If You Let It

It's the end of the year, if you haven't noticed. I moved into my writing room to cool my face down. For the past hour or two I sat and read in front of the fireplace, and my left cheek blazes with a shaming blush of sluggishness. I haven't exactly been slothful because I hauled in the firewood, folded some laundry, made a salad, and put away all the holiday decor. I was a verb this morning. There's tension in my neck and shoulders, a tightness in my foot. There's that light orb of grief, an ornament that rests in my chest, ready to break during any season.  My head is an unkept office space. My whole body has much to say, outside of calendrics. I possess a body chemistry that rejects time. Watches stop when on my wrist. 

I do like this time of year in spite of its expectations, sales, announcements, exclamations, proclamations, and resolutions. I feel the contrasts build in me like a cloud cover. It's a quiet drear among the glitter: to be more, do more, wrap everything up and move ahead, to get beyond, to rise above, to have it all figured out and together. Have you seen the aisles of empty plastic containers, ready to be filled with what we want out of sight? Once you've hidden Who-You-Once-Were, you can set your table with the gleaming flatware of I-Know-What-I'm-Doing-Now. 

I know what I'm doing now, which is writing this while red cheeked and feeling the collywobbles caused by a robust handful of chocolate almonds. I haven't made a list, or drawn up a plan for anything else I wish to share. I have nothing for you. Were you expecting anything? I just have now. The dog across the road barks into darkness and fog, there's one light on in the neighbors house, and if you let it, the sound of rain as it hits the porch roof could be mistaken for a clock. 

All Day Duende

A duende is an elfin figure of folklore. I think of duende as a feeling, a cross between fidgety passion and contemplative inspiration. Frederico Garcia Lorca's vision of duende includes irrationality, earthiness, an awareness of death, and a diabolical touch. That fits.

In Spanish duende originated as a contraction of the phrase dueño de casa or duen de casa, effectively "master of the house." The duende of various cultures get up to all sorts of tricks, masquerading as leaves and woodland creatures who then prank women by pulling down their skirts and pinching their bottoms, or they pop down chimneys and lurk in corners to create havoc in the home. The chimney entrance sounds familiar. Is Santa duende? Because the whole season, this stretch from the end of October through about mid-February (as soon as I can smell the ground again) is intense All Day Duende for me. The rest of the year is All Day Duende for me too, but with the sun's varied satires.

The Moon Appears

by Frederico Garcia Lorca

     At the rise of the moon

bells fade out

and impassable paths

appear.

     At the rise of the moon

the sea overspreads the land

and the  heart feels like an island

in the infinite.

     No one eats oranges

in the full moon's light.

Fruit must be eaten

green and ice-cold.

At the rise of the moon,

with its hundred faces alike,

silver coins

sob away in pockets.

Tricksters

A few mornings ago I looked up from my desk and saw a raccoon hop up from the road onto the stretch of grass in front of my window. It was raining that day, and its fur was sodden. It walked right up to the house like it had important business by the Japanese quince and the linden. Then it disappeared. It was right near the house and I lost track of it. This is the magic of raccoons. They are shapeshifters. When they visit, they are here to teach you to be vigilant, or persistent, or clever in your dealings.There's a lot of folklore surrounding them. When we visited Japan I fell in love with the sensual depictions of tanuki. Tanuki are more of a cross of a fox and a raccoon. I prefer the cheerful and benevolent rogues they turned into to their original forms, which were said to possess humans and haunt them.The rogue tanuki is a partier, with a large belly and scrotum, and usually a bottle of sake at hand.

The animals around here have more business than I do, scribbling and dreaming at my desk. The owl knows when there's the business of a loose duck, the fox knows spring dusks by the pond are her best business hours, the deer keep a quiet business of traffic across the fields, stray cats have the business of frog and field mouse hunting, the rats keep a hippity hoppity duck feed business.

My business hours are 5 a.m. to about 4 p.m. now, when the light shifts into night. I crack open a can of corn, put on muck boots, a giant, black sweater that makes me look like an ominous wooly worm, and lead the duck parade to safety. The business of the raccoon, the weasel, the fox, the owl, thwarted once more by the cleverness of chicken wire, hardware cloth, and hope.

The Raccoon Whisperer, a retired veteran in Canada who feeds raccoons hot dogs, is raccoon and human business transaction at some of its best.

