Sunday Funnies

Sentimental; lost, found, whole, broken. The spin of the planets shifts from solstice to solstice as it has for millions of years, and here I am still astounded. Just remember that everything is transient, even the planets. Where will we be in another million years, it's been a brief four million in comparison to the giants that once lived hundreds of millions years ago. Uh oh, I think I am giving myself a headache, and that's not why I am here.

So what is the big deal with a Rembrandt, a Dali, a Durer? Squishing color around on a canvas is not earthshaking, so what were these men up to? I say creativity coming from the spirit, from a source imbedded as sturdy as their vascular systems, put before humanity as a preconscious effort in rattling our sense of who we are and offering a perception of where we need to proceed.

Dali was nutty as an oak tree full of mean squirrels, but he is quoted as having said that "You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life." (1980). He would stand on his head so that the hallucinatory images which formed became inspiration for his work; who thinks of these things, of putting the body into a vortex of physical effect as a way of exposition? Not with drugs or alcohol, but by using a kind of excess that changes blood flow to the brain in order to induce euphoric visuals. Like a child spinning till vertigo takes over. Not physically dangerous, but temporarily altering.

How does this relate to anyone? Well, maybe we need to try things that are foreign to most of us, like sitting in a tree, walking over a bridge, attending an unfamiliar event, learning to stand on our heads.

"You are old, Father William," the young man said,

"And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head—

Do you think, at your age, it is right?"

"In my youth," Father William replied to his son, "I feared it might injure the brain; But now that I'm perfectly sure I have none, Why, I do it again and again."

Go and try something, but let me add, record it somehow whether in conversation, journal, art, or online social website. We would like to know; no, we won't tire of it as long as it isn't one incessant cock-a-doodle-doo, but that you teach us something about what we don't know. Keep moving, for heaven's sake. It's a human speciality, and it is welcome.

Off you go, take an unscribed book to write in, draw, or prop against for balance. It has been a busy day at this end, and I am so excited for the prospects of another one tomorrow. Have a bit of supper, latch the door, slippers on, think of something new for yourself to try. Oh go on, it doesn't have to be big at all. It might just be going down into the cellar and then turning off the lights and staying there for a minute in the dark. Don't know if I could do that one, but that means I should try it and then look back at the results as fodder for reflection.

Night is coming this early winter afternoon, you know I am waiting for the solstice in two days. Until then, tuck under the covers and let the dreams come, the knowing dreams that tell you where to plant your gardens, turn your pages. Deepening night, lamps of the city alight. Supper now, lighthouse sounding over the lake. Sleep well, it has been earned. Good night.

Buyer, Be Wary

I went to the franchise eye doctor for the once-a-year today, in the Land of Things, the big arse-whuppity Mall. Floored, I was, positively floored. The Mall is not for me in any language. I don't think there are enough people to buy all that stuff, what the heck are they thinking? Where does it all go? The stuff that sells, the stuff that doesn't sell; it has all been put into existence and will be here for the next how many thousand years? The most uncomfortable feeling is that after it is discarded in favor of newer items is that it goes to a landfill, or more likely, our ocean. I mean, open your eyes, people! What the hell is going on that there are over one hundred styles of watches in several six foot long glass cases in the larger department store alone! Is this fun? My lord in the sky, it is frightening.

The shoes, the sneakers, the clothing, is any of this worth the prices asked? Don't even get me going on store display, for all that goes into the trash as well. What has this become but a never-ending Merry-go-Round for humans needing a constant high from achievement measured in bags of loot? And every single bit of it eventually hits the garbage. Where else do you think it goes?

Look, I know there are items designed for fun, like the barbeque spatula I almost picked up at Brookstone for my son. One side was a wide spatula, the other a smaller spatula to clamp down atop whatever food was being picked up. Not for the $20 price tag. There were spurlings of metal along the edges, the wooden grippers were too thick and heavy making it awkward, and the whole thing was a once in a while convenience. Crappy quality for twenty dollars.

Women seemed to be the worst offenders, buying up bags in a hurry like hens before a rainstorm. Is it the nesting instinct mismanaged into pretentiousness? You have money for all this crap? Could you not be accomplishing something better? And when will you tire of it, what do you do with it? Even if it becomes a donation to a thrift shop, eventually it will go to the same place, the garbage. Not into thin air, but some unseen landfill. Forgive me if I am not thrilled with your alleged prizes. After being discarded, the many, many shoes are on their way to poisoning some aquifer, adding to the dead zones slowly gyring in the ocean, or traveling the highways in the tractor-trailer world of shifting garbage. Do you see it or have to deal with it? Before the end of your lifetime, I would imagine that you will be experiencing some sort of consequence to the planet as a result of all this wasteful, self-centered consumerism.

Shopping is fun and a great stress reliever, but the end of all things doesn't happen, and we need to slow down. Greed is ugly; without foresight, it is deadly. I promise you won't have to hear this again at least for another year when my eyes get rechecked. If I have offended anyone, I am not sorry and you can go jump. Do something rewarding for other people, and then I will retract the pincers. This is just from visiting one Mall, good lord, just think of all the places that sell items in this country, from the most exclusive to the dollar store. Unless you are building a collection of well-made, useful heirlooms to pass on, get a grip. What you're looking for isn't in your purse.

My god, maybe I am tired. Trotting through Macy's almost put me into a seizure of nausea from the sheer amount of materialism set to the sound of bouncy jingles designed to make you stay in the store longer, so you shop more. "Armani is on sale," intoned one sales clerk settled in the the middle of the aisle so she could offer this earthshaking news. Blow it out your ear, lady and outta my way. My eyes are dilated and this whole affair reeks of poor value, simply because Chinese manufacturing has superseded our own and we don't need all this fake shit as a substitute for avoiding feeling whatever shortcomings handed to us.

Bed. Time. Now. I am sleepy, and the eyes are tired. Can't wait to crawl in. This month, a total lunar eclipse is scheduled, allowing the constellations to temporarily outshine the moon. How fun, but I will be asleep. Maybe the foxes will notice, the foxes out in the woods who live by night searching for mice and rabbit pie. I will let you go on ahead without me, and find the moon when it returns from it's blood-red journey, the moon, the moon. Yip. Sleep well.

Hear and Attend and Listen, O Best Beloved...

This salutation-command originates from the beginning of one of my favorite stories by Rudyard Kipling, "The Cat Who Walked By Himself". It begs attention in rhythmic calliope, drawing the brain into the lulling call typical of Kipling who had an ethereal knack of cadence. Like ocean waves, or the sound of rain slapping on a forest of fallen leaves, his words soothe and remind you of the beat of our hearts. Luh dub, luh dub, luh dub, luh dub. We are us: fin, finger, feather, fur.

What comes to me this Sunday in December? I tentatively have finished the final project of the semester and such a sense of resolution has fallen, like a shawl Grandma has placed round my shoulders. Once I get the okay to bind, I run off four copies and get them signed by my professor. My reward is to write a bit, push things around some, and work on a drawing. At least for today.

I am restarting artwork, it will be the sixth creative stage of life and may become my most productive. Inspiration comes from a qualitative article stating how a number of women have come to eminence past the age of 60 and produce successfully well into their nineties; since I will be 59 very soon, I have a head start. Now what is meant by eminence? Nothing remarkable, just as widespread as I can make it.

I have to tell you, I am tired in such fashion that the doctor has ordered up a stress test for Wednesday along with a heart monitor which is mildly alarming, but the more I talk to people, the less frightening it seems. What comes will come, I'll be here.

Tonight the temperature is to drop and the wind to rise. Lay out the blankets, make sure your mittens are ready. Sleep curled in wool, knowing that the wind traverses from lake to foothill, an atmospheric sleighride from above catching in the eaves; hear the bending branches, say a small prayer for the birds. Socks and gown, flannel and friend. Good night.

L M N O P

The crush of paperwork and reading from college has precluded any. thing. else. during this semester, much of it accountable to a dedicated lack of organization. My television isn't working, the cell phone has not been seen in two months, and the windows on my car are up, forever. Thank goodness for the sun roof, which I take as an overall commentary on life. When it gets tough, look up.

Today has been declared a snow day for the school system, so before the finishing polish is added to the master's project, I am visiting Dreamville.

The snow fell continually on the first day of my second-favorite month of the year, in pretty, circling flurries, a postcard from Mom Nature. The kids appreciated it, and would emit squeak noises from time to time when the flakes thickened, look, look, look at that (no, look up HERE, singular possessive nouns, hey!). It subsided until after dark. If you put a spoon under your pillow, it is rumored to affect the outcome of having a snow day from school. Thank you, Spoonster, where ever you are.

