feeling like a million bucks

my trusty Kent black squirrel sticker, one of the best charms a girl pushing 50 can have on her mini-van’s backside

Long ago, after giving a friend of mine a massage, I asked how she felt and she said “Are you kidding? I feel like a million bucks!” This was the way she talked.

Feeling like a million bucks is not a phrase in my vernacular, but today I took my 2000 Toyota mini-van, all 163,000 miles of it, to get its state inspection. You know it failed inspection 2 years in-a-row, right?

the “ass” of my car

My daughter fastened all the seat belts before I dropped her off at school, a good omen.

At 8:15 this morning, the second-to-the-last day of the month, I pulled into the Sunoco station on Route 9, handed over my registration and 29 dollars to the grizzled but friendly mechanic, and parked my ass in the dingy, fume-y, dusty “waiting room,” chatting up a plumber and the woman behind the cash register. With baited breath (at least mentally baited breath), I bided my time. The car passed inspection.

I usually don’t have to leave the house for whole days at a time. I don’t drive my kids to school but once or twice a season. But today, I actually got dressed. I pulled on my skinniest jeans, by which I mean, they are not skinny jeans, but they are the only pair that may make my ass appear with some semblance of youth and dignity, by which I mean, they are snug and tight with just the right amount of stretch to make sure all loose flesh is tautened into a neat package. It’s not like I’m going to turn heads, but I felt like I was turning heads as I slid on the icy lot walking away from the Sunoco waiting room back to my car. I am sure heads were turning because of my faux-skating and not my ass.

These days, the car is missing portions of its hubcaps. It has no handle on the rear passenger side door. One of the sliding doors no longer latches, making it slide closed when parked on a hill. The windows make a slow grinding sound on raising and lowering, in protest of having to work so hard. The inside backseat air vents are missing their louvered covers. Only half of the dashboard lights up. The heating makes a whistling sound when it’s on full blast. But Fucking A. My husband presented me with this car in July, 2000, just weeks before we relocated our entire life to Western Massachusetts.

It’s falling apart, it doesn’t get the best mileage. It’s beaten and banged and bruised. But it’s mine. I drove away from the Sunoco feeling like a million bucks.

my min-van, not a metaphor for my bodily state or anything

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Thankful Thursday–ain’t no thing

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my loves!

 

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maybe you’ve noticed

These last few weeks have been no exception to a sea of changes that seemed to coincide with the start of my blog, January 01, 2011.

You may recall that my youngest graduated from the 8th Grade less than 2 weeks ago. You may recall that I am peri-menopausal, if not outright menopausal (don’t hold your breath, you have to go a WHOLE YEAR without a period before you are considered good enough to be fully old, crone-like, ancient menopausal). You may remember that we had 2 cats get killed within 6 months of each other. You may also remember that Hubby and I celebrated 21 years of marriage recently.

Completing 8th Grade in a Waldorf school is a BIG DEAL, I have stated before. I mean to write a nice, long, lovely post about this, but in some way I am uninspired.

To be honest, as yours truly is want to be, 20 years, and now 21 years of marriage, has been a monumental time of change for me and Hubby. We have always striven to make our relationship better and stronger, to dig deep in when things haven’t worked, but some remnants of old stuff have been getting in the way so Hubby and I find ourselves delving again, deeply and fundamentally. Why do I tell this here? For one, it’s a cultural taboo to talk about these things, at least until you’ve earned about 40 or 50 years in. Then, everyone is all ears about how do you make a marriage work and how did you do it and what is your best advice to young newlyweds.

Sometimes I think my poetry has dried up, but it’s not true, I write quite a bit. Sometimes I think I’m a bad mom. Sometimes I think that the garlic scape growing out of the compost bin is the loveliest thing in my life. Not only because garlic scapes are beautiful curled green things, but because there’s some accident there—I did not plant garlic in my compost bin.

I want to post poems here, I want to save them, I want to gnash my teeth. I want to scream at the poetry that gets published in respectable journals, I want to shout fuck you to name-dropping authors who are full of themselves and whose essays barely touch the surface of human experience.

I wanted to tell you about the ladybug that hitched a ride on the top tube of my new bike yesterday, my virgin ride on it, how I felt blessed, but how I was just trying to find an excuse that the world makes sense.

I did want to share about my cracked rib, but I didn’t want to divulge how it happened. I told a few people as the subject came up, but I hemmed and hawed with most people who asked.

