Breathe

If there is anything that we share with our ancestors, it's that we live under the same sun, and walk on our hind legs.  What about the air, are we breathing the same air as in the time of the Romans? Stegosaurs? Technically yes, not the exact same configuration, but those molecules of oxygen and nitrogen have been on the earth for that long; they break down, regroup, and there you go.  The particles you breathe today may have come out of either end of a sauropod, or of a Roman gladiator; very little disappears from earth beyond the atmosphere.  I hope your coffee wasn't in your hand when you read that.

The question I have is, does it smell different?  Does breathing fresh air in a pine forest (you need to do this) provide as delightful an experience as it did in the 1800's?  Tree leaves produce oxygen, so you will feel a bit buzzed in an area heavy with foliage, and in the stillness of a forest, where the growth settles the wind forces, and things are quiet, oxygen hangs around a bit longer and concentrates in little currents.

You want to feel revived?  I urge you to find a houseplant, preferably a prolific one like a spider plant or a philodendron; now, stick your face into the leaves and inhale.  Don't be clumsy and inhale dirt for that's where the molds thrive, but in the crown of green leaves, hang your face in there and breathe.  Your headache is gone?  You're welcome.  And don't worry, the plant likes it, for you exhale carbon dioxide, just what the critter sustains itself on.

Springtime is not just jumping lambs and more daylight; the green things are returning, and when they do, you are getting the oxygen those plants are pumping out and thus feel more alive.  But the aroma, was it different so many centuries ago?  Maybe not so much as you go trundling through the woods, but within the boundaries of a town, it has to be; today we have cars, two centuries ago, it was horses, oxen, and other four-legged beastie things.  Swamps come and go, factories arrive and disappear, new chemicals are found, anything which consumes energy gives off exhaust.  Those of you that have traveled, could you tell if you were in Thailand or Egypt if you stood still with your eyes closed and fingers in your ears?

Once civilization arrived, so did herds of cows, pigs, and horses; according to ice core samples, this change created enough methane to affect the atmosphere.  Move into the Middle Ages, where sewers were a rarity and slop was dumped directly into the streets; this was also pre-Speed Stick, folks, so double up on those pomanders and hankies.  Dead things were used as ammunition for catapults and trebuchets, so these people knew not about the germs so much, but they did understand stinky.

In centuries following, along came the belching Industrial Revolution, pushing tons of coal into the air, along with the minerals and toxins from smelting iron, carbon monoxide, and as the cities became packed with workers, the gutters and bins overflowed with refuse.  The girls selling violets weren't just offering a visually pleasing bouquet, they were providing olfactory rescue if you had to walk more than a mile through twisty, narrow streets.  People in charge soon decided that a street shouldn't be a cesspool, and eventually installed sewer systems.  Civilization took one giant step forward as grateful as a foot that had missed an ochre-colored, glutinous puddle.

But lets turn towards other things; science has found a way to extract scent without harming the flower, and the largest fragrance manufacturer in the world has a very lucky man going about and capturing what may be the last fragrances of rare flowers.  Kept in chilled aluminum flasks, the essences will last for at least two hundred years, when science may recreate some of the smells that have disappeared.  Isn't that, I mean, isn't that just a wonder?

We are in winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, and in cold air, molecules travel at a much slower rate, and our noses don't pick up as much to smell.  Because winter doesn't present the menu of aromas we normally enjoy, this is the time of year that we light more scented candles, make hot soups, and bake cookies.  The indoor smells take precedence over the outdoor emptiness; oh, our busy, busy brains.  I get a kick out of us.  For the most part.

So, what would my favorites be?  Dorian mentioned old books, and in my mind, that sweet tannin wafting through the air not only smells good, but alerts my head to the wondrous things inside.  I like cinnamon cookies in the oven;  old, heavy roses, horses, salt water, lumberyards, a hammer striking a nail, fur on a living animal, drawing paper, gum erasers, blankets and sheets hung on the clothesline, brick and stone, rain, unscented candles burning in a candelabra, bee's wax.   Fallen leaves, dirt, a cut pumpkin, a fresh cotton shirt, those large Christmas tree light bulbs that smell like the tree is going to burst into flames because they get so hot, and clams.