I woke around four to silence. This is a Sign. Living next to an elevated highway is clamorous unless there has been snow, which muffles running tire treads, this was quiet, no traffic whatsoever. I blinked hope and upon opening an eye, noticed the room was glowing orange. This is also good; similar to reading cirrus clouds and knowing that they bring precipitation soon, the orange is reflection of the sodium-vapor street lamps upon the airborne snowflakes,which then haunts the room with a surreal vision like you are living next to a huge warehouse fire. Snow was still falling; a plow blade scraped by, the early train sounded it's horn before entering the tunnel. It looked messy outside, but not impossible.

As much as NPR is a mainstay of the morning alarm system, they don't report school closings like the local rock station. and it is there that the news was broadcast first. That is also where the first description of what was happening elsewhere came to vision, that people no further than a stone's throw away were socked in, stuck overnight on the thruway, complete with jack knifed semis. I am grateful to be safe home.

Sleep well, sleep warm, sleep knowing that you are.

Open Windows

The heat is on here in the apartment, and you don't realize how warm it is until you toss donated bags of clothing into the car outside and then re-enter the building. I flipped a few windows open to release the stultifying stuffiness; Min has taken her post on the sill and is yelling to Buffalo, New York all the cat news and opinions she thinks it needs. She is my talker, once a stray who ran the porch at the back of another building. Meow meow meow. Rawr. She misses her cat boyfriend Martian, who we lost last summer to heart failure. Big orange guy. Last year was a sorrowful year of combined losses.

I am doing brief research regarding intuition for a final project, and find that this work is taking me into a paranormal arena of extra-sensory perception. Tread carefully. I can't stress that enough. There are fine lines between this world and the unknown next, bordering on things that have little to do with any savior. People fall into traps of their own making, some plummet into a world of illusions. I have a relative from a generation ago, who heard voices in lonely train whistles, who thought the vacuum cleaner was inhabited by demons. I can see how that happens, especially when hearing the call of the train that goes by in the night, a long, lone, wavering banshee which pulls you into the distance. To me, it's now a friendly sound of progression and exploration, to someone on the edge tormented by thoughts of saints and penance, it can become less so.

Before the age of nine, when we lived out behind the woods laced with cricks and swamps where catkins grew, a train track ran through the trees at the back of the far boundary. The whistled warning as the freight came to the crossing on Gunville Road scared me for many, many nights, reminding me of the ghost from a Disney movie. The movie was "Darby O'Gill and The Little People," and it was listed as forbidden by The Catholic Union and Echo, which also forbade Tarzan movies because Tarzan and Jane lived together in sin. My beloved Protestant cousin took me into the city, to Lafayette Square to see it, very hush hush, my also Protestant Mom in cahoots. Afterwards, I suffered the confabulation of the young, and ascribed it to heathenistic choices of the willy-nilly. My sin. My penance.

Gosh, I was a nutty kid. Certain planes flying over the house, especially the C-119 twin boom tails scared me, the frequency of their sound lit me up like a Christmas tree. No other plane, just the double-tailed ones. They traveled slowly, and the low sound of the engines was a cascading rrrwir rrwir rrwir that searched over every hillock and moraine for human essences, particularly tender, juicy, six year old girls. But this is the point, that those who are susceptible to suggestion can take the hoodoo part of science and run with it, like a dog with a frisbee.

What can I say? My phobias were fed by sneaking into my other cousin's stash of fifties monster magazines, and being horrified yet fascinated with the walking casserole-faced people of black and white cinematic fame that preyed on the living and well-coiffed. God, I paid for that. They lived under my bed for years, and I slept with a night light until I got married.

Now, the night is for sleeping. Period. No monsters or hands are waiting to grab any body part hanging over the edge of the mattress. Peaceful, silent sleep of the innocent, both human and animal. Lovely. Purple edged night, solace for the weary. That's us, all around. Sleep well, sleep secure. Good night. Good, good night.

What Was I Thinking

No, no, nevermind me. It's something that will seem funny in about a half of an hour. I am in the throes of writing papers for this degree, and since nearing bedtime, want to avoid caffeine in anything or I won't sleep. Yesterday I had trod the aisles of a health food store Only Because the pet store wanted four bucks for less than a tablespoon of winter wheat in a bag of potting soil. Cats love grass, and mine have been a little oogy-foogy lately with stomach toss-ups-- if it starts with one, it usually runs through the lot of them. A helpful thing to do is plant wheat grass which can be found for maybe 70 cents a pound at the grocery. Put it in brightly colored packaging with a happy cat cartoon on the front, and you can charge four bucks and up. Not in my world. I trot over to the health food store in the next block and find two pounds of the stuff much more reasonably priced.

While looking and listening to fascinating ideas held by organic nutritionists ("There's a raw food Thanksgiving at Merge")(blech), I see a box of catnip tea. Yippee! I love catnip tea, and used to make catnip jelly for my toast. It comes home with me, I plant the wheat kernels, and get busy on this paper. Now it is tonight, and I want to wind down but also am dying Dy-ing for a cookie, which I haven't any on purpose. The solution is tea, and at this time of the evening, non-caffeinated is necessary, perfect for breaking out the catnip tea while working on the laptop.

I brew a cup, scalding hot in a favorite mug, and head back to the desk where I am working. Tap tap tap away on the keyboard, and there's a tail, a big swish tail coming to visit, how nice. Kai leaps onto the desk. Another tail comes by, and Steve Pickles is on the desk also. A third tail enters, and crazy-crashes into a nearby box; Snowbelle has arrived. They are undulating back and forth, stepping on keys, and if a meow could be a bark, this is it. They are barking short meows, and it becomes so clear as Kai loops a paw towards the hot catnip tea. She tries to stick her face in it, and I have a problem in that I cannot have my tea sit quietly as the desk is crowded with three agitated cats.

They know where I keep the real stuff, so we traipse out to the cupboard and all the cats including the two who weren't part of the pillage get a dose of catnip leaf, gathered earlier in the year. I am not paying pet store prices for something I can pick for free. I bribe them with their drug of choice and gallop back to the laptop for a peaceful two minutes. Yet the aroma from the tea still attracts them after they have downed their portions, but it is a much less frantic plea except for Kai, whose paw is putting great effort into snagging what is rightfully mine. At least to my way of thinking. When combining writing a master's project with writhing tails batting one's face and paws running figure-eights atop the Mac, it is easy to lose it. No door to shut them out, no shelf to stow the hot tea; I could only drink it quickly and be done with it. I will have to hide the soggy tea bag in the refrigerator, or face consequential late-night rowdyism with the wet bag dragged out of the garbage and torn apart maybe in my bed, their favorite place to hide things. Whee.

I'm calmer now. Maybe the catnip kicked in. Time to feed the fish and turn off lights and laptops. I am hitting la hay. Everyone has had their fun, beat each other up, and are now washing their dainty selves. It is cold outside, and all of us want blankets to make us happy. Another day has come and gone. Poof. Wah. Tired.

Bless your hearts, what else could we want? Fun, a fight, and then a snooze. Sounds like a few family gatherings on my mother's side. Tuck under then, pull the kivvers up to your chin. Frost is on the pumpkin, rambling vines sink to earth, the last of the harvest is brought to the barns. Old Earth is getting ready to sleep, we can too. Good night, good night, quiet tails.

People Who Smell Like Bacon

Once upon a discussion, I sat next to a middle aged man. We were perched on folding chairs in an audience for a telecast of academic conversation, stifled by the heated stage lights and closeness of elbows. I was taking notes on the laptop, and he leaned over to ask a question whereby a sudden updraft of warm air from the floor brought the unmistakeable aroma of bacon to the fore.

I realized: it was his maroon sweater that smelled so delicious, I mean, So Delicious. The warmth of the studio became a kitchen, a Sunday kitchen for bacon and sizzling fry pan aromas somewhere in the middle of a cold day. Bacon was for weekends, for slow good morning breakfasts with toast and eggs and orange juice, coffee and the paper. Saturdays were usually rushed affairs, full of errands before the next day when most shops used to be closed. That was why you could take your time on Sundays ago, because nothing else was happening until Disney came on in the evening, after Lassie.

I don't think he understood the effect his sweater had; I wanted to bury my face in his midriff and inhale. I sort of kept up the conversation so that each time he leaned in, I could smell him. Sweetly, innocently, it just joggled the bacon pathways in my brain. The presentation began, and we went our attentive ways.

So, the other night I sat next to a woman who usually dresses in layers of foofy clothing. What? What? My gosh, she smells like bacon. She did. Must have fried something up for a quick supper, or it was left from the morning, but for goodness sake it was a weekday and who cooks bacon for breakfast when you have a job? It did not have the same effect on me, since well, she is also a smoker and frankly, a woman; her hair and clothes were permeated with stale cigarette vapors over the delicate bacon aromas, but yet the bacon-o-meter sensor levels were high enough to establish a reading.