Views From the Windows of My Mother's House

Kitchen

A stretch of green yard with a concrete sidewalk on the left. A 100 foot tall (or so it seemed) Norway Spruce that dropped torpedo pinecones we loved to throw at each other. The garage where Dad kept his car washing supplies, and the upper room full of hats, costumes, props, and a filing cabinet with our childhood drawings. The parking pad with Mom's car next to the garage. The gate with a closure Dad made that was difficult to open and close when it rained. The long garden of perennials Mom planted along the chainlink fence that separated their yard from the Gehr's. Tammy, Mr. Gehr's tiny dog, sniffing the edges of the fence. The alley beyond the garage.

Dining Room Gehr's Side

A porch with a square table covered in a black and white checked tablecloth in the summer, topped with a tiny blue vase with choreopsis and speedwort from the garden. The patchwork pattern of the Gehr's asbestos shingled siding, and their dining room window, curtained in 1945.

Dining Room Other Side

The first floor apartment porch of a reclusive woman who lived there for decades. She had an exotic sounding name I can't remember now -- Florence, Lorraine, Yvonne, Eleanor? A man visited her regularly, who she claimed was her brother, but Mom figured to be her boyfriend. When he arrived, he'd pee facing the garage on that property, an action we could see from Mom's kitchen window. His suspenders ran up his back like crossed train tracks. 

Living Room

The brick porch with a blue painted ceiling, a cherry tree, a lavender bush, and a stretch of State Street with a line of large Victorian homes. Most of the neighbors were unknown. The road was a wide river that wasn't crossed too often. 

Bedroom Porch Side

The upper floors and roofs of houses, the midsection of the Norway Spruce, a zigzag of powerlines, the sky. This porch is where we watched the fireworks each year from a bench swing that hung by chains from the ceiling. Dad installed it.

Bedroom Other Side

The rental property with the reclusive woman. A long staircase leading up to the second floor apartment, which changed tenants often. More often than not, there was a pile of moving boxes and leftover, unwanted items on the porch.

Bathroom and Guest Bedroom

The second floors of all those expansive Victorian homes across State Street. The tops of trees, the sky. This was a view you only saw if you were brushing your teeth at the sink in the bathroom and happened to turn and focus your attention through the sheer white curtains Mom hung above the two little shutters on the bottom of the window. Or if you were making the bed in the guest bedroom with the blue striped wallpaper and matching comforter.

If there were windows in the attic and basement (there must have been), I never looked out of them. The basement was Dad's stained glass workshop, so my focus was on what was being created there when I was in it. The attic was filled with childhood toys, books, costumes, dead birds, and holiday decor. I can see in my mind's eye where the light is coming from up there, and I never walked over to it, afraid of dead birds or squirrels.

My memory of this house asks for more. It is the season of more, please, until I am stuffed to the tear ducts with nostalgia.

A Reconnaissance of Cats

This morning I woke up thinking about cats, as the newest one in our family wiggled her way from the bottom of the bed to perch directly on my chest. It's hard not to think about cats when you have one breathing on your chin. I made a mental list, and discovered I've known and loved fifteen cats in my lifetime, not counting the ones who lived with my parents or friends.

Spooky

  A black and white wilding of a cat, she was a first cat memory of early childhood. My sister named her. I don't remember much about her except a story of her clawing Dad's back, an event which didn't go over well. She was in and out of the house, and when we moved Mom worried that she'd not be able to find her way back to the new house. She put butter on Spooky's paws, following an old wives tale that if the cat licked it off she'd also taste the dirt of home, and know where she was meant to be. Spooky must have tasted the roof in that butter because she spent a lot of time on the roof of our newly built home in the winter. Our icicles were yellow. 

Pip

    Pip and Pyewacket were a sister and brother pair who found us as kittens in our early teens. Pip was Kristen's cat. A black and white cat, similar to Spooky, I remember her sleeping on Kristen's bed, devoted. Later, when Kristen went off to college, and Mom and Dad moved, Pip found her favorite spot in the new house was in the onion basket on top of the fridge, a perch she used to swat at people as they walked by. Surprise! 

Pyewacket

    A tiger striped male, Pyewacket was really the first cat I called my own. He was a friendly cuddler; a rollicking fatboy. He enjoyed playing with chipmunks outside, which I didn't like to see. Once he got into a ground bee nest and was stung multiple times, and panted like a dog as we took him to the vet. Pye heard all my teen dramas, sadness, and dreams. I couldn't take him with me to my first college apartment. He became an escape artist when Mom and Dad moved to Ephrata. 