I am not shy, so let’s say it involved a massage table, which has a very hard surface after all, and let’s say it involved sex and let’s say I’m being honest.

My right side has been feeling pained, deep intense pain like when you get the wind knocked out of you.

the solar plexus

When I was a little girl, in preschool or maybe kindergarten, at the little private school I attended for kids with high IQs in a suburb of Detroit, I remember getting the wind knocked out of me and going to see the nurse. Her name was Mim, we called her that at least, and I remember a white nurse’s hat and pink stripes, maybe even white shoes; somehow I associate her with the color pink. I loved her. I remember a stick of ammonia, smelling salts. I remember lying down in the nurse’s room more than once. How much I loved her and now, when I think of that time, how small I see myself, tiny and sad of heart.

I will write again. I will post poems, but maybe not my latest poems. I will save them for the waters or maybe for paper.

Sometimes poems reveal things and sometimes poems hide things and sometimes the time for either has not yet come.

This is me, one of the first photos I ever took of myself in a mirror (I found another one from earlier, when I still lived in the dorms at Kent State). This photo is from October, 1983, in a house I rented with 4 other people, Lake Street, Kent, Ohio. We found out my father had cancer in August 1983. One of many beginnings of growing up too soon and also one of many times when I wasn’t ready to let go of that tiny girl inside.

Remember to pay attention. You might miss something otherwise.

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on the soles of their traveling shoes

Do you know how far away China is?

I sure don’t because I flunked my geography test last week. Not only that, but my GPS doesn’t tell me the names of the streets.

Hey, the littlest birds just saved you from a post entitled: ugh! wordpress, why are you so dumb?

and that wouldn’t have been very fair because, let’s face it, I love my blog. But I also love irony.

on another note (or is it all the same note?), I am still sad about our dear cat and I am eager to do a real Montreal travel post since it got kinda fucked up along the way

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Thankful Thursday–just for a frill

the pink petals from the cherry tree that float down every year all over my yard, across the rooftop from the back to the front and side of the house, onto the back porch and bins of recyclables. their pink color fades when it rains

soon, when the cherry tree bears its fruit, a flock of cedar waxwings will visit. They only stay a day or two. I will try to remember to let you know when they are here. Maybe when I get a new camera, which I am determined will be within the next couple of months (you may recall if you’ve been keeping up, that my camera has had a water stain smack-dab in the middle of the lens for over 2 years), I will be able to get a picture (the following is not my photo)

that I could look up on the web the weather in Shanghai, China and also find that the peach blossom celebration there ended on April 10, but that perhaps Paul and Violet will still see and smell the peach blossoms when they get there

the word frilly

things that are frilly

frittilaria even though they won’t grow around here

the search terms people use that land them at twinklysparkles. Today’s best and one of the best of all time: what is a semi brachiator

That’s all I can muster today, but if you can give a definition of semi-brachiator, without looking it up, I’ll give you bonus points. I do not know what the bonus points are for, but I will think of something in good, twinkly time, which is really the best kind of time

I thought of posting some photos that I found on google images when I searched for various word combos with frilly

if you can guess what this is, more bonus points for you

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Music Monday–Glenna Bell

Hubby is far away. Really far. To exotic places: Burma, the Myanmar Penninsula, Phuket, but really only in the vicinity. He’s in Singapore, though maybe hasn’t landed yet.

I picture food cooked with limes and hot peppers; purple orchids; turquoise water. I’m shut down and I’m busy and I’m tired. So that got me thinking about Tom Waits and “Shore Leave.”

But then, something else happened, something wonderful. I found Cowboylands, the blog of an old pal. And on that blog, I found Glenna Bell.

I’m not sure how all of this works as far as the technology goes and as far as copyrights are concerned. But I think if you click through on these links and then click on each of these songs, it will work and it’s hunky dory. It is her own myspace page after all, right? I sure like her music and I don’t even speak Spanish or know anything about Cowboys and Texas.

la-casa-que-yo-amo-40169726

can-t-get-my-mind-off-you-40169721

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Thankful Thursday–perfect temps in Western MA, towel hooks, and a poem on voxpoetica.com

If I could hand you something, it would be yesterday’s weather. Perfect temperature, perfect sunshine, perfect air. I would like to give you that, but I can’t.