When frying bacon it pays to wear an apron, for even with a screened cover over the pan, microglobules of sizzling deliciousness will invade clothing fiber, the pores of your skin, and cling to fuzzy sweaters. I am only recommending this for my own sanity for if you smell like bacon, I may hover like a hummingbird over a feeder. Really, I have better self control than that. Most of the time. But a man who smells good to begin with, especially with a starched shirt over that and then a sweater with baconness, it's like human catnip.

On myself, I can't stand it. Seems thick and cloying. But then, that's a good thing. I don't cook it or eat it that often, and am shocked and dismayed that some everyday markets are charging up to six dollars for a pound of store brand with a streak of lean so thin it looks unhappy. The price of pork didn't zip up that high, so what gives? Bacon is a mainstay of flavor and used to be a cheap supper; tuck a rasher into a grilled cheese with tomato, build a BLT, begin a chili, add to the vinegared joyful mess of German potato salad, let it draw the family into the house on a chilly day. Pancakes? Waffles? Better with bacon. I rest my case.

Long day, short night. Time just flies by. Aches come and go, come and stay. I will turn gratefully in tonight, after typing up a paper for class. The wool blankets have come out, and the cats burrow under during some of the chiller October midnights. Sleep well, sleep safely, put your worries in a jar and let the subconscious sort out the nonsense. Good evening, good night.

French Toast

Watching Mr. Pasquette walk the wire between two towers took no time at all if you saw it via the broadcast news. However, (toot horns), I could see half of it live, right out my window and was so immersed in his concentration that time slowed to a molluscan dimension; a cautious, tendril of a foot balanced his weight forward in meditative time; I willed him to stay up, move deliberately, to grow roots into his line. It took forever. He stopped, knelt, tipped a hat, saluted. An animated dot, he shortened as he knelt. As he gained the safety of the ledge, I saw him scamper down the terraced levels supporting the towering Statue of Liberty replicas, a mannikin upon the horizon in the sky. I clapped, not loud enough for the neighbors to hear. Thank you, Mr. Pasquette; you stopped the sun and inserted your own version of time like a wedge between o'clocks. It was fun to see you. Au revoir.

Hours. Sleep, please stay.

Noah's Ark

Last Sunday, I drowned any spiders, dust mites, and microscopic prokaryotes, thus liberating the saprophytes that feed on dead remains and so produce bouquets of spores. English: I flooded the back end of the god-blasted apartment with an inch of water and spent a good part of the next day ripping up carpeting. Plastic crap-ola indoor outdoor carpeting that was the color of cheap canned dog food and stapled into the asbestos linoleum on top of once uponna time foam underlayment. No one was hurt, no cat became ill from padding through pools, and I promised the universe to swear less if I got my job back while sopping up buckets with a miracle sponge that I will bury with a marker when it's ready to go I respect this sponge so much, it saved my giblets. Just the kind of sponge you use to wash a car, an oversize floppy synthetic thing, but it held water like Scarlett clinging to the fantasy of Ashley Wilkes. I am grateful, O sponge; particulars are not being revealed even if you promise me a box of kittens.

Much was thrown away, my mom's old easel, a table missing a leg but it was such a good piece of furniture, a wool rug so plain and warm, a mirror in a gilt picture frame from grandma's time, and some books. It was horrible, I still ache. This scenario was compounded by the mystery of job status which was not found out until that Tuesday, when I went to the online site and saw the words. I had gone to work to set up the classroom, yet waited to get home before checking--if the state hadn't said okey-dokey, I didn't want to know in front of anybody.

Well, it was, I am, and sleep has returned. There is still an anxiety, but it's wearing down, ebbing away from a clawed grip to a tolerable elbow in the ribs. It will be all gone soon, remaining sensation being the breathless shock that things worked out. Lord, I need to get to the ocean, to feel the salt waves rocking against my shins, pulling the tension of human life on land back to the beginning of shelled things. Since I redigidooed the car insurance policy, there will be nine hundred dollars that I don't have to pay them. This will buy a lot of cat food and maybe get a vacation in there somewheres. Oh baby.

Going off to push some more furniture around, found a black circular dial telephone which only needs a split adaptor to hook up. Tried it out in the modem and yippee, using a finger to turn the dial felt familiarly weird, and sounded like fifty years ago. Come on over and call someone; maybe grandma will answer, but that is a story for a cup of tea.

Oh sleep. Tomorrow is college library research for a Monday paper, but tonight, that beginning-of-fall cool night that requires heavier bedding will lull daylight into memory. Oh, most of our joy occurs in day, but there is the respite from being good enough that night comforts and loosens a little, if only to dream or fall into dark, quiet worlds of slow time. Rest and recover, let the subconscious wend through thought and desire, let the body sink gratefully down to innocence. Good night, good night, water, star, carbon, flesh. Love to all.

I saw that, get back here.

It is 10:30 a.m. by the world clock on the laptop; breakfast has been cleared and papers are electronic and silent but for the soft clacking of a million keyboards. I sit on the couch edge, typing missives and apologetic requests for words documenting efforts to higher ups and departments.

The apartment remains cluttered by years of a somnambulant existence, enchanted by shells, books, drawing pads, cats, and grandmotherly things. I remind myself that I have only awoken recently, and cannot undo years of gathering things that made me feel temporarily loved in a few months. Health not quite good enough to sit down and stop was compounded by graduate papers due at college and by demands of a job that requires a sixth sense and a mind two steps ahead of the clientele.

I noticed falling last summer, when the words coming from the instructor made no sense and it took too many times to understand a page of text. Stress, older, blah blah blah, suck it up, get busy. Now things are better, moving forward; even if I get half the brain I once had, it would suffice, but resolving organic growth does take its sweet time. Oh people, be patient with each other, you never can know what mischief will impede anyone's synapses like a burnt squirrel in the phone wires.

So, signs. What do you think? After becoming religious, non-religious, then religious again after the marriage ended, then non-religious when they wanted me to go to "Divorce Class" before I could take communion post-annulment post-divorce, then a little too Run-With-The-Wolves spiritual, then a little uh-oh over the edge I saw a bird sitting on this street sign so it means blah, then, for heaven's sake get a grip and work towards your education, next, walking around in a stultified state from the two anti-depressants, tranqs, and Ambien that someone-who-is-not on my Christmas List put me on, then the resurrection from sleep disorders, and the current issue of my freaking muscles melting away from a recipe of statins (warning: do not take), snake venom blood pressure med and diuretic heart palpitation circus meds; after all that, I believe in signs. Tippy-toe like. Maybe.

I journaled an occurrence offline because it was too out of the ordinary and really, some of us have these things happen, and others end up in a cupboard next to the once-a-year Bell's Poultry Seasoning brought out Thanksgiving mornings, that happy little yellow box with the bright blue and red turkey on the front, since 1867. You want to know more, email me.

But did it just happen again? Printing out a hardcopy document for this evening's class, the computer produced an image on the paper mimicking the previous you-didn't-hear-it-from-me there she goes again. A picture that had been stored in the photo files. No document, but so similar to what was experienced, I paused, then laughed with the silvery angels. I mean, it did come out as a laugh, but maybe it was more related to nerves and last night's sleep interruption when Snowbelle got caught behind a dresser and needed rescuing in the middle of nowhere nohow. I think it's my Grandma Ida, and that's all I'm admitting publicly.

Letters have now been written and faxed at this 11:30 a.m. hour, the BTF rep said that the Albany connection would put it through if she got the letter due course. Now I am waiting to hear if it gets there, if the right people press the right buttons after lunch, perhaps.

A dear friend and I were supposed to drive up to Newfane for a short trip to visit a shop where another friend sells her knit purses. It will happen in autumn, closer to leaf colors and tannin in the atmosphere. Tonight I have a class at the college, parking better after four o'clock when the younger crowd leaves. The master's project begins this evening, I am ready. Listen for a royal wahoo when the soft mists begin to gather over the Lake and day is done. No cat is getting caught behind a dresser this night.

Do a good turn today, I know you do every day; these actions create a family and a sense of social belonging which is all that anyone wants. Day to night, moon to up, sun to down. We dream.

Pennies

It's just something that I do, but if I find a penny, it's a good day. The penny is not allowed to be a signifier of anything further than a bit of happy. Larger coins are also accepted, and thus boost the number of penny-finding days forward. A nickel is worth five days, for example; nickels are hard to find because they are larger and people notice them, pennies and dimes tarnish more and thus blend into the strata besides being a smaller size. This past June I found three dollars on the ground in the parking lot, so technically I am ahead 300 days even though if I don't find any pennies on any day, well, it's like no dessert which I am used to, since cake is bad for you anyways. I still believe in pie, but don't let it in the house.

But I did find a penny today, in the parking lot of the college where I registered for two more courses closer to the degree. This is a trapeze-swinging jump, as I think I am unemployed from my job, (will know more tomorrow), and paying out of pocket. It is taking half of everything I have, and that's the scary part. However, what could happen? Once I pay the car insurance, I will qualify for food stamps. Wegman's will honor generic prescriptions for $10 per 90 tablets. Without a job, I would be eligible for unemployment, yet don't think I can get any further student loans. I have one course in the spring left.