Poem

    A calico female I got at a pet store when I was in college, Poem was a tiny and elegant cat. As a kitten she was acrobatic, and leapt onto bookcases and mantlepieces. My grandmother Romayne was amazed by her energy. She accompanied me through college, and my early marriage. She was the cat who sat in my vanishing lap as I was pregnant with Helen, and she was Helen's first cat. We brought Helen's little baby hat home from the hospital so she could meet her through scent. She slept next to Helen's cradle and watched over her.

October

    Mom used to say "The fur fairy threw up on October." I'd  never seen a tweed cat before, but that's what October was. She was like the jacket of a literature professor. Thin and clever, she enjoyed eating spaghetti noodles directly out of the pan in the kitchen, and once sunk her teeth into a tube of ground turkey. She didn't like it when I went away on weekends though. She'd drag her butt across the carpet of the apartment, and I'd come home to poop trails. Mom and Dad took her in when I couldn't keep two cats, so she ate spaghetti at their house, and enjoyed the morning ritual of feeding the African frogs. Mom had her trained to the sound of a music box. She'd open the lid right before she fed the frogs, and October would run in to get her treat of frog food.

Mouse

    Mouse showed up one day on Buttonwood street, in the little patch we called a backyard. She was grey and white, and longhaired. A lovely fluff of a cat. Bewitched by her floofiness, I let her in, and she caused havoc. She was a storm cloud who found her way to a friend in Reading.

Edna

    Edna and Albrecht were adopted at a Reading shelter when Helen was two years old. As kittens they slept with her on her toddler bed, all curled up at her feet. They were her cats, even though I claimed Edna, and Joe claimed Albrecht. Edna was the sweetest, most tolerant female cat. The color of a latte, with faint stripes and spots of white on her chin and paws, she was beautiful in a simple and subtle way. Helen used to dress her up in doll pants, and she would walk around with a rankled look on her face. She curled up neatly on laps, and loved every visitor. In her later years she had a neurological event (a stroke, maybe?), and we took her to the vet after finding her stumbling around on the stairs. She recovered, and was with us a few more years. Her fur was as soft as a rabbit.

Albrecht

    An orange tiger male, Albrecht was named after Albrecht Durer, Joe's favorite artist. In his later years, he grew enormously fat, and loved to sleep in Helen's "critter heap" of stuffed animals. He blended in well, but he snored loudly, giving his location away.

Mango

    I adopted Mango from a Wilkes University student who found herself with a litter of kittens. It was Helen's birthday, and this cat was a birthday gift. Mango was formally named Mango Toodles Kaucher Caraballo, a collective decision of Helen and her best friend, Alex. I remember bringing Mango home, and driving over the Market Street Bridge to discover that she had escaped her box. She climbed up onto my shoulders and tried to sit on my head for the rest of the drive. Mango was white with orange spots, and shorthaired. She was similar in temperment to Edna. She enjoyed sliding around in the hallway in a shoebox, a game we played with her often. She accompanied Helen into her young adulthood and moved with her a few times, including back into our home for awhile, a "home from college" visit.

Stella

    Stella was the half sister of my mother's cat, Miss Havisham. Both of them came from a woman in Ephrata who fed all the feral cats in the neighborhood until they were friendly and less fearful of humans. Stella and Miss H. always retained a bit of the feral in them, even when they found cozy homes. Stella's thrill was discovering baby rabbits in the basement and bringing them up into the hallway for snacks. I still don't know how she did it. When we moved from Edwardsville to Lancaster, she was spooked, and found her secret hiding spot in the basement. We left food and water, and Helen brought her to Lancaster later. Then she became Marissa's confidante. 

Lucy Bob

    An adoptee from the SPCA by way of PetSmart, Lucy had a gravelly, old lady meow, as if she'd spent a long time smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky. On our way out of the pet store with her, some guy heard her meowing from the carrier and said, "Good luck with that." She hated the litterbox, and only pooped next to it. She was cuddly, and chubby, and had no troubles with her roommates, Edna, Stella, and Mango, and Muninn. I have a photo of myself at Christmas one year, sitting in a chair, covered in all five cats. Bliss.