Swirl around yourself tomorrow, and find what smells are reassuring to you, or that bring forward a memory of younger days, like H-O oats cereal which was my favorite, a toasted oatmeal that gave off a nutty, steamy aroma that my Grandma made for me as I sat at her maple table and listened to the fog horn on a chilly morning.  They just tore down the remaining buildings maybe four years ago.  See how it works?  Now, you remember...

Sleep, sleep my dears, you well deserve it and the night has charms of its own.  A crushed sachet of lavender under the pillow?  No?  Perhaps some rose cream over tired hands.  Bergamot, jasmine, sandalwood; these are the best to induce calm, to swaddle you in the cloak of sleep...chamomile, lilac, and ylang ylang, which slows down the nervous system.  Dream of fields, of nights filled with blooms.  Good night.

Morning Embroidery

People that you didn't know existed appear; an older man wheeling laundry in a shopping cart, a young man carrying a paper plate of toaster waffles to his car.  Who are these people?  Two neighbors I hadn't seen in months were just as surprised to see me with "I thought you moved" expressions.

It's a different world at 5:30 a.m. in winter, in the dark.  The sky had changed from streetlight punctuated midnight to the dull blue which announces the impending dawn.  Is there a word for the changing color, that one existing between the sepulcherious black where you can't see your own hand and the rising light of blended gold and rose?  Dawn is the part with colors, as far as I know, but if you've ever driven through night and into the morning day, the switch to that deep blue prior to the glow of pre-sun atmosphere is as welcome as the thought of toast and eggs.

I saw the pre-dawn this morning, while sitting in the back of Addisu's taxi.  Terrestrially, a few Christmas lights hung in windows of houses, and one creche was already in full shepherd, for the season is upon some of us.

Surgery had been scheduled at six freaking fifteen, and we got there amid quiet streets; the people that were up had business to tend, there was no hesitation in their walk, they were getting into the buildings which held their assigned roles.  Mine was of patient with a stack of filled out forms set to hand in, yet the clarity of morning air pulled me as a sea anchor, changing the purpose temporarily from medicine to breathing the morning air as yet untouched by the sun.

Night air was once considered poisonous, a miasma filled with decomposed matter that brought disease and rot from organic debris, including that which wafted up from the buried in the cemetery.  Breathe that stuff in, and you're asking for trouble, said the early 19th century.  To me, there is less clutter at night, when the cooling air staunches whatever effluvium has been warmed by the sun; oil on the pavement, dumpsters, something sticky.  The air at night has less caustic abracadabra and fills you with clear draughts of oxygenated energy, waking a far away human traveling with their pack.

Everything went well, and they wheeled me out, still quite jolly from the IV; I love anesthesia.
Golden people that melted into golden puddles filled the time spent under; no, I have no idea.  Back home, I slept.

But these folks, the ones on a different time schedule yet exist at the same address, the ones I never see; this is intriguing, like crepuscular animals who blend back into the bushes at daylight.  I guess it works that way, and has ever since time became more than a rising moon.

Sleep in complete darkness if you can, it allows the deepest level of sleep to lengthen, for we are wired to respond to light.  Breathe in the night air.  Burrow. Warm.  Heal.

After...

I wish I had some stars to see; something to look into that never ends, the closest thing to infinity that gives a sense of forever.  I want to see forever, a Mobius strip of energy which absorbs time, shatters the hours and days into clusters of galaxies spiraling, wheeling, careening through airless space.

