Backwards

What a day. What a day. O the machinations of children hell bent on getting their own personal justice. These children do not understand that I don't love them like their parents do, and so don't fall for the c.r.a.p. doled out as eight-year-old truth; furthermore, I have learned the hard way to trust none of them. None. Their perception of events is as skewed as religion, their little claws reach for the nearest vein so that they will be the last one standing and therefore receive all attention and accolades.

My one little guy was suspended today because two others took advantage of his named condition to set him out of whack. He went ballistic because order wasn't kept in the first situation, and was again set up by another in a speech class by being kicked. Both of the perpetrators got more than they bargained for, one of them was suspended also; however both of the catalysts were bullies who know how to push buttons and then use very small, wounded whispers and sorrowful puppy eyes when talking to their parents about circumstances. I bought a carton of frozen yoghurt on the way home. For me. Flavored with evil children's gizzards.

So this is the backwards part: I miss writing on paper, but the convenience of working on the laptop is too beneficial to ignore. My solution is to work it out on the keyboard, but then to scribe it down on paper somewheres. For heaven's sake, how are we ever going to value handwritten material if it doesn't exist? Think of the postcards, letters, notes, rough drafts of documents and sentiments that bring us connection, warmth, humanity. Reading postcards from earlier times, from one hundred years ago, lends a bridge to that mother also, reporting how much her new baby weighs. I was a proud young mother also. I know what she meant, beyond the marking of weight.

She also meant this: my child is growing, my child has food and health and appetite; thank you thank you powers that be, for I have seen terrible things take innocence away as casually as closing a door. Well, me too; so happy to have this miracle trilling in my arms. Better than a cat, and that means a lot with me. But who will know that, and is it important? When the electricity goes off, who will have access to the ethereal reams of posts shooting by like stars in August?

I need to get these stories in ink, on paper, or at least print them out for my son's interest. Handwriting is lovely, but I don't know how much my fingers can do these days. I'll figure out something. So, instead of the entering of script into the electronics as in the old days, I will be transcribing the pixellated words onto paper. At least, this is the plan.

Now, I hear the squeaking of children's gizzards yoghurt calling from the chest freezer. This is what happens to spoiled children when they get to the real world and you yourself are deader than Moses and can't shield them from their own self-entitled delusions. The Gizzard Reaper comes creepity sneakity, attracted by whining and heavy exhalations of carbon dioxide. You've seen grown people do this, it just hasn't been their turn yet but it's coming. I swear.

You want that jacket? Get a job. Need your hair arranged in layers of ringlets? Find a career. Pencils? You think I am supplying you with pencils when you are twenty-eight? Oh ho no. I am the Head Gizzardologist, and will have little mercy on the spoiled and indulged. Thinking of starting a new line of fro-yo called Fingers and Toes, so that when Ignatius is curling those little fingers into a fist to punch his neighbor, or aims those toes at a nearby shin, well, creepity sneakity. I can manage some very large scissors. Hmph. This is getting macabre and I don't want nightmares; I just feel so badly for the one who got snookered by those two flabbering barkers.

Light on the downtown buildings changes from white to yellow to orange and pink as the sun sets into Lake Erie, just at the head of the Niagara River. Yes, a nubbin of vanilla yoghurt is going to appear. Some poking about should be accomplished before settling into the couch, maybe a bit of reading. Then bed, after the birds roost and gulls find their way to the breakwaters that protect the harbor from prevailing waves, after the first bat has crazily flown past window in search of dinner. Dear bed, fine bed, lovely bed. Regeneration of muscle, bone, and soul. Cat and human, whiskers and thumbs. I can't wait. Peaceful night.

Cleaning Seeds

Purposefully waited to go outside till the sun was at it's cookingest in order to get a solid dose of Vitamin D in fifteen minutes. Messed around with the car by cleaning out the trunk, found things of use, no use, and now what. Pulled a few vigorous weeds, left the Queen Anne's lace to blossom later, and tossed the remaining bit of backseat birdseed into the field.

What is shame? It is what I feel when emptying the car of shoes needing repair, seven grocery sacks, cord, battery cables, plastic litter I pick up to recycle but rarely get to the bin; things to go to relatives, AmVets, or to school; the eight Halloween pumpkins I bought on sale to use for crayon holders in class, the saw I use to cut a real pumpkin in half, papers, car products, and paper towels. But who says I should feel guilty any louder than myself? Ah, friend, it is the voice in my head.