The part that squirrels me is that once my then health issues screwed up my waking memory to the point where I forgot to pay them their easy $75 for three months, the state required not only that "good faith" payment, but they also garnished my wages $200 a paycheck. So, $475 just to the government. This, combined with the lost ability to get student loans put me in a

financial bind precluding further attending grad school until the income tax refund arrived.

Life was later hit by the bag of wet mice that had the last two courses needed for the degree given on Thursday nights at the same time. Even if my head was on straight, it wouldn't have happened. So, employing either catalyst, I am losing my job which wanted the master's degree by midnight, tonight. A note is in to Albany from the union, bless 'em, and there may be a last minute reprieve. Results like this are really in the state's best interest as well, for without employment at my age, what are the options?

I am not going down the litany of worries, because frankly, being back in college feels terrific. The health issues ever dissipate, and I will always have a hot shower as long as I live where I am. Who knows where this will land me? A new adventure, this, with old skill sets of living on a string. It may even force me to paint pictures to sell. Dumpster dive. Catch a brown goose for dinner. Move in with my son and his girlfriend (just kidding on the last one, Buzz).

So this is where I am, and it's a far better place than three days ago, when despair clutched in an iron grip. Even then, pennies found meant something good. I don't know why people just throw them away, a good place to find them is in the area behind a do-it-yourself car wash, where people vacuum their cars. They'll toss eight pennies on the ground, but save out the one nickel.

I have a day tomorrow, of getting books and assignments, of going in to get more personal belongings out of the classroom. Not waiting for results, I can always haul stuff back. Sleep is calling to me, sleep under an orange moon just rising in the east. Have to plan, have to think, it is a thing of interest to me, this happenstance, a puzzle to be conjured.

Lord, the children. Let them sleep well, this life is not for the drowsy. Good night.

Editing previous post

Well, I don't know how that happened, that bit where sentences are cut off. But I like it.

Names

Apple, peach, cabbage, silo. Arm, leg, tinker, walk. Up, down, red, green. Words communicate ideas; the idea of water drops on grass in the morning is dew; bring something up, whether thought, building or foot is to raise. I love words, should learn more about usage, maybe read the Times more, go back and subscribe to the New Yorker. Poems are a favorite, images play for years from a stanza or two.

I have been practicing e.e. cummings poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town", restarted memorization again last night. His ideas are tough to get, to put in order, but so, so lovely. One of my secret hobbies, memorizing poems. I have Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", Yeats "The Second Coming", and Emerson's "Brahmin" complete. Have to review from time to time, the old brain is fusty and jumbled.

An author's nuances and meaning turn me inside out in delight, for example, from Coleridge:

"But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon lover!"

What woman? Where'd she come from? A demon lover? What was she looking for from him,

was he late with something? "Where the hell were you, we missed the seven o'clock showing."

All sorts of visuals there. Ah but that's the thing, visuals.

Names give us a common reference identifying connections to each other, with whatever groups

we circle in throughout the day. People delight in wit, in being the clever one, or mostly, being

a friend of the clever one. We repeat what we hear in spite of thinking, do we really mean this,

is this phrase expressing our own hearts? Alliance forms from fear, of being the one left out, and

so we parrot whatever current group we are in.

So nice to see you's are spouted, but when in front of the other nasty mouths, the words turn

cartwheels to become agreement with whomever we regard as the most intrusive or feared, just

so's we don't get squashed ourselves. It doesn't stop when you get older, this relegation of

rank continues and lives on, fed by fear and self-loathing. But it is most painful to observe in

children being victimized by other children or adults.

Carving out social rank within a group is a safety feature of survival, no news there, but there are

way too many glitches along the way. These glitches are called nincompoops, and they live to make

their position seemingly secure by dumping venom on others not within their perimeters. Names

are the easiest, non-thinking way to cut someone off at the knees and then congratulate yourself

that you aren't one of them.

This whole train of thought was brought on by a friend's blog, as he reminisced about feelings

surrounding the names peers tagged him with. I was called names, others I love dearly have

suffered verbal bullying, and until you believe that you are a good person, these names cut your

soul to shreds. Self-doubt is magnified by the lens of scrutiny, and you better buck up and find

what you like about yourself and build on it, or the rabble will grind you in their maw until they

tire and find other victims to sustain their useless selves.

It is just so hard for children, teenagers, the lonely, introverted, or different. The can collecting man

has a degree in physics, the quiet child who can't read knows how to make beautiful pictures;

listening to them raises you up, smiling at them pleasantly isn't hard, use a kind word in front of

them and more importantly, display some integrity and refuse to play these horrible, empty games.

Go out and hang up some laundry or go find a new way to study turtles. For heaven's sake, do

something useful. I'll like you better.

And not always, but most of the time? The people who are drubbed and tormented turn out to be

fascinating adults, while the mouthy clique-y ones find that name callers stay just that. I know you

know someone who hasn't outgrown their high school role. Yet not all introverts are heroes, nor all

extraverts pains in the neck, you just know better where the extraverts are; 75% of the population,

for goodness sake.

One hundred percent of us need our sleep, and bless you if you can with a clear conscience. No demon

lovers necessary, we can take care of this ourselves. Be at peace with one another, all any of us

want is to be happy and toss over a grilled cheese on whole grain bread once in a while. Change

into jammies, say a prayer to whatever guides you, and let yourself fall innocently into the sleep

shared by every other living being on the planet. As the world spins, imagine the light switches

being clicked before head hits pillow. That will be interesting, a recorder in the high atmosphere,

able to pick up the changes of the hours as they rotate around the earth. Does Spain sound differently

from China? It would have to, but how? Ah well, sleep my dears, and heal. You are loved and shiny as

a new penny.

Sunset over the lake. Moonrise in the southern sky. Venus, Saturn, Mars, Jupiter, Uranus.

Good night from the city.

Clippings and Notes

Moving furniture takes your mind off of whether you may have a job tomorrow or not, so the bed is being pushed about the room it is in, sloughing layers of papers saved from this and that. An envelope of newspaper clippings that my Mom had snipped spills onto this bed, and belies the dreams she had. What I read from these yellowed scraps tells of isolation from friends and life, due to her marriage and the life she was doled.

She saved items mostly from the two Buffalo papers, The Buffalo Evening News and the Courier-Express; there were several clothing tags from garments she bought regarding fabric care, and notes of measurement for curtains and carpet. These are what she was allowed as portals to a world outside. I say it is my job to report her interests, of things that seemed important, for today the clippings are being thrown away.

This is what her eyes took in, what she deemed helpful to keep life in order: German events in the city, shops for cuckoo clocks and Hummel figurines; recipes for crowds, car care, window cleaning formulas, and hints on freezing candles to prevent dripping wax. Wall washing hints. About eight different snips of articles on vinegar, particularly for window cleaning. She used scissors to cut out an imaginary safe world, storing it in shoeboxes and used envelopes. I have two more boxes to go through; this is just the beginning, this first pile.

Pictures of people at dinner, dancing, sitting in conversation over the latest recipe for cabbage and pork chops are framed by pounds of clippings for large crowds, dinner party for eight sort of things. My Mom, so lonely and wistful, not strong enough to get out there where real people and ideas surfaced. Ach, du lieber.

Her flat, lefthanded writing sometimes has numbers or names of stores and companies. Measurement meant hope. The curtains will bring warmth and that note of sparkle to the decor, providing the family with a homey sense of society. A carpet will be comfortable, able to silence hard footsteps, mask and absorb sounds. Feed your family from the five food groups to keep their immune systems functioning and give them happy dispositions. I see, Mama, your thirty pickle recipes were how you kept going when all you had was a newspaper and your soaps and had to have a hot meal on the table or face the terror and violence at five p.m. and on weekends.

In a wonderful world, I would not throw them out, but publish them in a book titled "Dorothy Mae". It would be a handbook for the people who live just under the top layer of life, who live without breathing most of the time so the poltergeists don't eat you up. Invite people over, make a casserole able to feed twelve. Be loud, clink glasses, laugh, turn up the music. It never happened for her. I couldn't save her. One of my biggest failings in this life.

What can be done. Looking back turns you to salt, so I am going back to moving more furniture and throw out some other history, perhaps some of my own. The cat rubs her face on the corner of the laptop screen and goes back to washing her front bib in circling laps. My love, I love you so.

Sleep well. Please. It would do me so much good to think so. Reality is that I can't save anyone but myself, but it does also mean that wishing you well feels good, and that I can lend you a hand if you need. Oh the power of thought, of wishful thinking. Move forward, push the bed. Good night, you are safe.