Muninn

    A beautiful black male cat who found us by way of our friend Jack, Muninn was half of a pair of cats Jack had for years -- Muninn and Huginn -- named after the Norse ravens. Muninn didn't like living with us much. He didn't like being away from Jack. First he was first rehomed to Jack's mother, and then to us, where he had to live with four other cats, and none of them were Norse Gods. 

Steve

    Steve was the only male kitten from a litter born on the rainy day porch of one of Helen's coworker's uncles. When I went to visit, all the females hissed at me, but Steve peered up from his spot under a glass topped coffee table. When I picked him up, he purred. He's an all black ragdoll cat with long fur that mats in the summer. He gets a regular "lion cut" when he mats, which makes him look a little silly, but it's more comfortable. Steve loves all of my costumes. When he hears the closet open he's right there, ready to admire (lick) feathers, and chew on tulle. He gets the same giddiness around Christmastime when the decorations and wrapping paper come out. A lover of water, he drinks from the sink, and will also have a sip from your unattended cup, thank you very much.      

Ozgood

    Oz found us by way of the "Kitten Bush" here on our property which we think blooms once or twice every couple of years. I found him in the shed one morning, meowing behind the tools. A tiny, male tabby, he stayed outside for awhile, getting used to us and our schedule. He loved the farmstand visitors and people asked about him. He joined me for hoop practice in the barn, and played with everything I was working on. When it got cold, he came inside and was an indoor/outdoor cat, until he brought poison ivy oil in on his fur. Now he's indoor only, and is the friendliest and possibly the smartest of our cats. When Stubs joined us, he welcomed her like a big brother. When she escaped recently, scared by a power outage, he went outside to look for her. A hero. He's also a great mouser, which is helpful in an old farmhouse. 

Stubs

    Dan heard her meowing behind the rhododendron last year. "I think the Kitten Bush has bloomed again" An all black stump of a kitten, she was truly feral. It took me a long time to woo her with food, and I spent a lot of time sitting on the cold patio. Our neighbor helped too by bringing his stuffed mouse on a string, and coaxing her into play. On Thanksgiving Day last year,she walked right into the kitchen, and never looked back. We call her Kettle Bell, Stubby, Gremlin, Bunbun, Bowling Ball, and a host of other in-the-moment nicknames, and recently Dan said she looks like a whiskey barrel on four thumb tacks. She's short of stature, but has some heft, and plenty of independent attitude. She's the cat I wake up to every morning, because that's when she gets fed. 

If you're up for more cat stories, you can check out Cats I've Known: On Love, Loss, and Being Graciously Ignored by Katie Haegele. 

A Few Typewriter Poems

Bare November trees

slip on wigs of grey clouds

lunch ladies at dawn

Woodpecker on oak

taps to find what feeds her

Royal typewriter

Alcoholic friend

sends a text at 2 a.m. --

the only light on

 

Unrelated and Related Fragments About Ownership

Everyone has hauled out their holiday decor overnight, and now each home dances with projected snowflakes, or an inflatable chicken dressed as Santa bobs in the wind by their front door. Yesterday I found myself in the wonderblitz of Target, considering lights. You can buy them by strings of 200, coiled on large plastic spools, for $28 each. I'd need at least three to cover the tree by the barn. That's a lot of money for something that is impermanent. I decided to not buy anything for the holiday and dig around in the attic when the mood strikes. Then I bought thirteen dollars worth of toilet paper and left, but not before taking a slow stroll through the makeup to ask myself, "Do I care about this anymore, either?" The answer was no. I do not, but part of me wants to. The sparkly part.

I tested negative for Covid yesterday morning. It's been a long two weeks of feeling taken over. I'm still coughing and tire easily, and toothpaste tastes fusty instead of minty. When no extra line appeared on my test I had the impulse to call my mother to share the good news. She would wonder what I'm talking about, gone long enough to have never heard the word "Covid." 

When I was unpacking the toilet paper, I noticed a man was standing by our newly sorted shed, his red umbrella popped like a mushroom in the rain. I pointed him out to Dan, then I saw the man punch numbers into his phone, and Dan got a call. For the next few minutes Dan politely explained that the shop is closed for the season, and yes that information is on the website, and today is Sunday, we live here, we're closed. It is obvious we are closed. The property is under a good deal of construction with a path being replaced by the house, so there are pallet piles, large stones, and heavy equipment in the driveway. The barn is closed, the farmstand is zipped up. There are no signs saying we are open. But this man was insistent in his need to shop, to browse, to consume. When I saw his wife step out of our shed, I was stunned. Who just stands in a total stranger's shed as if it is a bus stop? They sat in their car and kept Dan on the phone with questions for a long while, saying they would place an online order and then Dan could bring it out. Then they spent more time browsing on their phone, and must have decided that it was just too much to bear. They left without any announcement or fanfare. In spite of my frustration with people who act this way, the hostess in me hopes they noticed the charming ducks, dibbling in the mud by the pond.