We all have one, unless we are crazy and maybe then have more than one or none at all. I often hear good things from people who have passed on, from people that love and care for me; these are blessings of daytime, these sudden thoughts in remembered voices. Go ahead, don't worry, it will all work out. Once, when making a left, something told me to swing the car as far out into the further lane as possible, just as the bus behind me surged forward out of his lane and winged my back quarter panel. A big, freaking bus, for heaven's sake.

But there are memories and intonations that are mean, impatient pushes in the center of the back designed to point out failings. Well, get out the bushel basket, cause I will not and particularly resent living up to expectations of the quibbling mind. Yet it's there, perfidious as a twisted foot. It ahems as I haul out the car, impatient, derisive, and look-at-you shocked.

This is nonsense and ticks me off to no end, this penny-pinched testimony to flaws; in protest I admire eccentricities of my own and others thus canceling out negativity by rebellion. If the voices didn't bitch so much, they would get better results, as I continually try new things just to be independent. For instance, this morning I tossed a handful of uncooked oatmeal in yoghurt with cashews for lunch. Not cooking oatmeal, what's the matter with you. Lazy. And yoghurt, what the hell is yoghurt? Why don't you blah blah and blah?

By lunchtime everything married and had kids together and it was delicious. A dab of agave syrup added sweetness. (Sugar! Why ya gotta put sugar on everything...)

This is what I tell myself, in my own voice: let's hang out the wash and forget the neighbors and get all extravagant with people, generous in compassion, lavish in forgiving our humble selves. We are in this together and cannot afford to let the cycle of self-punishment heap more sorrow on our weariness. Lift that head up and throw more birdseed out the car window as you drive around the city. I may be responsible for more flattened sparrows pecking at street seed than I care to know. Really, I don't do it in busy areas.

Self-judgement is necessary and important and isn't the whinnying of contempt brought on by shame. Reflection guides our way around the world safely, sanely, and allows the companionship of our loved ones inside our hearts because we deserve it surely as sunrise.

The planets do spin on, they even reburied Copernicus the other day, invited his old bones into the church for a proper burial after his heliocentric research got him condemned to hell in humiliation, back when the hierarchy said man was dictated by God as Center of the Universe, therefore the sun revolved around us'ns. Todays sun has spun itself down below horizon, and night has arrived.

You a good deed today, I can feel it. It's enough, important, and honest. Time to turn out lights, close doors, and climb in. It wouldn't be the same without you, dreamer of lifetimes, let a grateful head lay peacefully upon pillows safe as an aproned lap. Sleep well, sleep deeply. We are waiting, other side of the sun.

Sun Song

These mornings on my way through the parking lot, I pass several beat-up crabapple trees that line the backside between us citizens and the higher level city street. Just finished up the show of blossoms that rained rosy petals in mounds down upon the crust of asphalt and metal hoods of the cars. It was lovely, and contrast between the hard material and the celestial pink scraps was noticed as they were blown into mounds on the pavement, then crushed into duller colors by shoes and tires.

Amid and atop these trees now flit a family of goldfinches, yelling their heads off about the sun, the weather, the menu, the annoyance of seeing people trot off to work through their area, and perhaps to chastize the neighbor birds that like to chase littler ones. They sing and flash bright yellow, buzzy as bees. Oh I love to watch them; it cheers one on, in hopes that putting one foot in front of the other helps them as well as it helps yourself. Thank heavens for the brightness of animals.

This was also noted by a friend who saw a mother fox and her two kits dining on her front lawn with some sort of small, caught unfortunate. How dear, how sustaining for a human to see that mothering extends universally; it makes for a sense of kinship with the other species as well as binding us to each other. We enjoy watching, wishing it were a fairy tale where everyone lived so. Besides, foxes are just fun, being a mix of dog behavior with feline grace; canine body shape with the wild, vertical slit pupils found in cats, crocodiles, and venomous snakes. How terrific is that?

Being late spring, the sun is still bright just after seven in the evening; the feral cats are being fed by my neighbor who does a good job of marshaling them into traps for clean-up. The woodchucks who live in that strand of city field along the parking lot are also out, being given wide berth by cat wisdom; chucks have nasty tempers. Birds are starting to wind down feeding activity, making room for the nighthawks and brown bats to take over the night sky.