On a near winter night, the ice of starlight pierces the cold as coruscating diadems, but I know them; Orion, the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia.  They are fiery bastions of measured life, telling the seasons for as long as we humans have been, yet, they are limited as well; constellations are held by the same law that nothing ever stays the same.  Stars spread apart, new ones are born, others flicker into oblivion; even they disappear.  But space remains and will not fold into itself for a time beyond measurable thought; when it does happen, one final origami trick, shall it tumble, explode into a thousand paper cranes and become another once upon a time?

I want to look, to forget momentarily that I am mortal, pinned to the planet; my desire is to see the window of forever.  Let me be a part of infinity, of no hands spinning around an ivory dial, to where quaggas and dodos bray, where loved ones wait, where death explains itself in humbled murmurs.

Bed, let me find you and wrap myself deep under heavy covers; give me dreamhorses to gallop through starfields till sun up, let the striped, desert quagga be my courser.

Tulip Night

You know how you wake up in the morning, and click into the routine that gets you up, brushed and presentable, but there is nothing nothing nothing that reveals what is to happen in the next hours, before the hand of the clock again passes midnight into the day after, and eventually begets memory.  You learn to accept loss or go mad, regardless of faith or experience; your heart is a bit more ragged each time but also grows a shield of certainty that carries you through.

Even so.  Death is a quickly closing door that pinches our fingers as we are the ones left behind; for all of it's inevitable reason, the stopped heart of one is tethered to the living beat of us, we who are still here.  Then you meet with a cascading series of firsts; the first night alone, the first night without, the first daybreak, the first breakfast, the first game, the first weekend, holiday, year; life goes forward, if not completely steady in its stride.

Memory is formed from looking back at the lasts; the last talk, the last time that.  No, it's not counterproductive to look back, as long as you realize where you belong in this life and the responsibilities of living, to yourself and those within your circle of knowledge and love.  Humans regale in taking photographs, writing stories, or talking about their heroes and ancestors.  I guess it helps that connection we have with each other, here or hereafter.

Today is the anniversary of my dear friend's sudden death, some five years ago; it is also the fateful night, tonight, that my darling little cat Tulip collapsed, the labored breathing that had begun three days ago increasingly difficult and final.  I rushed her to an emergency vet, where it was supposed that the cancer of the early summer had taken over and run through her like mycelium.  I held her while the euthanasia was administered, and felt the one last heartbeat.

I am home, and time that had slowed is now speeding up; the lasts and the firsts have begun.  Already in October, I had lost my oldest cat, Min, who lived to be twenty-one; I remember that last time I saw her living, insisting on sitting in the bathtub for some crazy reason, wobbling even as she sat and butted her head into my hand.  The memories intertwine, threading strands of who we are with who they were, making a lovely, orchestral harmony known as us.

Sleep, my baby, sleep my darling girl, I am glad I was able to be yours, just as you were mine, if only for a short ten years.

Count the clouds, I saw a star on the way home tonight.

Not in the Papers

Last Saturday the congregation of a local church put on a dinner for it's veterans in the convention center downtown.  It was a pishy posh affair, from what I heard from Fred, also known as Chucky, a church member who tended bar for the crowd. He would pour a row of shots and one for himself, so by the time the ruckus began, he was feeling no pain, even though he ended up overnight in the VA hospital.  Chucky is in his early seventies; the vets attending averaged mid-eighties, but apparently the fighting spirit and sense of dignity carries on, possibly abetted by the free-flowing alcohol.

There were speeches, tributes, glories; things were going great until the last ancient speaker introduced his wife, who was to present a recognition plaque to the Men of the Church, and looked as though she were around when the pyramids were built.

"Here is my wife, Mrs. ______," said the speaker.

A voice from a back table yodeled the clarion call, "I had her years ago."

Now, most of these men are at least 84 years old, but that didn't stop the speaker from approaching the heckler and lambasting him one in the cakehole.  These two elderly men had to be pulled apart by other elderly men, so besides taking time for the effort, bodies were pushed, shoved, and eventually slugged.  Tables went over.  The war was on.