I looked up William the Conquerer to read about him right before I fell asleep, just because his name popped up in my head like a real estate ad while I was walking down the hallway to the bedroom. I didn't realize he ordered the compilation of the Domesday book, a survey listing all the land-holdings in England along with their pre-Conquest and current holders. Adelina Joculatrix is listed in the Domesday book. She was a jester and owned land, unusual for women. I wonder if anyone ever showed up in her shed, demanding to be entertained. I wonder if she kept ducks.

The Physical World

The soul straddles time and the infinite. The soul resides in that untoned flap of upper arm. The soul, your soul, if you believe you have one, exists with all the other souls that have ever and will ever exist. The soul is immeasurable and also changeable. Your soul lives in rain and snails and tree roots. The soul frolics as a rat under straw. The soul dozes like a lowercase l. The soul is yellow, no, red, no, it's the color of that feeling you get when you peel back several layers of wallpaper and find you are holding a handful of palimpsest. The soul, your soul, found mine in all the noise of the world, all the static and yawping, and like two magnetic tricky dogs we snapped together. Even though you don't believe in souls, I sure like yours, and how it insists on the scientific, the known, the physical. The soul is theory. The soul is hypothesis. The soul is part dendrite and mitosis and the bedroom light switch. The soul loves its body and doesn't want to leave it, but when it does please leave a window open or cut a hole in the ceiling, because the soul is not all magic (that word it digests), and is given to clumsiness. This soul isn't a professional soul. It's new in its oldness.

Not One Braided Narrative from Goody Pensmith

Yesterday I rhymed "maneuver" with "leftover" and it was as forced as a piece of sky puzzle piece jammed into the bottom left corner. I have a note on my desk that says "braided narrative," and I have all the interest in writing one that I have in the following suggestion on the same note: 

20 lines where each uses three of the words beautiful, ridiculous, beautiful

Past me, a real Goody Pensmith, wants me to write these ideas out. Current me has all the brain energy of a test pattern. It's past midnight and everyone is asleep.

There are plenty of Goody Pensmiths online, encouraging other hopeful writers, sharing prompts, asking open ended questions so they'll get engagement and follows and fans. The equivalent of carnival barkers, shouting at a public that reads less and scrolls more.

Beautiful, ridiculous, beautiful.

Passing By

The greying fence that once wound around the corner of our property is gone now. Every morning I looked out at it, close range, from my writing desk. There was not much reason for it. What was it keeping out? What was it holding in? I decided we'd have more light, and I'd get a better sense of the gardens around the house without it. The wood could be repurposed into a wood shed, and possibly an outhouse. My argument was sound, and so the fence is gone and we have a wood shed. 

My morning view has improved. I see the sunrise slap the sides of trees, the frosty grass of the field across the road, and I wonder who is awake in the neighbors house when there's a light on. I also see traffic up close. Yesterday I saw a driver cut someone else off, and the victim gave the offender a solid middle finger. Not a flash, not a flicker, but a switched-on-for-good fuck you. Some drivers who stop at the corner notice me and my little green lamp. This morning there was the older man in the black pickup who shamelessly stares as he makes the turn. His head is fixed like an owl. Yes, someone lives here, and yes, she can see you passing by on your way to work.

All of a Sudden

This morning I started a sentence in my journal with "All of a sudden," and I remembered a moment when I handed my mother a story I'd written. I used the phrase a lot in my story, but I wrote it "all of the sudden." My mother corrected my usage. "It's all of a sudden, not the." I was stunned, and a little confused. What difference did it make, really? A. The. They were both articles, signifying a noun up ahead. Was sudden a noun? An adjective? I learned the phrase was an idiom, which sounded too close to idiot for me. 

All of a sudden was a favorite phrase of mine, and it still is. As someone who feels like everything in life is happening all at once, it works. All of a sudden, my pen ran out of ink. All of a sudden, the ducks were in the road. All of a sudden, my fake mustache peeled off and fell into my coffee with a fuzzy plorp.