Solipsis

Can it be ever understood how many people are on drugs? Not the recreational illegal business, but the doctor-prescribed medications that are not hinged too tightly on getting us better. First I was on a high blood pressure med that zombified me. Then I was on cholesterol med that started dissolving my long muscles. Now I am on a diuretic that creates a ghostly, drowsy weakness that has me tripping over rugs and my own feet.

The online stats say that over two million people take this particular cholesterol drug, not all of them successfully. They are as woozy as I was, and maybe this is a good time to let everyone know not to tailgate. God knows what the person ahead of you is on. If it's a prescribed drug, we think the side effects are legal and try to go on with business when we should be sitting at home with a pillow under our head. No, no, I'm fine. I can do this. Getting used to a new drug and finally deciding that it is doing more damage than good is a long struggle towards normalcy. Getting used to a drug that works for you is just as nerve-wracking, for you never know the outcome until weeks have gone by. My life, a good chunk, has been spent getting used to drugs.

Just realize folks, that too many of us are dealing with pharmaceuticals and what they do to body systems. I feel way better now than I did this morning and hope that with time this new med will be tolerated at the get-go. Friends who take it say it will, and it eliminates the other two meds that were debilitating. Plop one foot in front of the other and there you go.

The rhabdomyolysis causes the muscles to waste, and so I still ache while the meds are flushed out. It hurts to lift, walk, and breathe. But I am peeing oceans of bright yellow, better that the weak brown from dissolved proteins that would have caused eventual kidney problems. If anything, I have learned to be insistent with doctors and ask questions and do web research. Most are doing their best to be good people, but that's just it, they are people.

The night is cooling and I look forward to laying my long bones flat. Over the next few days the Perseid meteor shower takes place, and perhaps tomorrow evening, I will see some. Never have. But I will be near the southern border of New York State, in the woods with a couple of girlfriends, a mother and daughter who have a cabin there. Nowhere near city lights, at the top of an Allegheny mountain.

Sleep well and keep trying. Don't give up, too many people think of you when they say prayers. It is a privilege to be part of the struggle. Today at the grocery, I overheard a cashier speaking with a customer. This cashier is a man, a refugee from an African nation who had one arm chopped off possibly when he raised it to deflect the machete, which also left a deep dent in his skull. The customer asked, how are you, man? The cashier said, any day above ground is a good day. Think of that.

Dreams are for everyone, particularly for those who worry, push against the flow, or collect cans to supplement food on the table. An eccentric man used to run a bookstore, and lost it to a devious partner who came in and sidled his way legally into ownership, booting out the original owner. I see him up and down Elmwood on occasion, trailing a wire cart while searching for cans and returnable bottles. He refuses help from the government, and is intent on self-sufficiency, his long white hair and beard flopping out from under a baseball cap, his fingernails curved and yellow. His college degree is in physics.

What can we do but dream. Replenish with sleep tonight, let the body systems do mysterious workings unknown to the conscious mind. Sleep well, sleep tight. Hold on to something, it helps. Good, unknown night. Wait for me, Perseids.

Walk at the Basin

The sun was shining on the sea, shining with all her might; she did her very best to make the billows smooth and bright, and this was odd because it was the middle of the night. Here in the city, the sun was very shining except it was upon the lake and head of the river. I went for a walk in a direction I haven't been in maybe two years; I live right near the thing and rarely go that way. The point of interest was to see what plants they were testing in the beds down at the Marina, for one of my goals this school year is to have the kids plant a garden of mostly perennials, so they can witness the plants growing along with them. Grow and Read. What do you think?

There are two narrow strips originally designed as raised flower beds surrounded by concrete that have been let go, becoming just grass to be weed whacked. I think if we could just stuff a few here and theres, it would brighten the space and with luck, last a few years. The students could weed and water and see just how a garden works. I have taken this walk, then, as a step towards beginning research.

Also have to clear this with administration, but it was meant to be planted, so what's up? There is also abandoned space where a small playground was, and that could be used as a vegetable patch, further down the road. A sunflower house. Well, that's waaay later. There are urban gardens springing up left and right; big one between Fillmore Avenue and Wilson Street, smaller ones run by community groups. I wonder if the Buffalo Conservancy, which tends the garden outside the museum, would be willing to divide up some plants for us, really, the spot isn't that large. It's just empty.

Maybe the Botanical Gardens could divvy up some of its outdoor plants, and furthermore, most of our school staff have gardens with potential donations available. You know, when public areas clean out oh, say, tulips after the blooming season is finished, the bulbs are pulled and tossed. I know Buff State does that, as well as the Niagara Parks commission. If you know someone, there's bags for free. I don't know anyone, but I can introduce myself.

But anyway, on the walk towards the Hatch there are now carved statues from the immense trees felled by the October Storm of 2006. It is rather fabulous looking. The gardens are lovely, if concentrated and when turning a corner, there was a little brown bunny not too alarmed to see me lurching around. I found a penny. Petunias mobbed the beds in vivid Congo pinks, zinnias threw flames deeply scarlet and ravishing. Ornamental grasses were purple and fireworks red. Just lush, sumptuous.

I moved on to see people with lawn chairs dragged out of car trunks watching the goings on in the basin and further out on the lake. There were many sails apparent, perhaps participating in a race because they seemed to be going in the same direction, mostly. Sailboat races, because everyone's brother has a different class in this area, are handicapped to even up the field. You have to wait till they all get in before anyone can say yippee. Pretty to watch.

And there were geese. Lines of them. Gulls were about, but the Canadian geese swam neatly, conversationally, with wings tucked politely and no pushing or shoving. A couple rose up from the surface and I felt that thrill at watching an animal do something marvelous with little effort. To fly. The air rippled under their wings as two glided low over aqua colored water, silently.

Continuing towards the end of the berm, there really is quite a lot to see. The shoreline was swept of the skeletal mounds of driftwood that once filled the shore almost to the top of the slabs of stone put there to buffet waves. The stone slabs had also been built up more, with some gargantuan pieces of Medina red sandstone tossed in like checkers amid grey chunks. Columbine, Virginia creeper, Butter and Eggs, Moth Mullein, and I think a bit of poison ivy (it wouldn't surprise me, ivies in this latitude have increased a hundredfold because of climate change) grew from crevices.

Made it to the small, municipal "beach" with added sand and a sign sternly and correctly warning not even to stick your toe in beyond this stretch, the current is that bad, and it really is. Wading in the safe area seemed okay, but here is where nature hit the fan. Those lovely, regal geese must use the area as a morning spa, for goose feces was everywhere as well as the short, fluffy feathers that line under wings and chests. It was a supreme mess.

One family was allowing their little girl to play at water's edge in bare feet with a pail and shovel and lord watch over that she doesn't come down with a bad case of stomach cramps. Could someone not rake this small strand of sand? Not that it would take away the minutiae of bacteria, but for heaven's sake, if you make a play area available where you know people will be, do something about cleaning it. How could geese be convinced to go elsewhere?

Heading back off the berm, then, and to home. The sun felt so good. I had found catnip gone to seed poking through the slabs of rock and nipped some dried buds to scatter closer to my doorway. Grabbed a few green stems of chives for a potato later. That's me, pioneer woman.

Speaking of geese, when the economy sank and food prices became just plain ridiculous, I decided that if necessary, I could either supplement the menu with PCB loaded fish from the lake, or grab one of them birds and give it a quick whack in the noggin. The cats and I could live for a week off one. A can of Cream of Mushroom will kill the taste from almost anything except itself. Seriously, I worry and try to come up with solutions.

I don't have to kill any geese today, so that's good; the air is cool and dry and it is Sunday night. Two more days of summer school and then a few classes and hopefully good news. And more walks. You see so much more and get to say hi to folks as they pass. I think we all try to squeeze Sunday to the last drop.

Need to push a few things back in place before retiring to bed. Just a few, the rest can wait, I heaved a number of items to trash this morning and am now scanning the area for more. Airing out a few jackets, one of which I just rebought two days ago and don't regret. I got the piece from my favorite store, AmVets, and grew too big for it. It has a cat pattern woven as a sort of tapestry, but since I was donating things too small last spring, it went.

I have watched that jacket after it was put up on the rack for sale again for the past three weeks, hoping someone would wouldn't buy it. Only a cat lover would. Say, I'm a cat lover, but well, reality is such that I wasn't wearing it. From the rack, however, the little cat faces would look at me from the sleeves and frontpiece and I would think, oh, that one looks like my Martian, my Lucy, my Kai, my Muffin. Arrgh. So, here it is again. Heck it was only five bucks and a basketful of peace of mind.

It happens that you give things away and rarer that they return to you. Funny, for inevitably this jacket, all jackets, will be given away, passed on, donated or tossed. Nothing, not even a slab of stone lasts forever. Shorelines shift and rebuild, walls tumble, frames are bulldozed. Let go of what you can but recognize that there is nothing wrong with sentiment, nothing.