Leaves fold, grass bends, heads nod and loll with end of day fatigue. We all want rest, to be safe for the night, to cozy ourselves with an ending book, a cup of chocolate, slippers, lotions, a friend to say goodnight to. Say farewell to someone as you begin your night journey through sleeptime, whether they are here or there. Whether that other is four-footed or two, next to you in a chair or away in the woods bedding down with kits; it isn't easy for any of us, the best we can sometimes do is a simple wish. It can't hurt, and the notion keeps us from being self-centered which is the beginning of loneliness. You aren't. Not while birds scold or mothers wash faces or fathers beat drums. Sleep safe, sleep sound. Awaken, and sing tomorrow's sun song. Love you so.

Catnip

During spring, the narrow scrap of land terraced between city street and parking lot by my building fills quickly with grasses, gilliflower, and burdock. Useful plants. Among the greenery, another herb that loves sun and poor soil comes into being for lucky us; catnip. Just like waiting for the right week to gather wild leeks, I wait to see how far I can outlast the city workers who come each year to mow this strip down to the bare ground.

Today was the day, cool and sunny, and I can just feel city fingers twitching to ride that tractor mower over the tender, inoffensive growth in order to keep the critter levels to a minimum. Lord knows, the feral colony of cats cared for by Crazy Cat Lady Numero Uno--not me, I rank an easy second--leaves gifts of mice and etcetera by car doors of humans they like. We don't have a problem with vermin thanks to them, nor do we have the numbers of wild bunnies that used to exist down here anymore. We do have skunks, a pair of woodchucks, whitefooted mice, regular mice, shrews, and plenty of grey squirrels fuzzing about this bit of sloped ground, at least until it gets mowed.

Every year, it is evident afterwards that the mower has done the job with a vengeance, for the blade of the machine bites into the earth, slicing apart the dirt holding the roots of things. It must be on purpose, for wouldn't the person working this objective stop to raise the blade after the first cut of hillock spewed out dirt and stone? The incline performs as a run off from the street at the top, and has a stone culvert added after a pipeline break flooded the lot below. Because was the canal area in early city history, when the drain busted it washed broken shards of blue pottery, red brick, odd bits of terra cotta plumbing, and a wallop of discarded clamshells from the row of bars and boarding houses that once did business and murder here. So, lots of debris gets bladed as well as the field grass.

The upper street leads to an arena used for entertainment venues and also provides affordable parking for the events. People returning to their cars often toss bottles, the large glass kind once holding alcohol, over the fence and out of their sight. These also get chewed into calamity for the shoeless.

At the base of the slope within its perimeter exist several crabapple trees, most of which are dying. The October snowstorm in 2006 deviled them, along with city workers who in possible illegality, used salt left from a milder winter as weed killer on the lot side and heaped it in dirty grey mounds less than a foot away from the trees' trunks. Poor dead branches mingle with lush blossoms on the living, the deep rose color vivid as a Bengali wedding. The falling petals cover my car; I dispense them on the highway at fifty miles per hour. I know the builders will come and eventually pull the trees out; today I am grateful for the luxury they afford me.

This is what I see when I scutter sideways along the city hill for the grey green fuzzy leaves of catmint. I clip the stalks, not too far down for the plant should be able to feed itself after I behead the thing. Sometimes, if city budgeting is shortshrifted, the mowing does not happen till later in summer, when the first growth of the plant has gone to seed and died back in August heat. This means a few more forays to top off the earlier harvest. It comes back again by September for a second turn, and will continue till the first frost. But this first part of catnip season is fresh, unbelievable that such fat leaves with scalloped edging burst upwards from the scraggly rootstock of this plant that prefers dry-ish scrapyards of ground.

Min, my oldest cat, has found the half-full bag and is as happily enchanted as a trick-or-treater with a sack of confectionary sin. She hasn't moved for three minutes, inhaling the bitter aroma from the leaves, and has only just now wriggled in, leaving her tail out as proof that the cat is in the bag. My other ones wait till she is shooed out by me, then delight in the fresh leaves I crush for them.

