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what would it be to take thanks

Slowly it dawns on me that writing is not easy, that all of the voices that say this is not real work deserve to be put to rest.

I’m not the first to say this, but it is my dawning. A mechanism turning inside of me, a key, letting me know what this is, my writing.

I can’t remember the last time I wrote a new poem.

I jotted down a dream a couple of weeks ago, a vivid dream of a thin emerald-green book of unusual size, leather-bound, the cover rich in color and texture.

But no poems per se and not much desire to share my thoughts here of late.

Sometimes the time quickens, sometimes it drags.

What is this calling? I appreciate silliness and I love to write nonsense. But I only want to write down the most important of my thoughts just now.

Yesterday, we drove from Massachusetts to Northeast Ohio. It had been a very long time since I’ve made this trip in the car—the last time was the summer of 2009. It is close to 600 miles.

I have never read Watership Down, but we have been listening to it in the car for long stretches on this trip. The narration is excellent and I am reminded of how much I love to be read to, how much of a pleasure to all humans this gift of stories being told aloud is. I feel thirsty for it now and I have decided that I will read at open mics even when I don’t have my own work to read.

Such is the thanks I would like to give. I love reading out loud as much as I like singing out loud. It is a great pleasure to me, like the emerald-green book from my dream. The richness of the color I can summon in my mind’s eye. How I would like you to know it, too, to take it from me. I will hand you the book so you can feel its richness, the animal skin, the creamy parchment of the pages, crisp and soft at the same time.

I want to leave politics behind, the truth of war and rape, the way humans have of tearing down what cannot be shared.

I want to take and drink and give back.

Thanks Giving and Thanks Taking

Peace

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Thankful Thursday–spring snow

Indeed it snowed

Indeed my teenage daughters built a snow fort (the second of winter! after many years of no forts!)

Indeed it is spring

Indeed my m key is sticking

Cat Walk

black ice boot tracks

footprints in the snow

sidewalk running

[now a line that rhymes, but I HATED and therefore deleted it. You can figure it out because you are so smart!]

ipsilateral/contralateral

cat gait trot pace

howling at the moon

crust snow, rust snow

pink blue

glow

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valentine love, love valentine

♥

I would title the post Love, but it looked and felt wrong. My next thought for a title? LOVE. Then, love. You can see what I finally chose.

Love is a kind of choosing, isn’t it? Even when we’ve been taken by love without our consent. Like the photos of adoptable dogs I pore over or the way I feel when I see my friend’s 3-year old son. That love comes without effort, question, or want.

I suppose Valentine’s Day is the most fun of all holidays if it is not taken too seriously. For if you take it too seriously, you will find something in which to be disappointed: I have no boyfriend/girlfriend; my beau didn’t get me flowers, or enough or the right color; my beau didn’t propose to me today; my love didn’t give me chocolate, a dinner out, a blowjob. Single people could be bummed out and feel less than; paired off people could find fault; so why not take it with a grain of salt? There is enough love of many kinds to go around.

All the years with children have made it fun indeed. Decorating cards to hand out in school when they were little, decorating the breakfast table, cutting food into heart-shapes. Chocolates and flowers some years, some not.

I finally got excited for Valentine’s Day at about 4 in the afternoon yesterday and went on a chocolate-buying spree and made plans in my head for the girls’ breakfast. At 4 am, I woke and paper-punched some tiny hearts all over the table, crawled back into bed and at 8:30 am (one day a month is late start day for the school), I made batter for waffles.

In the past, I would have used some sort of cut-out heart to sprinkle a heart pattern on top of their waffles, but I could not summon more motherly love than I already had. Sigh.

♥

I’ve always loved Rickie Lee Jones doing this, but Chet Baker comes in a close second. Be still my beating heart.

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prolly

I’ll prolly miss Hubby a lot when he is out of the country next week.

Prolly if I were a good Buddhist, I wouldn’t anticipate this state of affairs because I’d be living in the now.

I’ll prolly never use prolly in speech, that is orally.