Chucky yelled to his crew to get down to the floor, as chairs and decorative centerpieces became airborne.  He later declared that the brawl was a good party indeed, after he was x-rayed for getting clipped in the back of the head while breaking up a grappling match.

The police were called to restore order, ambulances arrived, no arrests were made, and the incident never happened according to local media or the pastor, Chucky's brother.  The Fighting 49th was treated, bandaged, and sent home to their wives, secretly wishing they would have a chance to punch a smart aleck next weekend.  Not too many showed for the Sunday service, the absence not noticed due to the attending wives, whose broadcasted glares dared anyone to inquire.  Hats were pinned a little more tightly to the head that day.

You have a pleasant night, and realize what beating hearts exist under a suit and tie while sitting with the congregation.  These men faced the unthinkable, and are still upholding a sense of duty and honor;  I wonder if that had to do with how the media completely let this slide under the rug. Foolhardiness or bravery?  Most likely a mix of the best of both.  Sleep well, put an extra blanket at the foot of the bed.  Good night.

My Friend: Wish You Were Here

Growing up in a severely constricted, scary household had me by the throat once I entered my teen years; what was expected of me had never been taught as the folks in charge weren't too sure themselves.  By this time, my Mom had given up and went into alcoholism, not in league with, but in defiance of, the addled king.  I couldn't blame her; it was a loss for myself and my brother, however, and we hung on as best we could, my brother was less affected as he was the boy, and therefore favored by the noise of the house.  It wasn't all wonderful for him, the same expectations of magical thinking were applied to his future.  Me, I was the first born, a girl who was supposed to be a boy born in the age when gender was a surprise at the end of pregnancy.

No bubble bath, I had to use Spic 'n Span; no purses, dresses, or the fake plastic lipsticks; no fancy soaps; none of that stuff, Mom and I were told, for that would make me any number of yelled words connected with street walking, punctuated by a fist in the wall. My defense was to disappear; become as needy as a plant, just water me once in a while; I arose into books, drawing, the fields.  Scrubbed the fossils I found, picked up frogs.  Those were acceptable, as were the cap guns, mitts, bats, and the comic books; Dad viewed me as a personal failure.  Now, some of those were truly my own interests, but I'll be damned if I want to hear how I stand like Eddie Matthews at home plate because I bat left.

The trouble with being a kid is that you have few points of reference, especially if you live in isolation, out in the sticks.  Church yammered on about how you weren't supposed to think about sex but you were to examine yourself for sexual thinking at prayers morning, noon, and night.   Television programs approved by the Catholic Union and Echo may they burn in hell portrayed families that played out scripted family interactions where problems were solved in jolly fashion, not made to go away by smashing glassware or animals.  I thought there was something wrong with Ozzie, a father/husband character in a popular program; why isn't he screaming about why I don't smell like Spic 'n Span this week, piney fresh, because Mom switched to more flowery Tide?

Now, this isn't what the entry is meant to be about, but this prelude describes where I came from; a scared kid who had little interaction with others until we moved to a suburb with sidewalks; now there were children on the street and places easily accessed; a playground, stores, a custard stand. My eighth grade IQ tested off the charts, and the school wanted to send me to courses at a private college, but the books would have cost $60 that nope, we can't afford, and besides, she doesn't need education.  Saving that investment for the boy.

I would find ways to stay out of the house; go to the supermarket and read soup can labels, order a coke at Woolworth's and sit for an hour.  Staying in my room wasn't an option, for that was being "antisocial" towards the family; so I brought my books and art downstairs.  I couldn't sit in the backyard, for my father thought that would entice neighborhood men to watch me, and Dad began a fantasy to hold us under his thumb that he had a WWII machete and would decapitate any of us at anytime.  The dictionary explained that word to me, and I became even more complacent to protect my mother from any outbursts. There never was a machete, it turned out.

