain
will hold off.
6.15.2010
tails
I opened the book and a penny fell out. It landed on my desk tails up and I thought, 'well, I am not surprised.'-- I could build a whole day off of a library penny falling from the binding of a book and landing lucky side down.
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