Sleep well with the belief that you are loved and safe, that there are objects around you that remind you of where you have been and where you desire to go. Totems, charms, amulets, they are part of our psychological trappings that comfort and call our name in the night when we wonder what we are doing here and why. Moon and wheeling stars, sleep.

After the Storm

The spire for Erie Community College is currently topped with a flame of rainbow cast from the dress hem tatters of passing storms. It is seven in the evening, with sunset imminent in a sky fading to the translucent purple of dreams, the light still filtering its way through horizontal promenades between city buildings and through the tiny remnants of glassine floating in the atmosphere. After rainfall, after mist, departing cloudlets shake off those last drops which act as prisms

Two pillars of rainbow color appear as the droplets break lingering rays into myth, the larger, inner piece just landing above the gargoyled steeple as if it were lit by a fantastic, gaseous mirage. It hangs there, shifting as the sun settles under earth's edge and into the wilds of the zodiac, for at night our sun becomes part of some constellation imagined through the magnifying lens of dissimilar galaxies. Sunset is a see you later, do we know what our yellow star does when we aren't looking? You think the sun is visiting China as we sleep, but out in space it has another name from another set of eyes and perhaps assumes the shoulder point position in the celestial image of some alien babe. We may even be a nipple. Eek.

As the sun goes on to other things, the pillar of rainbow blanches to a little ghost which floats away as light ends and colors shift; only a dim miasma blinks with a last glimmer of hallucination in fading spectrum. Then sunset, dusk, twilight, and black; then begin changing back around three thirty in the morning when the darkest part of the sky somehow changes to a navy blue and so on. Anyone who has driven through the night recognizes the change of the clock without a dial.

Dawn is usually accompanied by yelling birds and any night critters scuttering for their burrows and nests. Just before the grand entrance by Sol, and if you are driving through civilized people, coffee smells emerge along with toast, egg, grits, and bacon aromas that make the steering wheel turn into a giant pancake and usually the car needs gas, too. So, stop already. Make everyone happy. Go comb your hair and splash your face awake. And besides, eggs are good for you.

The small, meditative rainbow has evaporated, the rain has sluiced into gutters and drains, gardens and pools filled with calico fish, puddles for sparrows, crevices of leaves for the tiniest to sip, and into creek, stream, river, and lake. It is a rainwashed evening, the cooling air of night cleansed by drops hurling through troposphere to ground.

We humans appreciate the cooler air, and flop ourselves down to sleep without the constant whirr of a fan or air conditioner droning its propellor mantra. Quiet, after our day of noise and conflict, we would like a dose of quiet, please. A night cool enough to use a blanket so that we feel protected lends to this hypnotic recipe for a simple, deep sleep with dreams of meadows, roads, or flowing currents.

Turn the key, close the door, climb under, fall in, lights out. Good, clear night.

Garden Walk 2010

Every year is an opportunity to be filled to the gills with amazement and splendor by the ingenuity of the city folk, and by the stirrings of Old Buffalo becoming realized once again. Not to say that we are looking stubbornly backwards in theory, but that the original design of parkways, trees, and gardens is emerging in the individual expression of the citizenry, and they are kicking up their green heels.

The Garden Walk opens neighborhoods with maps leading the inquisitive to paradise islands of malachite, aquamarine and jade, splashed with sunset colors seen once from the end of a tropical key. It is summer in voluptuous exuberance, a come-along-and-see invitation from neighbors, a public opening of quirky art, and deep rooted admiration of the urbane. We lucky duck visitors were allowed to tread grass into mud, impose our big selves upon tender shoots, and poke noses into deliberately arranged crockery. There were books for visitors to sign, and bits of melon to refresh; there was a cooler of free water, and one little girl sat on a cement step with a pitcher of red drink who would sell you a cup. James the Ice Creamcycle Dude had free raspberry sorbet being offered by his assistants at different posts throughout the Walk. Everyone pitched in, we all enjoyed the benefits.

In past years, I had visited neighborhoods surrounding upper West Side Ashland Avenue, Pearl Street in Allentown, the little Summer Street cottages, and Brantford Place off of West Delevan Avenue. Today I cast my direction in the area of Prospect Avenue and Rabin Terrace, the lower West Side that laps at the edge of downtown. Was I surprised, for the area one street over has a littered history of some roughness, gangs, and of hardworking people endeavoring to keep their neighborhoods safe.

It's where I shop for groceries and get sundries; there's a Mcdonald's, and several successful small businesses. Further up are several Asian markets, D'Youville college, and pockets of the hundreds of immigrants this city receives each year. It's an area of hope and struggle, so I wasn't expecting the colony of old hands in residence on this street in one of the oldest sections of town. Some had drawn chalk arrows on the sidewalks, hypnotizing you into their yards.

Oh it was fun. I saw "The Garden of Lesser Effort" next to its impressive neighbor, each a combination of art and humor. The sidewalks are broken and tilted, so you have to watch, but there are trees from before plastic rolling giant roots over blocks of slate and brown conglomerate cement. Italianate homes rise tall and narrow, a large butterfly bush behind one attracted both people and a Regal Fritillary butterfly with cobalt colors resounding in infinite flowers. The owner told of how she had moved that bush and talked it through regrowth, waving her hands as if to draw the essence of life through the ground and into the roots.

One home was not participating, but it must be shelter for a couple of enthusiasts as the wood siding was taken down to a bare surface and glazed, trim painted in black and red. A string of pumpkin lights hung from porch eaves, and a large, black metal cobweb spoke volumes, as if the owners decorated by reading Steven King. Fabulous is the word.

All owners were dog tired but proud. Glad to answer questions, patient with an occasional, accidental homicide by foot, generous in information. You could see the stars just pouring out of their chests, grateful for the wonder on the faces of the visitors. Well, thank you right back. It couldn't have been more.

I am tired right now, but burgeoning with the sensation of now. Now we are here, now we have these ideas, now there are people in this often downtrodden city saying it isn't so. Come over. They are people with tables and chairs under vines in their backyards, grills and ponds and window screens strikingly painted with immense blossoms. A sense of art, of the sublime in living. Of goodness and arrangement and peaceful coexistence with plants, the earth, her people and animals. Like cats.

There are always cats. For example, as I was leaving one home which had industriously raised garden beds, a woman was leading the home cat in harness from inside to out, coaxing the not reluctant animal with a "Come meet the people. You want to meet the people? Come along, then." Large, grey, and swish-tailed, the cat did come along then, and met its admirers, absorbing oohs and ahhs as any cat does, with agreement and belief.

The day held well, no excessive heat or rainstorms to thrash viewers or gardeners, and pleasantries were given and received at all compass points of the city. I am revived by both the greenery and the people, and how pleasing it is to live here inside city limits where inventive, hardy folks hang pots on sturdy branches retrieved and reused as trellises. Each yard was so close to the next, some blended with paths into one. You might find a metaphor hiding in that one; myself, I am worn to a nub and want supper.

Tonight there is a breeze coming into the city from the lake as the sun hits just above the horizon. It was a fine day, and will be a good night to sleep. Sleep well, sleep peacefully, we have taken another step forward in being the bearers of good, in being grateful for the things we have. Good people, good night.

Snake Venom

Sure, I sometimes watch Animal Planet. I like the Animal Rescue series, but that's about it. The channel also points out how tiny jungle animals want to kill us and leave us moldering upon the tropical floor for the jaw-snapping ants to render into ant-size kibble. Have I ever benefited from animal medicine? Didn't know, unless you count the lucky we have penicillin fungi kingdom, which lays between animal and plant world. Didn't know until today.

As yapped about previously, the resurrection performed by my CPAP therapy was a wonder. Oxygen levels went up to 96% while sleeping and I was anticipating all sorts of living when it was found that the blood pressure med I was on was doing nothing but creating scary sausage feet so swollen that shoes became an option. So, a different sort was prescribed and since taking it I have become loopier, sleepier, and stoopider than ever.

Last weekend, my cousin had a party for her now twenty-one year old daughter. She lives in West Seneca, New York in a home that I have been to many, many times. I got to the street and could not recognize her house; walked up and down a few times past driveways full of cars until I saw her pool in one of the backyards. I called the doctor.

She lowered the dosage by half, and I am breaking tablets into quarters but lord almighty this med curtails my life. I can't walk to the car without staggering, memory is laughable, and it feels like I am wading through a deep pool, forcing arms and legs to move. I look up the side effects of this ACE-inhibitor, and hear a brown spotted snake who lives in a drawer on some laboratory farm, laughing.

This med is based on the venom of a South American pit viper, the jararaca, who eats small mammals and birds and is responsible for 52% of snake bites in Brazil. It can cause death and the little red spots now on the bottom of my lower legs, and I am being slowly poisoned. I can't tell you how grateful I am for the sleep apnea diagnosis, but the end of medicine that throws pills at you is an industry little better than dry-clean only designer clothing. Trendy, but hell for the consumer.

