Turtle Facts From My Brain

Turtle Facts From My Brain*

turtles are reptiles (therefore cold-blooded, therefore seek to sun themselves in warm places)

a turtle’s shell is made up of 13 plates

turtle is water critter; tortoise, land

THIRTEEN PLATES! Each and every turtle. How cool is that?

The mama sea turtle arduously drags her body onto the beach where she herself was hatched and in an annual ancient instinctual ritual, she digs a hole in the sand with her back legs (flippers?) and lays her (gooey) eggs. As the turtlings** hatch and attempt to crawl to the sea, thousands die in an ensuing feeding frenzy.

Once the giant sea turtle reaches maturity, it has few natural enemies (save MAN) and can live for over a hundred or two hundred years. Same with the giant tortoises.

Habitat Destruction and Environmental Degradation

I saw a giant sea turtle when I was snorkeling in the ocean in Hawaii. Yes, it was huge and beautiful and I can hardly believe it happened to me.

snapping turtle

oviparous (though some reptiles give birth to live young)

need wet places to lay their eggs (go turtle mamas, go!)

I drove my car home on 116 in S. Amherst on Friday. A turtle was in the middle of the southbound lane.

The turtle was in an apparent state of shock while car after car ran over it (not the wheels), not moving for at least the 4 minutes in which my car approached, I took in the sight, turned around about two blocks ahead, parked in the middle of the road (this is a busy street, peeps!), grabbed a towel, picked it up the turtle, put it in the grass away from the street….

Did the turtle crawl back into the busy road after I moved it? Don’t know.

*no, really, these tidbits are what I remember from any episode I’ve ever seen of Nature about turtles. Fact check me. Go ahead, I dare ya.

**turtlings is NOT a real word, but if you use it, I will know what you mean

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in the Queendom of twinklysparkles

In the Queendom of twinklysparkles, the women look like this:

though some of the women look like this:

The women are always naked unless of course they want to wear ribbons or bows or bikinis or braids. They wear whatever the fuck they want whenever the fuck they want.*

The sun is shining. There is a slight ocean breeze. The daytime temp hovers between 55 and 85 degrees depending on the season. Of course these temps don’t apply when the Queen orders snow.

In the autumn and in the spring, the Queen has her way with the air; like everything in the Queendom, it is subject to her whims.

After every transaction, the bank tellers let the residents of the Queendom know that they are awesome customers. The customers let the tellers know that they are equally awesome.

Cell phone use never occurs at meals; while walking; while conducting face-to-face financial transactions. There is no law governing this because there is no need for such a law. The residents of the Queendom get it and live it and breathe it deeply.

Men and women of the Queendom hold open doors for each other, regardless of need. The children and youth have impeccable manners.

There is no plastic surgery in the Queendom, but you knew that.

All glass in the Queendom is unbreakable unless an emergent situation requires it to be broken.

If there is broken glass, it is gathered and used to make The Pretty. Same for broken ceramics.

All rocks are tear-drop shaped or heart-shaped except when they are not.

There are no TEA partiers in the Queendom, for when they cross its threshold, all sense returns to them.

The word briolette is never used in the Queendom. Never ever.

A honeybee does not want to sting you, says her Majesty, for to do so is to lose its life.

Sometimes Bette Midler sings in the Queendom. Sometimes the Queen herself sings. Sometimes all of the residents sing. The singing is good and heartfelt. There is an abundance of lullabies for children, even the almost-grown-up ones.

Performers in the Queendom do not equate the appearance of emoting with genuine emoting. Layers of false emotion are laid bare, kicked out, and a fresh start is made, tabula rasa.

Sometimes, Anthony Hopkins narrates the Queen’s day, for his Welsh accent and the dulcet tones of his mellifluous voice please Her Royal Highness.

Dancing of all kinds is encouraged in the Queendom, but the Queen is partial to getting down and getting funky and prefers a heap of soul to little or no soul at all.

If you are gonna do it, do it right, says the Queen. This means, do it with gusto. This is not the same as the popular bumper sticker which states “speak even if your voice shakes” because the Queen knows the Alexander Technique. Also, sometimes you need to know the difference between what is worth speaking even if your voice shakes and what is not worth speaking even if your voice shakes.

Fucking A, says the Queen. Pink, says the Queen. Blue and raspberries and violets, says She.

The Queen needs help with motivation and that’s where her handmaidens come in. They encourage her to go to the Royal Yoga Class and to put her Royal Ass on the Royal Bike Seat for the Royal Bike Ride. They indeed help her to clean up the Royal Dog Poo as well as to scoop the Royal Cat Urine from the three Royal Litter Boxes which are lined up oh-so-neatly in the Royal Basement.