What else? I went into the bathroom one evening, last Thursday or Friday, and I saw on the wall next to the little mounted metal-and-glass shelving unit and towel bar (that’s one, singular, towel bar, room only enough for one neatly hung hand towel and one folded and hung washcloth) and saw 2 beautiful polished chrome towel hooks installed on the wall. That was love from my Hubby and I am grateful for it. It may seem cheap, I know, to mention it here. These things are sacred to me and it would be unseemly to broadcast them all over the place. But once in a while, in my need and quest to stay mindful of the good in the world, I must share them here, for you, but mostly for myself. So there. Newly installed towel hooks in my bathroom installed by Hubby. That is good enough proof of good in the world.

That’s not all folks: I, for the first time, submitted a poem to a poetry website/blog a few months ago (this is different from Poetry Jam in which poems are not read or approved by an editor). In case you never noticed, on my blogroll over there to the right, there is a website called voxpoetica. I submitted a poem and it was taken and has been published for today. It stays up for one day and then is moved to an archive of past daily poems. So I am thrilled and excited, it is true. It’s sort of fun and strange and amazing to see it there with my little bio. I love, too, that a daily poem is posted and then moved along to make room for the next day’s poem. I am learning to let go and to not get too attached, so it’s perfect and I am grateful.

And a shout out to Ray Sharp at Bard of Liminga who gave me a nod in the direction of voxpoetica. I would not likely have tried to submit without the little nudge. Thanks, Ray.

That’s all and it’s enough.

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Thankful Thursday–Woody and Wilco and my Mac Daddy

I am grateful for this day and that I have decided to push myself to give thanks each Thursday (more or less each Thursday and more or less thanks)

Glad that Hubby helped me fix yesterday’s poem’s formatting, which I had screwed up when left to my own devices, Mac and me. I needs my Mac Daddy.

How about lack of pretension and a sense of humility? It sounds pretentious to say it, but I love a lack of pretension. Innocence, the naif. Humility, humus, the dirt, the ground, the earth, what is lowly and below, what lacks ego. I am loving Jeff Tweedy’s old school lack of pretension, but also love knowing what a complicated person he seems to be.

Grateful for Woody Guthrie’s words channeled through Jeff Tweedy’s music and voice. I chose this version because it’s so like Woody. The studio version and the many live versions are often great (how can you fail with those lyrics and Tweedy’s voice?), but this is the most simple, humble, and lovely to me.

Woody had me already, for many years, and Wilco had me a bit, but this? It’s beautiful, so beautiful.

Here’s another. I always forget how plainly sexual Woody Guthrie’s words often are, but how in their simplicity, they are often much more –broad and encompassing, clear and honest; never missing. It’s the Garden of Eden, maybe without the shame, isn’t it?

“Remember The Mountain Bed”

Do you still sing of the mountain bed we made of limbs and leaves?
Do you still sigh there near the sky where the holly berry bleeds?
You laughed as I covered you over with leaves
Face, breast, hips, and thighs
You smiled when I said the leaves were just the color of your eyes

Rosin smells and turpentine smells from eucalyptus and pine
Bitter tastes of twigs we chewed where tangled wood vines twine
Trees held us in on all four sides so thick we could not see
I could not see any wrong in you, and you saw none in me

Your arm was brown against the ground, your cheeks part of the sky
Your fingers played with grassy moss, as limber you did lie
Your stomach moved beneath your shirt and your knees were in the air
Your feet played games with mountain roots as you lay thinking there

Below us the trees grew clumps of trees, raised families of trees, and they
As proud as we tossed their heads in the wind and flung good seeds away
The sun was hot and the sun was bright down in the valley below
Where people starved and hungry for life so empty come and go

There in the shade and hid from the sun we freed our minds and learned
Our greatest reason for being here, our bodies moved and burned
There on our mountain bed of leaves we learned life’s reason why
The people laugh and love and dream, they fight, they hate to die

The smell of your hair I know is still there, if most of our leaves are blown
Our words still ring in the brush and the trees where singing seeds are sown
Your shape and form is dim but plain, there on our mountain bed
I see my life was brightest where you laughed and laid your head…

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands

I crossed many states just to stand here now, my face all hot with tears
I crossed city, and valley, desert, and stream, to bring my body here
My history and future blaze bright in me and all my joy and pain
Go through my head on our mountain bed where I smell your hair again.

All this day long I linger here and on in through the night
My greeds, desires, my cravings, hopes, my dreams inside me fight:
My loneliness healed, my emptiness filled, I walk above all pain
Back to the breast of my woman and child to scatter my seeds again

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