Everything is a surprise with all of a sudden. An unexpected delight (or not).

It turns out we've been using "of a sudden" since Shakespeare first coined it in The Taming of the Shrew. "Is it possible That love should of a sodaine take hold? (antiquated spelling alert!) Sudden has been used as an adjective since the 15th century, and it was once a noun, too, meaning "that which is sudden." Today the noun form is obsolete, except in the phrase "all of a sudden."  

What a gem! 

All of a sudden, the word sudden is no longer a noun.

All of a sudden, thanks to Mom, a memory, and the internet, I know a little more.

Crone Bone

I am teaching third graders, over Zoom, how to actively listen. "Make eye contact. Be generous with your attention."

Will they use this skill in their futures?

I am heartbroken today, for a variety of reasons, but the main one is I wish to have conversations, to connect with people in a meaningful way. Even this blog isn't a conversation. It's just me moving my scattered thoughts from head to hand to a public room behind many other public rooms that are discotheques of language paired with images and video. Be witty, be clever, engage with quick quizzes  -- whatever it takes to keep the viewer's (reader's?) attention for a full 30 seconds. Everyone is jumping up and down in those rooms. I feel trampled in them, bumped into, rattled. My head pounds from all the dippy filters and polls. The audio files that everyone uses for their videos homogenizes messages, plays them on repeat, while filters make faces melt into sameness, too.

I will not be a part of wherever this is headed, which is why I keep returning to this quiet space. Eventually I think I will stop writing for this empty room, too. I keep telling myself that this short attention span communication is leading to something new and exciting, that future generations will be prepared for what is needed to survive, to create. But this sort of talk just feels like the happy surface nonsense you say while your gut feels the deep rumblies of doom.

Books may be a thing of the past.

In defiance, I am reading as many books as possible and writing lengthier work no one will ever read. 

I am a chalkboard filled with words everyone just wants to clear off so they can go clap out the erasers.

I am the typewriter that no one knows how to use. 

Where do I feel the heartbreak in my body, no one asks? My jaw, my neck, the weight of my suddenly ponderous legs, my empty gut, a deep tightening in my ribcage. I hold my breath too much. 

No one cares, and self-pity is ugly, so here we are. I mean, here I am, a crone with her bones, trying to divine.

Some Sunday Images

On my way to a friend's house yesterday I saw a porcupine by the side of the road. I've never seen one "in person" before. It was armored, showing off its boundaries. They prefer the safety of forested areas, which I was driving through, but it must have lost its way and been anxious to see cars instead of understory.

While at my friend's house, I spotted a fox in her backyard, twice. She has chickens, and like me with the ducks, is on alert. The second time she went out to shout "like a wild woman," I realized the brownish blur I saw was her neighbor's dog.

So, did I see a porcupine? Or was it a discarded, upturned scrub brush? If I believe I saw a porcupine, did I see a porcupine? Such is the way of thinking for those who wear glasses. Our visions are questionable.

That same drive produced for me a number of images I enjoyed, questionable or not. The first being a sycamore, trimmed to stubbiness for the fault of growing by a powerline. The tree had put its energies into growing a branch that curled around the powerline without touching it. A brilliant and childlike defiance.

Can we talk for a moment about setting words 

v

e

r

t

i

c

a

l

l

y

?

It makes them difficult to read. Still, businesses put up their banners and flags that announce what they are selling inside with each letter stacked on top of the other. I guess it has to do with economy of space, but I wish we'd stop setting words in this way. When read from behind, which is possible with most of these banners since they are printed on thin fabric, the reader has to sort out letterforms that are backwards and up and down. Funhouse signage. In a way, my brain loves it, and rises to the challenge, but does it in ways that can be unsettling and revealing. Yesterday's sign announced a WINERY. Read from behind, and vertically, I saw MISERY. My eyes only caught the last three letters of the word, and filled in the rest of the spaces it saw with MIS.

How many words end in ERY and have three letters at the start that might announce a business? BAKERY. EATERY. Even CELERY would be a better choice than MISERY. The CELERY store.

On my way home I stopped at my daughter's apartment to drop off some Girl Scout cookies. Her apartment had that Sunday quiet about it. A pot of soup gone cold on the stove, books and art supplies on surfaces, cozy slippers cast off on the floor. Her heart wasn't Sunday quiet though. We had a conversation about boundaries, red flags, what we will allow in our lives, what we hope for the most. I told her about the porcupine I saw, or thought I saw. A vision, I see clearly now, of all those things we were going to discuss.