Each spring the cherry blossoms bloom and die. The cherries burst out and the cedar waxwings pay visit to the Royal Cherry Tree for one week during which the residents celebrate Fleeting Time.

And of what does the Queen dream in her Royal Bed? Under clean cotton sheets and soft, down comforters, and with the Four Pillows of Royalty, she dreams of the ocean. She dreams of kale, curly and dark, almost black in its nutrients. She dreams of centipedes and millipedes and other crawly creatures in the cool soft earth. She dreams of iron and steel, minerals and bone. She dreams of death and she dreams of freedom from pain.

♥ ♥ ♥

*this is a link to something I found on Facebook which I believe had something to do with a call for women to submit photos of themselves in bikinis on HuffPo. The passage sounds a lot like Caitlin Moran could have written it and I wish the author would say more about her inspiration. In Caitlin Moran’s excellent book How To Be A Woman, she coins the term human-shaped, at least I think she is the first to have done so.

Thanks to my many blogger-chick pals who inspired me to write this post, though my contact with them has been scant of late. I drink from the fount of their fortitude more often than they know. I also hope I didn’t steal too much of my idea from Erin O’Brien at the Owner’s Manual, but she is also probably too humble to see that it is so. She is the original Queen of the Blogosphere to me.

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the birds never take the string

The birds never take the string that I leave for them.

I put various pieces on the porch railing every year: a green drawstring from an old, zip-up sweatshirt; a small length of berry-red wool yarn that was tied like a ribbon around a gift long ago; strings from clothing tags.

Now it is cold again and we saw snowflakes meekly flying across the yard this morning. The snow looked like ashes.

Maybe the birds don’t come because I have cats. Maybe I need to set the string out as early as January. Maybe anyone who partakes in this ritual is always left with string.

And maybe Spring will come.

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run ‘n’ bitch: virgin spring run

[experienced and written on Thursday 3/21]

the air lightens around us

1. I do not expect you to understand this post. There are bits that I have left purposely un-puncuntuated and one part that I left flimsy, poem-like. Not that I want my or anyone else’s poetry to be flimsy, but sometimes I like flowy words for no reason but the sound and feel. So we call it poetry and let it pass. Not all of life need be tidy and tight.

2. because you don’t have to number something if there’s only one

you know me as the [sometime] bike ‘n’ bitch, but I’ve got a new pair of high-heeled sneakers on; yes, I’ve been a dabbler in running, but there’s a new phase a’comin’. I just know I will be able to run the whole stretch of my block and back without stopping within the next little while, few months, year. To be honest, I’d settle for being able to do yoga again first. It’s the longest I’ve gone without a class in over 4 years. Sigh and fuck inexplicable injuries!

the neighbor who bikes to the racquet club was walking in the ‘hood with her husband

a woman was stopped at the end of the street, probably standing right in a pothole, with her Great Dane who did NOT have its ears or tail cut (hooray for humane decisions). The dog was so good, so patient. The owner was training her (him?) and it was a sweet sight. Who’s a good dog?

what is this?

it’s a dog snood

After her mom stopped her car at the end of their driveway, a small child opened the passenger door, ran to the mailbox, and flew back with the mail. So small and wee, jet-black hair waving in the current her speeding body created. Was it a boy with long locks? I waved and said “you are helping; that’s a good thing,” and he, rightly, took a little step back toward his mom and squinted across to me and shyly asked “what?” and I repeated what I said. I waved to the mom, too, so she knew that I knew that we all knew it was safe. It’s good thing when children are taught to be cautious of strangers.

On my way back from my very short “beginner’s loop” (though I’ve been a beginner for years), I cursed the sidewalk that our neighbors seem to feel is beneath them to shovel. I’ve actually heard the wife chide her husband for shoveling too much. Isn’t that backward? I thought hen-pecking happened because men didn’t do enough around the house, but somehow, she thinks that anyone who walks the neighborhood doesn’t deserve a clean, shoveled, safe stretch of sidewalk. Now I know I’m bashing a sista, but when it comes to sidewalk safety and being a good neighbor and doing your part, especially if you are able-bodied and home much of the time, I got no patience for ya.