One way I found to escape were the Girl Scouts, an acceptable organization that was connected to the Mariner branch.  Thursdays, I would go and staple myself to a chair, hoping no one would speak to me, just let me stay here, let me watch.  By this time, at fifteen, some of the other girls were wearing makeup, had learner's permits, and smoked.  Some of them had fathers that they loved, it was weird to me, seeing a healthy relationship with a male parent.  No, it can't be real, something is fishy here.  I just didn't realize that I was the one who came from the distorted background.

Eventually, when we weren't singing Kum Ba Yah, I got to know some of them and was stunned at the liberties they had through stories of travels, boyfriends, families.  One girl was dressed better than the others, wore jewelry, makeup, and kept Marlboros in her purse.  No clue, no interest in putting myself amidst any circle, even though the other girls were friendly but mystified by me.  What caught their interest was that I was funny and a bit of a daredevil, having been climbing trees and picking up snakes since when.

Halloween came, and for a costume I dressed as Chaplin; won a prize, and the girl with the jewelry thought it was the funniest thing ever, and started to sit with me, tell me about her boyfriend, sneak out for a smoke, and eventually invited me over to her house, two blocks away from the church basement where we met.  Her name was Nancy; she became my best friend for forty years until she died a short while ago.  She was the antithesis to my everything; her parents were also strict, but her response was unbridled glee at escaping out of her house and hitchhiking to a store where she shoplifted makeup.  I was horrified, and made her pay or I was leaving, DO NOT get into that car, and can you teach me how to put on makeup?

She did.  She drew that severe line midway on the upper lid, painted single eyelashes on the bottom; pale frosted lipstick, teased hair, and I looked like I came out of the To Sir With Love movie.  She had fake I.D., and got us past the bouncer at a local kid's bar--at the time, drinking age was 18.  We were 16.  It was my job to drag her out at 11, so we would make her parent's curfew; her family came to appreciate me and my sense of following rules.  I didn't drink, didn't like what I saw my own family go through; and I didn't smoke.

It was illicit, against almost every tenet exhorted by my father, and it felt wicked good.  I should have focused on the college scholarship I had won, but again, was told no school for me; but how could I get a job without training?  They don't just hire you off the street, so Dad had a friend who worked for the phone company and I interviewed.  And again.  And again.  Three times I went there, and wasn't hired, got yelled at what the hell is the matter with you until Dad called his friend and was told my voice was not within the criteria.  Too low.  Too this.  Too that.  Nancy pushed me into a job at a big box store, where I sold donuts and expeller-pressed cookies.  Her doing this gave me a key to the door of independence, and soon I was able to move out into my own apartment; I hated leaving my mother, but getting away for my own safety was paramount.

I worked, saved, and went out on Saturday nights; Nancy was put into nursing school, but was kicked out for sneaking her boyfriend inside.  No, she wasn't perfect, far from it; but she enjoyed living, loved history and politics, and would do anything if she loved you.  She suffered internally, for her mother would tell her that even though she was adopted, they loved her just as much, which is a pretty crappy thing to say.  They attributed her wild ways to genetics, not that she had to sit on a chair for three hours at a time while Mom played cards.  We stood by each other forever; but I couldn't save her from the addiction to pain pills that ate her life away.  By that time she lived in Atlanta, Georgia with her then husband, and was filled with other sorrows due to marital troubles and family matters.  She's been gone five years, and I miss her.

She was brave, resourceful, more than generous; compassionate with animals except for the monkey who stole her cigarettes out of her purse in Costa Rica; she was always searching for love, thought she had found it, but unfortunately that turned out to be another story.  For all her poor choices, I could trust her to the ends of the earth and back, even when her strength and emotional health were being chipped at by medications, family ills, and her own intense self-doubt.  I see you in the leaves, Nance, the leaves that fell at the base of the immense maple, the one we climbed together to watch the sun go down.  Happy Birthday.