Navigating around the empty vodka bottle and fast food cups, this talisman plant of frail soil gives me pleasure as I know my cats will enjoy it. It tickles me to wade through knee-high grasses, and find the gill-over-the-ground, the early mustard plants, the burdock whose leaves arc close to earth, the beginning rosettes that will be later cornflowers or moth mullein. The bumblebees are dazed by crabapple blossoms, the first butterflies cling to tiny throats of purple vaselike flowers, probing for nectar as energy to lift themselves up in the fresh, clear air.

The night has come and the city lights glow, illuminating the field to a muddy brown under the orange lamplight. Car noise, tire treads on pavement, motors accelerating in the evening have taken the stage from the humming buzz of insects, the swishswash of grasses of day. The cats are sacked out on the couch and any warm electrical technology they can fit on. I am thinking of bed and sleep; the more I learn of sleep, the more it awes me. The things we don't know.

The dynamics of a smallish dollop of field caught between downtown and a parking lot allow me to pretend to be from this planet, prowling, gathering, inhaling. I am full of cat gladness, and we are quieting down into the dark release of memory, of breath, of response. Sleep well, all of you. A field is waiting.

Early Sunday Rose Gold Fire and Feathers

Saturday was another somnography, a test to see how breathing goes and how often it stops. One of the most fun things about the sleep tests is that the attendants get you up at five a.m. so that you are out the door and on the road by six before sunrise at this time of year. The moon was halfway across the Sunday morning sky, three quarters full. Just before sun up is a different kind of dark where the silhouettes of images begin to show and the black of night becomes deep blue. The air is still and cool, unheated by the machines and work of day, and smells fresh. Without background noise, the calls of the birds magnify just as they do in the far woods away from civilization. This is what thrills me, the blackbirds that crabbed at me last night upon arrival sit on the wires above and toss out morning warbles, oblivious now to my nearness. I hear the robins repeating call loud above everyone else; a pair of phoebes underscore the frantic solar-powered robins with their familiar, plaintive, two-note song. Oh it's lovely, and I look up to the stars still visible in the morning air.

Getting into the car, the radio comes on with news that quickly gets flipped off and I open the windows to the air, the birds, the green growth of this spring. Driving in the pale of beginning light, the car ahead of me slows; headlights show a young doe at the side of an embankment, retreating backwards into the colorless brush of cattails and scrub. The low light of early dawn causes her to appear as a grey shadow, only her eyes are illuminated from passing lights.

I continue towards the city, to the west with the suburban area behind me and am suddenly aware of brilliant gold and pink fire in the rearview mirror. The introduction of sunrise before the great ball appears at horizon flames through colors seen only in the atmosphere. Ahead of me, lands of green rim stone pavement, blue sky opens to the tops of houses where I can see lights on in some kitchens, maybe coffee, maybe toast; a newspaper. Good morning, my longitudinal companions.

The slice of the world open to sun extends from Baffin Bay in Canada to the edges of Chile at the bottom of the globe. We are all blinking and stretching, or because it's Sunday, hanging half out of bed listening to the radio news, reluctant to put that first foot to the floor. Aw, go on, you know you set up the coffeemaker last evening, and Saturday bread makes Sunday toast. Do we all see the sunrise, does the earth revolve to birdsong and shuffling slippers? If you could listen from the moon, would you hear a million Sunday front doors open to get the paper as the sunrise hit the wedge of longitude from pole to pole? Does water pressure drop for all the showers happening at once? Really, I know the logistics of who may have indoor plumbing and such, but most economies have to wash their hands at least once in the morning.

So it is at night, when cities dim and wicks are trimmed. Exhausted from day business, we gratefully dismantle the accoutrements of diurnal life and open arms towards the realm of evening repose. O sheets, O linens, O washcloth used to swipe sticky remnants of blush and pie from faces, O blankets warp and weft, O curtains drawn, O Sand Man, Nyx, Hypnos, darkened room, breath, thudder, somnus, luna, vault of heaven, closed door, ghosts and gods. Mystery, this stuff.

Ritual here, ritual there; they gets us through. A cooler night tonight, the buildings here are swathed in mists and low-lying clouds, the grateful living things sigh happily for the freshness of the air, the lush growth of grass and leaves. We sleep in bounty, in safety, in love with it all. Sleep well, dream of Ecuadorean pots bubbling in the morning, salute the north and south upon arising; your brothers and sisters are there, stirring, blinking, stretching.