In fact, in the last few years, this is only the second time I’ve seen their stretch shoveled and on my run, the path was EXACTLY ONE SHOVEL-WIDTH across. You gotta have some balls to shovel only one shovel-width, but I think the wrong kind of balls. The snow was heavy as water, yes, but only about an inch-and-a-half deep by mid-morning on Tuesday. Their stretch of sidewalk is about 20 feet across. You know how much sidewalk we have? about 75′. Fuckers.

with the sun behind me, I made a shadow-shape on the blue snow and I watched the motion of my hips, unmistakeably me; no matter how much weight I gain and cringe to think of how I look, it’s me. Unmistakeably sexy, me. This is my walk, this is my gait, this is what people see.

The grief point where my rib meets my sternum, over to the left, above my heart, where the voodoo darning needle was plunged, still brings a rush of pain and tears. But it’s getting better.

Running and me? Two steps forward, one step back.

My health? The same.

Aging is a motherfucker, but sometimes I fight the good fight. Today was one of those days.

Look how James Brown seems to float above the floor. That is about how I felt today when I walked out of my acupuncturist’s office and my ribcage was pain-free.

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sweetgum

This morning, I dozed back to a restless sleep after my kids left for school. Semi-insomniac that I am, I had a couple of bad nights this week; paired with my lingering health problems, I have been needing more sleep than usual. Some day, I hope to return to productivity and my old “morning person” persona. When did I get this way?

As I slumbered (ha ha, don’t you just love that?), I had a dream with spiders. Huge spiders whose bodies mimicked the fruit of the sweetgum tree, aka, monkey balls (I don’t think that as children we thought they referred to a monkey’s testicles even though every kid knew what balls were).

There was a musician playing a guitar. Another man, too, but I don’t remember who. And Paul was there, I think to save me from the spiders. The spiders were key. There were many, sort of hanging around off the wall and they were huge and some of the spiders had babies. I thought the spiders should not be squashed and that if they were, they would make a bloody mess; bloody both in the British sense of the word as well as the bodily fluid.

I know why the spiders looked like they did in my dream. Yesterday, I had an appointment with my acupuncturist. There are 4 treatment rooms in her clinic and I was in the Herb Room. One wall is made of built-in shelves and on the shelves are glass jars comprising a Chinese pharmacopoeia. One of the jars has something that looks like the monkey balls of which I speak. I am guessing they are the very same, but since I don’t know the Linnaean name nor can I make sense of the Chinese words, I have no way of knowing. I suppose I can check next time I’m in the Herb Room, but I will have forgotten by then.

I think this photo is so lovely. It makes me think warm and happy feelings, like spring. Can you think a feeling or are thoughts and feelings distinct? Certainly, humans have the unique ability to summon feelings. Feelings, as well as thoughts, are simply neuro-chemical impulses after all.

Some time late in my college years, I made a beautiful mobile out of natural objects. A crab claw, a feather, perhaps some sweetgum fruits strung on thread. I can’t really remember. These things perish because they are not rocks or bones or sand. Maybe feathers, like hair, last a long time. Crab claws, they break. We see so many of them on the beach, their shells, too; they are thin and brittle. Maybe they become sand.

The long and short of it is that when I did get out of bed, there was a small, jet-black spider on the wall. It’s not the usual spider we get in the house, but I’ve seen them before. I meant to go back and grab it up into a tissue and put it outside. But I forgot. It dipped down pretty cold today, a freezing wind and no sun so it would have died. I try not to kill them in the house. This creates a dilemma in the winter. Sometimes I do suck them up when I am vacuuming.

Is it better to be squashed to death if you are a spider or to be put outside to freeze? Sometimes, I need my space to be free from spiders, but more often in the winter, I just leave them alone. In warmer weather there is no dilemma.

Are your dreams ever prescient or do you not cotton to that kind of phenomenon? No matter; I believe in the inexplicable and it’s often good enough for me. Science has its charms but I don’t think it can measure everything.

How many spiders live in winter? how many billions of neurons are in your brain? how many stars are in the universe?

Estimated guesses, my doves. You can leave the rest to the poets and dreamers.

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Thankful Thursday–Pink Spring

I know I’ve stated on numerous occasions that I refuse to use emoticons.

I got an email from a friend yesterday and it was prefaced with a little yellow smiley-guy blowing a kiss. I laughed. I keep looking at the thing. Is this how emoticons are supposed to work? I guess I finally get it. It is hard being an emoticonazi. I’m not saying I’ll start using them, but who knows? I can change.

Thankful for

the dental practice I frequent. I had a cleaning on Monday. I do love them all so much there. The new dentist, Dr. Wilson, who replaced the fabulous Dr. Brookes, gets a high thumbs-up from me. She’s got the same gentle touch that Klepacki has and that Brookes had. I am, however, trying to avoid x-rays to the head but I know one of these times they will insist and I will say yes. I have a friend who’s gone her whole life without even one cavity, who has never needed braces, whose children don’t need braces or glasses, and who, between her and her husband, still have 4 living parents. How does that work? And does this kind of information really belong in this post?