Good Morning

January is all about long shadows and blue light. The bodies of trees, the reflection of light on lingering snow. Lines everywhere. Angles, angles, angles, not that far from angels.

The woman in the room next to me at the dentist had a laugh like a goat calling out. She found the weather hilarious. We'll laugh at anything at the dentist, just to be liked. There's a lot of forced comedy in the dentist's chair -- one of the most vulnerable places for a human -- leaning back with your mouth wide open. The gateway to the body. Anyway, she sounded like a goat, which I found funny, not false.

I don't like wind. I want to be pals with it, but it just messes with my internal equipment. It throws me off balance, makes me eat my own hair, slaps me in the face. I try to find the positive in it the way you try to seek the kindness in a bully. "It spreads seeds," or "It has other moods, like breezes, which you like, and look how it makes the trees dance," but when it's cold and I'm lifting 50 lb. bags of feed, we're not chums. Sorry.

Which brings me to meditation. My hands are in my lap. and I am paying attention to my breath, and then the instructor's voice tells me to let all the negative thoughts go. It's like being faced with a plate full of marshmallows, and being told not to eat any. Marshmallow gorge fest. I don't even like marshmallows, so I'm not sure why I went there with that image.

GMO seeds are "brokenhearted seeds planted by a brokenhearted people." - Rowan White. 

I love the word brokenhearted, because you can turn it inside out and it still means the same thing. Heartbroken. Of course, you have to lop off the -ed ending, but you get the idea. It's like a really disappointing reversible jacket.

Is there anything better than eight puppies for a mood lift? I saw eight puppies with the mother dog yesterday and was so delighted. Everyone at that vet's office was smiling, including the dogs.

Mustard is good brushed on cauliflower if you roast it. I added some dill. That's my recipe for the day.

I wish I had deeper thoughts, but you get what you get.

When I write the word "the" I give up on it after the letter t -- the "he" looks like someone stepped on it.

A book I ordered arrived yesterday from Thriftbooks, so late I forgot I ordered it. "One Hundred Poems From The Chinese." Kenneth Rexroth's translations. I think we had this book at Paper Kite at one time, and sold it. I was never into the Chinese poets when I was younger. Their stark images and humor speak to me now as I hear doors closing behind me.

Coffee is cold. This was worth it.

Snow

Snow celebrates the unseen — bird footprints, fox tracks.
Snow celebrates the edges of things — curved branches, 

the tops of fenceposts, distorted diamonds of chainlink.

Snow spotlights the holy dry weed standing in the field alone.

Snow celebrates quiet — slows all human traffic, alters schedules, 

changes moods, puts the kaybosh on sound, shuts off lights.
Snow celebrates coldness  — it packs itself 

into the ribbing at the wrist of your glove, 

the ankle of your boot, reminds you of the warm pulse inside you.

Snow celebrates longing and impermanence 

as the building material for snowmen, 

and wishful, ramshackle hideaways during snowball fights.
Snow pulls its comforter over graves, reminds the dead 

and the living of the celebration of rest and spirit.

Snow celebrates newness, cleanliness, and chaotic order 

in a show of snowflakes, and endless white surfaces.

Snow makes it easy on the hawk, but hard on the chickadee.

Snow celebrates without knowing it is a celebration.
Beauty has a lack of awareness of its supremacy — 

its message of brevity: celebrate now.

Some Messages You May Receive

Your primary tab is empty.

There is Fool's Gold in your third eye. 

You have reached your time limit for today.

Your paternal grandfather is behind you, to your left.

You have successfully unsubscribed from this list.

Meet the gaze of your dead mother.

You've logged 124 hours of meditation. Way to go!

You have a strong heart.

Level up. 

What would it take to say "I know"?

Power down.

You are very powerful, you know that? 

You have three new notifications.

Your daughter: "It's in the words, Mom."

What would you like to watch?

There you are at 4 years old, in the mirror.

You shut down because of a problem. Error 101.

 Go ahead and skip that rope, then let go of it.

Your credit card statement is ready.

Your third eye is like the star on a Christmas tree.

We've received your message.

You have the awareness.

Leave meeting.

Connect to the natural world.

Sign up for rewards.