Prolly, you think orally is a funny word. I sure do. Aurally? not as funny.

It makes me feel young, as in like a child young, when I think about the word prolly.

I lay awake with excitement the other night when I was thinking about writing about the word prolly and how many ways I could use it.

This whole post makes me feel giddy.

Have you noticed that many of the words I’m using have double consonants? Just look at that first sentence up top. Prolly you noticed because you are smart and observant. I expect nothing less from my stalwart readers.

Prolly I’m about done and don’t have as much for singing the praises of prolly as I first thought.

I know you’ve all seen this if you’ve been anywhere near Facebook in the last couple of years, but this post made me think of it. Prolly you thought of it, too.

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Thankful Thursday–ain’t no thing

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my loves!

 

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I Can See Clearly Now, Glory Glory Hallelujah, WE DONE TOOK OURSELVES THERE

This is a photo of me on Tuesday morning. I was not thinking of jumping.

The world flies by. We forget.

I am glad, gladder than glad (Glatter than glad) that Obama will remain president for the next 4 years. But I am also almost as glad that the most cynical election in history is over. I think it speaks to a very sad time in our country. The money; the waste. Forgive us all our folly. Now let’s get Citizen’s United overturned. Power to the people.

(it is barely sunny out here. this image is bullshit, but the sentiment is not)

I’ve been having a bang-up time out here on the West Coast. Many good things. A friend we hadn’t yet met in-the-flesh came out to see us on Tuesday. Someone both Hubby and I have known only via blogging and the internet. This is the world in which we live, in which great things can happen, in which our best selves can come to light.

We did not take a photo of Katharine, as per her request, but you know she was here by the photo she took of us. We are in a cave; not an underground cave, a sea cave.

What else? Rock carvings in front of oceanfront mansions

I love this bird

it is a marbled godwit, not a whimbrel or a dowitcher, but I wonder what the birds would make of our names for them, our folly, our need

ART

private

public

and rogue

These are my 2 songs of choice for the reelection of Obama, the same ones I listened to over and over last time around

(Sorry for the cheesy visuals on this next one. They’ve pulled all the well-recorded live versions from back in the day)

Shout it from the rooftops. GLORY GLORY HALLELUJAH!!!

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this used to be thankful thursday

1. this song

2. I will, from now on, call writing poetry, poeming, without apologies and without explanation and even in submissions: Dear Editor of Journal I Will Likely Not See My Work Published In Ever: I have been poeming for x number of years. Kiss my ass.

3. not really. I will NEVER do that.

4. kiss my everloving tattooed ass hip

5. when I am alone driving, driving and crying go hand-in-hand

6. (to drive is to cry)

7. The Silos were a great band. Too bad about their lack of making it big. DAMN.

8. You know that month where people write a poem a day? It is called NaPoWriMo. I will probably never do that. I am one who falls into the camp of not finding prompts or deadlines or challenges particularly necessary or helpful for my writing though they can be fun and somewhat useful. But I have decided I will submit one batch of poems per day for 30 days. Started yesterday. Kiss my ass.

9. More Silos. No visuals, just the song. Listen to it before it gets copyright-infringed. Then buy the tune for your iPod. Don’t be a cheapskate. Our friend once categorized their music as “Domestic Rock.” Pretty accurate I’d say.

10. I had to have my necklace/bracelet (it is long enough to go twice around my neck and 5 times around my wrist) repaired because I never took it off. I wore it in the shower, to sleep, in the ocean, to yoga class, on bike rides, on hikes, in the bath tub. I was too hard on it.

11. I wrote hard on and I’m pointing it out to you as if you hadn’t noticed. How juvenile of us. But really, can we help it?

12. If I write kiss my ass in a post, I feel I owe a debt of gratitude and recognition to Erin O’Brien. Every time. As if she made up the phrase which I don’t think she did, but if someone told me that she did, I would totally believe it.