I love this bowl with its funny blue flowers

I love pink

I love spring today, even if it’s a bit cold out. It’s rainy and cool and the plants LOVE it.

I love the dream I had about a month ago in which Heath Ledger (alive) was standing just behind me, breathing and leaning in very close to my left ear. He lingered there, warm and dusky, saying something in his low Australian voice. He was slightly unshaven, scruffy; he had a hat on. I know he was gonna kiss me. But he didn’t.

I love when famous men visit my dreams. I am a lucky woman to have such a generous imagination.

Here it is people

Kiss my ass

Not as easy as it looks: this is what happens when you are the family photographer. You have to keep taking photos of yourself. In the mirror. the same mirror. You look pretty much the same. Except for the pink lipstick and pink shirt. Am I right? wait, I know how to do this, I’ve seen it before, alongside some emoticons: amirite?

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bee sting memories

I have only been stung by bees 3 times in my life.

Sting 1: summer camp at Camp Seagull, on the shore of beautiful Lake Charlevoix (at least that’s how I remember it being described), and a black wasp stung me right above my upper lip (you know, like nature’s own philtrum piercing!). We were on the tennis or basketball court or something with an asphalt surface, maybe green asphalt. I didn’t get a full sting, I remember swiping it off before full penetration (sorry, couldn’t resist). I remember black body parts, the dead wasp, and also remember needing to have the stinger taken out with the famous baking soda paste we all love. I was probably 10 or 11.

Sting 2: on my way to work as a banquet waitress. For one year before I bought my 1920 dream house on Willow St, I rented a little white, cement-block house at the end of a cul-de-sac (College Court) in Kent, Ohio, and I got a full bee sting, I think to my foot, maybe before I put on my ugly black waitress shoes. We had to wear a white top, mine always busting at the buttons across my chest, tucked into a black skirt, and we had to wear nylons too back then. I remember the feeling of the venom coursing through my body. It took a while before the sensation of the juice going through was over, still felt it in the car, even once I got to my shift, maybe it took a few hours ’til I could no longer feel the effect. The name of the restaurant escapes me, but it was on Rte 91 in Hudson. Oh, no, I remember–The Pub.

Sting 3: Paul and I on our way to Ogunquit, Maine for a 2-night anniversary weekend. Just over the NH line into Maine, on Highway 1, we stopped at some sort of naval ship memorial, but before we got out of the car, I felt a couple of stings low down in my posterior crotchal region (I know crotchal is not a word, but we use it around here anyway), no lie, like an itch, but stronger, and then definitely another one and more pronounced.

I went into the bathroom and, lo and behold, in my undies was a teeny-tiny dead bee, those really little ones you see sometimes and recognize as bees but aren’t sure because they are so small and have never stung you. I sat on the poor thing, what choice did it have? I had 2 red spots from that one, somewhere near my butt crease on the right. or left. who can remember these details?

In Germany, there is a cake called bienensteich, “bee sting,” my cousins know how to make it. You find it in all of the Backarei, es schmeckt sehr gut! Lecker! Lecker!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

on another note, I wanted to post a good photo of the cherry tree in my back yard, since Thankful Thursday’s photo was not representative of the true color and beauty and abundance of the blossoms. Here’s a shot of the same tree from a couple of years ago:

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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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April, come she will

And am I born to die? To lay this body down!

Easter is not a holiday I feel much of an attachment to. However, I was reminded this week of a specific time in my life, a new friend I once had, her life and death.

8 years ago, I began singing Sacred Harp every Tuesday night at the Helen Hills Hills Chapel on the Smith College campus in Northampton, Massachusetts.

I got to know Mirjana Lausovic at the Tuesday night sing a few years later after she moved back to the area from Minnesota with her husband and 2 young children.

Minja, as she was known, was one of the strongest women I have ever met—happy, practical, full of joy and life, big in presence and physicality; loved her kids, huge heart. Everything about her was open and present—she was buxom, full-lipped, had big eyes and a big smile, and of course, a powerful voice. Formidable was the word that came to mind the first time I saw her. She was easily approachable and had a humility I draw from to this day.

Minja had beautiful silver hair and it was cut short. I, too, kept my hair short and we joked together about haircuts, how it didn’t really matter who cut it or how: no muss, no fuss. I never knew why her hair was short and gray; she was, after all, a couple of years younger then me.