The doctor said that because it has lowered blood pressure to acceptable levels, my body has to adjust to not getting enough blood up to my brain. I have lots of weight to lose, yes it's got a great deal to do with the thyroid stuff and the antidepressant stuff, but I worry that soon, like maybe tomorrow, that I will not know where I am and be found wandering in neighborhoods seen in the movies. This is so discouraging after getting good results with the sleep studies.

I am still young enough to have a busy life, to contribute to whatever we call real. I hate this stalling, this waiting for a solution, this arise and go sit on the couch because walking is a series of acrobatics, the depression exacerbated by the constrained flow to the brain. I stopped the antidepressants over a month ago with fingers crossed; the sadnesses have begun, but I am chalking those up to another mentioned side effect of this pill. Usually by seven or eight at night energy returns, I am again guessing, because the dose of medication is waning.

I looked up an acupuncturist today. How could it hurt the situation? I have two honored, intelligent friends who benefited from this science, and I myself completed an introductory college course in Alternative Medicine. I can't sit still and watch my life dissolve into this continuous crumbling wreck.

Bed has become a season of normalcy from dusk to dawn, an orange sun descends, a pink one arises. In between, the dreams have again become forgettable, but they are there. Awakening in the dark happens only once or twice, and usually there is a guardian cat next to me as the machine hisses life into spaces unseen. My legs try to run, so night-anchors are tied to my feet in the form of folates and magnesium. When sleep comes, it is like falling back into a lap, aproned and enduring, with memories of a hand from long ago smoothing away bits of the storm into nothingness.

Sleep then, lay down among purple winds that run light silhouettes upon cheeks and eyelids; lay safe under the cover of the night skies that hum with the soft flutter of moths and wingy bats. Hum with the shushing of leaves on branches, with night frogs calling and crickets a-trill. It is all a dance, a forever dance extending through decades, centuries, ages. I'll be fine. So be us all. Sleep well.

One Way

I dreamt I moved into a loft apartment overlooking the Lake. A storm whipped the water into translucent brown and whitecaps, with thick roils of grey clouds pushing through the sky. The wind shook this apartment like a dog with a rag, but in the dream it was fascinating rather than frightening. My cats were with me, and were adjusting to the Asian decor of mats on the floor; I had painted the eyes of Buddha on the wall, omniscient and all-seeing. The shaking of the room from the storm wasn't pleasant to them, but they joined me as I lay on my stomach to watch from the low window the iron ships on the horizon cut through waves. There was a knock at the door.

It was my boyfriend who wanted to help finish moving my boxes in, and build something of wood inside the apartment, don't remember what, and then trot off to temple. I was dressed in plain Asian costume, and thinner. Go me. Who knows. The sensation of shaking and the violent waves has stayed with me, at least till the next jolt of life cycles by. Curious.

Ordinary Sunday, ordinary paper, cuppa coffee, shredded wheat, can of cat food popped open and divided. Son went to Ocean City for the weekend, just where those sharks were sighted offshore. I have received no calls, so I assume that no passing mako has been adopted and brought back to live with him and Dana.

The humidity has let up, appreciated by all except green growing things and the mushrooms. A storm is predicted tonight, and the winds will bulldoze this shallow lake water towards the eastern end of the basin, crushing the water against the stone structures of rip rap designed to manage the flow into navigable channels. Rip rap, $1.88 per ton in 1905.

Pay attention to sleep. Do something to promote a calming environment, even if that is only putting a feather you found into a glass near your pillow. This is your foundation, your rip rap to build a structure upon within an area that takes care of you. Clutter makes people nervous, so keep it down. No pictures of your parents. Insulate into a cocoon of nothing except that which forms a solitude woven of wood, of water, of stone, of air, of spirit in breathing in and out. Good night, good night, good mystery of unconscious night.

Short Entry

You see, I said to my dentist, a chair fell on my head when I was picking up the classroom floor after the kids were gone. I haven't been able to close that side of my jaw completely ever since, but it's only been about two weeks; he had been telling me to tap the new crown into place and it hurt like sixty and after my brief story, he looked at me as if lobsters were coming out of my ears. He also made me laugh while his finger was in my mouth and I accidentally bit him. I would so like to know what planet I'm from.

The not-novocain-anymore-but-I-don't-know-what-it's-called-these-days is wearing off, thank heavens, and the drool is now staying inside my mouth. I dropped off some bags at AmVets and trotted through the aisles--found a nice Jello mold in the shape of the United States lower 48--and when I got back to the car, noticed that white paste leftover from the crown cement had dribbled out sideways almost to my neck and dried. I thought people were smiling at me gently in the store. Now I know why.

So, I am laying low today for my new crown is tender and crabby; I am also practicing closing my mouth. The cats have helped clean out a closet, and some of the day was spent reading, this first day of July in the year of 2010. Tomorrow is lovely Friday, and even though I am off this week, it still rings well, Friday. It means we turn the page.

Sleep well this night, this cool night, and dream of life as a cycle that continues past the five day work week, past the seasons, the years, the passages of times. Love who you can, and the rest can go count their own teeth and toes till they learn what you already know. It visits us in stops and starts, but it is the surest thing which lasts beyond any door we contrive. Sleep in innocence, as we are, and in hope, in which we believe; draw shades, douse lights, tuck under covers and let go in surrender to the mysterious pull of slumber. I sleep. Darkened rooms.

Living Flat

I have roasted a turkey breast and baked a peach cobbler; the newish air conditioner is pumping cold air into the realm, and the piece of bed I ordered on eBay arrived this morning. "Gee, it smells good in there," said the delivery fellow, right after I pulled the dry-rubbed turkey out of the oven. Maybe I should hang a roast above the door and see what I get.

The piece of bed is a pediment for the base of the headboard that Pauline and handy husband Frank repaired for me. It has a similar design, an 1880's Eastlake sort that will need just a bit of jury-rigging to get it in place. You see, for all my sleep curiosity, I have not had a bed for three years, just a hippie-licious mattress. The bed frame broke when I slipped sideways standing on the too large for it mattress while killing a spider, a large, atomic, seaweed sucker. I repaired the window screen to keep leggity visitors o-u-t, got the headboard neatly puzzled back together, and now have to find a mattress that will fit the old, old-fashioned, three-quarter frame.

I pulled the whole bed monster out of the trash years ago, and put some money into it then; necessary hardware, bed rails, some decorative wood appointments remade. The main headboard has two half-inch holes drilled into the top to hold a removal pediment. The one from eBay does not have dowels to fit them, but a curved glue line that once attached it to home base. A joining piece of walnut won't cost much, drill drill, zip zip, done. And then I will have a bed. It really looks nice.

Advantages to a mattress directly on the floor: the only one apparent is when you have pets that need meds, they cannot run and hide under the bed. This actually was very handy, for at the time, Martian was getting two shots of insulin a day, poor love. Gosh I miss him. The rest of it is a mess, no further attraction to sleeping on the floor. I know I have more than most of the people on the planet, but still find the hutzpah to complain. I want a bed on legs. It's warmer in the winter since it's less drafty, it's less likely to be hairballed on since cats generally jump to the floor when yakking, and I will be able to tuck sheets in again.

Going to bed will be easier. Right now I have to step onto the mattress, sort of fold myself down to my knees, forward onto the palms, then plop over to my bottom, and ease down. Getting up is the same thing in reverse, which is particularly damn awkward for a midnight bathroom run. So tomorrow is mattress hunting day.

To get a three-quarter, you have to special order and even then it's no guarantee that it will fit the frame you have; mattresses back in those days weren't so square-cornered, maybe even smushy and filled with oat straw. This frame actually has rounded corners, sooo, my solution is to get a twin mattress and box spring and suck it up. This will leave openings to the slats, which could present hidden danger to running cats and result in a cast for somebody. For that, I will get some sort of material to cover the exposed portions and maybe have an extra area for my happy little friend, the CPAP machine.

Gotta scrub up the wooden piece, and go over it with a dab of linseed oil. After that, more pushing and pulling of the objects inside this apartment, here and there, up and down. But I am happy in these small accomplishments, for not too long ago even one would exhaust me. Now I sleep well, soon will sleep better.

The rainstorms and winds have filled the night with voices we human can only dream of harnessing. No capacitor could capture a pulse of lightning without melting, but perhaps physics could could net the static energies as they build into a discharge; the average thunderstorm releases around 10,000,000 kilowatt-hours of energy as water vapor condenses, giving off 600 calories of heat per water droplet. The measurements are stultifying to our current scientific abilities. Go to school kids, we can always use smart people.

I will sleep after the hum of the sun has gone below the horizon and the swallows are starting their night-dives for the masses of insects flitting under lamplight. The green mayflies, so pretty, are out for their brief life. Thick cumulus clouds scutter above city buildings and are headed west towards the sun to be painted delirious roses and golds. Descend to purple, as will I, when beautiful night cloaks our dreams in drowsy hope.