13. I get a lot of hits for “ass tattoo.” But mine is really on my hip, as you know. My acupuncturist knows.

14. I can’t find a good photo of my beautiful necklace (made by none other than Rebecca Rose), but you see it in many of my photos. I am going to post a photo of a gemstone from Amherst College that has roughly the same color blue as my necklace:

15. Okay. I have written a few “poems” lately. But what a mess.

16. It’s getting late. I gotta go so I can submit.

17. Ass Tattoo on Hip:

I know there’s a funny little bruise on my mid-section. So strange. And this is way before my cracked rib.

18. Consignment belt I love ♥! All those studs make me feel a. hip and b. skinny and c. tough

19. pink

20. Should I stop? Probably time to submit my poems. I hate this already.

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this day of apples and stones

Every fall the apples are more beautiful than the last. The Ida Reds. The Macs. The ever-popular and only-available-for-a-little-while, not-very-good-keepers Macouns. All of the ones I never try. The glaze, the sheen, the burnished surface covered in beads of moisture. In all my life, I have never eaten apples as delicious and crisp and prettily dewy as the ones we get in the Valley. Pleasure is not an adequate word.

♥

Yesterday morning, in the front yard, no mushroom. Yesterday afternoon, this:

♦

School has begun. She never rode a bus to school before. Strange, hunh?

♥

Did we experience our last beach day of 2012? I’m hoping not. I know it’s not a very beachy photo, but it’s my favorite-ever-in-the-world bracelet or at least one of them and I love the way it washes and shines after being in the ocean. How about those age spots? It doesn’t get much hotter than that. Can’t we think of a better name than age spots? Do you think the home remedy that I found on the web that involves lemon juice and vinegar would really work?

I remember the first age spot I ever got. Hawaii, 1995. Yup. I can still identify it. It’s the biggish weird-shaped one to the far left just above the bracelet.

I’m not sure any more of the names of the 8 wrist bones. They are small, cute, important, intricately formed, and a wonder of evolutionary advantage. I know I could look them up, but I’d never remember the names anyway. Here’s a mnemonic for them in case you want to try. But you kinda hafta know which bone you’re starting with. Good luck!

Some Lovers Try Positions That They Can’t Handle

♥

I’d like to hear this speech at one of the Conventions.

♦

I am thinking of changing the photo at the top of my blog, as bored as I am right now. Possibilities include photos of other rocks.

♦

Here are some of the mini-cairns I’ve been making in my garden. It’s not so easy to balance a stone with a rounded surface, but by gum, I’ve done it. Even in the heavy, heavy rain of 2 night’s ago, the 2 top stones didn’t tumble off and no stones have dislodged (I just wanted to use the word dislodge cause it makes me feel smart).

♥

Here are some more of my garden rocks. I love the long, oddly-shaped one that looks like a tool, but it’s just a natural ocean rock as far as I know. Not like the arrowhead I have on my desk that was shaped by human hands.

See the little rock of Ohio? It doesn’t get much better than that. It’s greyish-clear. You cannot believe it. I wish you could hold it, it’s really quite lovely.

Okay, another [final?] beach photo, because I am so vain

♥

FIN

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Thankful Thursday, revived–your Gogol for the day

Heading up to Burlington, VT in just less than an hour. Excitement abounds in the twinkly household. Young ones are crabby, but I suspect moods will shift by evening. I think I re-injured my rib in my enthusiasm to clean out the passenger side of my car. It’s hot out there. My hair’s a mess. I don’t look like a proper groupie who can muster my way up front to catch a few drops of Eugene’s sweat. I don’t want any wine spit upon me. I might try to find the Wanderlust Queen if I make my way up front, but it’s so hard to remember what everyone will be wearing.

In lieu of a guest post, I send you over to kamper’s place for your gogol-of-the-day.

Remember that Susun Weed says a minimum of 7 orgasms a week for peri-menopausal/menopausal women. We’ll just see about those spontaneous ovulations. I hate ovulating. I like orgasm-ing though. We haven’t yet hit 7 Gogol songs in one week. Babble babble babble. I’m a little excited. Can you tell? I just realized that my best 2 vibrators are purple, but frankly, I’m a little short on my seven-a-week.

 

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