When I began to sing in the Sacred Harp group, in 2004, I had a difficult time socially. If it hadn’t been for my fierce love of the sound, my determination to add a creative endeavor for myself after years at home raising my daughters; if it hadn’t been for my training as a teacher of the Alexander Technique, I would have bagged out. I found the group strange and clique-y; I didn’t understand the social dynamics. I heard a lot of talk of “welcoming the newcomer,” but my presence seemed less than welcome. I was baffled and spent many a Tuesday night filled with the joy and satisfaction of learning a new, powerful way of singing, but with an undercurrent of my own sadness and anger at feeling on the periphery of a group [supposedly] dedicated to a communal tradition of song.

Minja was a remedy for all of that, a breath of holy spirit.

She died less than 2 years after I met her. It was a shock to me because I didn’t know her history—she had had breast cancer and pulled through several years earlier and this was apparently a recurrence. They left town one day in July of 2007 and she died 2 weeks later, on my birthday, something I recognize as a great gift.

I remember the evening before Tim and Minja and the kids were leaving town. I had prepared a little card and a bundle of ribboned lavender from my garden. When I handed the card to her, my instinct was to walk away so she could open it at her leisure, no pressure to say she liked it in case she didn’t, nor to respond to the words therein. But she said, emphatically, “Can I open it now? I want to open it NOW.” It was so much her, living for the moment, taking a bite out of whatever life presented.

♦ ♦ ♦

Today, I watched as my daughter’s Agricultural Arts teacher introduced 5 new colonies of bees to the existing hives on the school’s campus. Nicki told us that the worker bees, all of whom are female, do not lay their own eggs, in deference to the queen’s laying.

I saw the first tulips open in my side garden bed.

I am preparing a dish for dinner with eggs from my neighbor’s chickens, a salad with greens from a local farm.

Sometimes I receive emails from a fellow parent at my daughter’s school and they close with the statement “Walk in the light, wherever you may be.” Some days I begin to know what this means.

Today is Passover; tomorrow is Easter. I know I have been delivered, here and now, to the center of a swirl of abundance that I call home, the earth.

♦ ♦ ♦

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Thankful Thursday–what it’s all about

If you are new here, if you searched for twinklysparkles on google to get here, for instance, you may surprised to discover that I have a tendency to chew on the negative, to get the blues, to sit with my own dry crusty thoughts*

*from the poem What Have I Learned? by Gary Snyder, from the book Axe Handles

I’ve been a bit funky lately and not in a good James Brown sort of way. This condition has put a damper on my creative juices (or is it the other way around, chicken-and-egg like?). This is entirely the reason that I invented Thankful Thursday (yes, I invented it; I was the first, I swear).

I love many things today

I love yoga, the 2 studios I frequent, the teachers whose classes I attend. I love the yoga class I was in on Tuesday night wherein my teacher taught to the body of spring, to our spring bodies, to the shift in the air and light. I love how deep yoga goes, how it inspires me, the coiled snake, the mud, the ooze, the tones of my being, the heat, the invertebrate that resonates in my soft tissue, below the bones. I love the 7 chakras and that each has a sound, a color, and a desire or higher manifestation. I love the double helix and the spirals of my muscles which wrap around my bones.

I love that to be a student of yoga is to be in a state of unknowing, same as to be a student of the Alexander Technique. That in the West, thinking one needs to be positive alone to attain enlightenment is a misunderstanding of complexity. I am not enlightened; I am only on a path and that path has no destination.

I love acupuncture and the lessons my practitioner shares with me. That the Chinese system of looking at the body is more complete and encompassing than a Western approach, that it is both subtle and complex, that I will never understand it, that I know only the tiniest bit about it, but what I know I understand and want more of. I love that the Chinese understanding of the body includes how we relate to the world seasonally, that there is an explanation for how our bodies chime with the brightness of spring and that sometimes this can manifest in restlessness and anger. I love that there are foods and activities that nurture our bodies and that these change seasonally. I love that every part of the self is interdependent. I love the 5 elements though I have little understanding of them.

I love that my Alexander teacher, Missy Vineyard, sent me a link about this.

I love that I wrote my original Thankful Thursday post almost a year ago today. I had no idea when I went to search for it just now. I love symmetry and anniversaries and time as much as I hate them; therefore, I love asymmetry and random occurrences and timelessness.

I love so much that sometimes I am taken down by it. I cry with the spring, I wait for the rain, I walk the earth alone; I let my thoughts whisper and hope they take flight in the moonless, cloudless night. I bear witness to the air, the red planet twinkling, the new prey being eaten in the dark, all that goes past us and beyond our time here.

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