Disruption

Less than an hour ago, the second car accident within the week has occurred outside of my ninth floor window, living as I do next to an elevated highway. The drone of traffic continues night and day and is only totally silent when a snowstorm shuts the city down. Snow also muffles the sound of the rumble, besides which, the apartment windows are mostly shut in winter. Even then, the noise is a perpetual rough hum. The rent is cheap.

Now, right outside my view, the highway splits into a fork, the left side takes you into the south side of the city and on to shopping. The right side is a wonder of construction that I try not to think of when traveling over, for you are following a road built higher than the grain elevators, the Gold Medal mill, the tall trees, or the onetime ship's mast. This is the Skyway, which spews traffic out into the hinterlands of the beginning Alleganies, the south towns, the where-the-hell-am-I-nows. I have totaled a car on the Skyway during a blizzard by sliding sideways into a buckled semi. Mythology says a Yugo was blown over the side and into the river below; reality is that there have been many injuries.

Construction and sight lines were not made for faster cars or the hurry up life of today. Hills block vision into the dips and there is suddenly the back end of a Lincoln being driven by a grandmother on her way to Bible study (this is what caused the jack-knifed semi). The fork in the highway that I live by is a mess of poor planning, for this is where the accidents happen for the most part.

Cars merge at a point several hundred feet just before the lanes split, and it doesn't allow enough time for people to think of where they should be. People are going well over fifty mph, and are either leaving the lane to get to safety for lord know they don't want to end up traveling the length of the Skyway and end up past the old Bethlehem Steel plant, or they are trying to get into those two lanes because they live that way down the lake. It's a curve, one way or the other, and tricky.

Of the many car accidents I have overheard or been in, not one sounded as loud as those depicted in the movies. Few have involved a prolonged screeching of tires or horns blatting; for when it's happening, there really isn't time to sound the horn, both of your hands are wrangling the steering wheel in desperation of avoidance, if you are able to see it coming.

I wonder if this is why there hasn't been the tire screeching...because folks are trying to maneuver, or is it the ABS brakes?

Last week's accident was a loud crash of a smallish pickup truck into the left back corner of a supermarket semi. I can only guess they were trying to switch places without the other knowing, right past the fork where a quick merge is your only hope not to get squished into the guardrail. Not even a squeal of brakes, just a loud bang when the right front of the pickup crunched into the rear end of this double-truck rig. Hazmat had to come out for unknown reasons.

Today, it was the now familiar sound that I recognize as trouble in process. Boof. Boof skip boof skip boof with a noise of a large tin can tumbling. Maybe the boofs are the brakes, which is why the missed beat occurs between compressions. There was a black car flipped on its back in the middle lane just after the fork, and concerned people were spilling out of their own vehicles to assist. The car must have lost control a few feet before, for the rate of speed would have caused it to slide forward on its roof for several yards. Not a witness, I only heard that odd, dull resonance which now causes my heart to pause.

Within five minutes, an off-duty somebody had arrived, after ten, the fire trucks had managed to weave through the jammed lanes of rush-hour traffic. What always surprises me is how things slow down after the firemen clock in. No one runs frantically, at least in the accidents I've seen, but the emergency crews walk deliberately, almost as if they are dreaming. Everyone knows their place, the injured are taken care of, hands are on shoulders. Eyes are looking into each other, which is one of the most connective elements any living being can do.

The driver was taken by stretcher into an ambulance, and was then driven away without the alert of a siren. I watched as two men lassoed the car with the winch of a flatbed truck, and turned it so that it was almost facing the ramp leading to the bed. A few adjustments, and the winch was able to tilt the car up and then one of the crew simply bulled the car all the way over to the way a car usually sits. The fire crew had brooms out and swept up the debris and glass, dumping shards into the newly opened hole in the roof.

Poor little car, poor fellow trying to get somewhere. No one else was involved, so I wonder if it was a blown tire. Everything was finished in less than an hour, then the full rumble of traffic began again at about 6:20 p.m. I was making soup for supper, and had found that the planned broccoli had yellowed (toss), switched recipes, and found that I had no canned corn; scrounged again for vegetables to kidnap and it is delicious. Potatoes, onions, a few tomatoes, old frozen parsley, and a small bag of raw shrimp. Bacon bits. Go me.

I will see my son tomorrow, he's in town for a friend's graduation. Tomorrow will be an early rise, for obviously, grocery shopping is needed and I might go see if the sour cherries are in at the farmer's market. The plecostomus is enjoying the cantaloupe I skewered with a stainless steel spoon and plunged into his realm. He likes me. This is the sort of routine that gets tossed by circumstances when disruption hits. Appreciate it, recognize the comfort of it.

My head will be lucky enough to hit the pillow this night, so far. Cats are fed, soup is done, plants are watered. My little orange tree that has grown from an orange pip is a flourishing foot high. The plecostomus was measured today and is four inches longer than a year ago; he is now seventeen inches and if he gets any larger, I may put tires on him and drive around town.

Sleep with the hum of breath, the crinkle of sheets, the hush of a light blanket. I have companions who purr and exhale soft, wheezy sighs of slumbering delight, who come and go on silent feet throughout midnight hours. You will awake tomorrow to lovely things amid the mundane, but sleep now, sleep deeply, safely. Dreamville is waiting.

Crickets and Hooty Owls

Snowbelle conducts an orchestra of tree frogs in concert; she lifts the sound of primeval croakings to crescendo, turns, bows, then stops out for dining at LeChez FeuxFeux before going back to the loft apartment at the Hillard. Applause surrounds her every move, we wish we had her specialness, her taste, her uncanny timing. This obviously is in her delusional haid until I raise a pillow to flop in her direction with cuss words only grandpas usually know, learned by cleaning carburetors on stubborn Pontiacs. This is the only way I can explain her biting a lovely, miniscule hole in my CPAP tubing, ending in a pressure drop and me waking at 2 in the a. m.

Froggery is only what I can imagine goes on in that cat's noggin, for she sees, hears, and thinks in the sort of logic found in the religious studies department of any university. She's pure white, but not deaf; her part Siamesie-ness evident by azure blue eyes which give no clue to the popcorn carny show inside. Her spine is missing a vertebrae, and the knee caps are luxated which means out of place. Walking is a hoppity gimp with tail in a perpetual sickle shape that swings from side to side of its own barometric readings.

Who knows where other anomalies may occur? She can run, climb, and gave birth to two babies before I found her at the city shelter in a vinyl box with sores on her neck from hanging her head over the edge. But there is something living in that little white head largely unexplored, which causes electrical stops and starts sometimes resulting in bleeding tread marks on me when she bolts. Pedal to the metal, that one.

All the cats are unafraid of the CPAP business that I now employ, and try to cuddle on top of the heated hose which is slid under a blanket to keep condensation down and cats away. Princess @#%$ Snowbelle is the only one who gets that half-lidded look of love in her eyes as she nuzzles the hose and will mouth it, gently, delicately, as if she is trying to pick up the tiniest baby kitten, then chomp.

I now roust her out at earliest inclination once I figured her game, and game it is for unless I am there and hooked up to the air pump, she could care less. And she knows that I know that she knows better. She knows better, I swear. She's not stupid, perhaps it is some mission dictated to her by the brain frogs she carries in her cranial cavity. The finality is that I now have a hose with a hole.

Online, the forum recommends duct tape which is fine with me once I procure some. Surgical tape didn't adhere to the inevitable crevice this teensy pinhole is in, for the thing hissed till morning until the alarm went off. I swore at the cat. The cat didn't stay around to listen. An order through a company on eBay is cheaper than going to my local supplier with free shipping and no tax, and will be here by midweek. Equipment will be sustained by duct tape until then, with a rewrapping of the hose in the makeshift cover of cut-off sweatshirt sleeves tied together, the epitome of living cheaply.

Princess Snowbelle, or Tish, is taking her afternoon nap. She is dreaming of different days and nights, of the evening before the summer solstice brings shorter daylight hours back to the northern hemisphere. Up here on the ninth floor, she may be the only one hearing crickets in the grasses of her dreams; maybe she is catching frogs in her old habitat further down the way in Lakeview where she was named Ashley and had her kittens. She can try to terrorize the others, but now even Tulip the Timid stands up to her, laying in wait to swat her white business with a pawful of even-Steven. I don't blame her, Tish made life hell for Tulip for several years. No one gets hurt, only small things are ever broken.

I have supper at a friend's and made the ubiquitous but always welcome brownies, and there is a rhubarb cake in process. Min is next to me on the arm of the chair, Tulip is on a rug in the hallway near cooler air, away from the warm Sunday in session. I will go get ready and be home later tonight, when the real crickets are naming temperatures, and frogs in the canal near my friend's house in the Old Ward are singing for supper at moonrise.

Sleep well, my friends. There is so much to be and do, be ready, be refreshed, move forward. The cats send their love. Me too.