Arrival:
Deep green spreads out through the bay. Tendrils of white foam streak across the surface like scratch marks. Oh yeah, this isn't your little lake anymore. This is the ocean and this water means business.
We curve around over the bay full of familiar land forms. Deer Island with its huge sewage containers that look like milk jugs left on the city's front stoop. Lovell's Island where I endured my first camping trip. We pitched our tents late and awoke the next day to realize the campsite was covered in wild hare shit. Then came the thunderstorms all night and the goons at the next site over. Did I mention it was black fly season? Yeah, black flies fed by what was in those big jugs on the next island over. I had fun. Wright's Island was the hub for all the boats. That's where I picked up the boat out to the biggest island, Peddock's. I read a book on the deck under the late afternoon sun while we rode out. We camped next to the vestiges of an assylum. Long Island is tethered to the mainland with a narrow bridge and sports a huge shelter on the end. Prime real estate occupied by homeless alcoholics. It all comes closer quickly and we're wheels down in Boston. Welcome back to the place that never was home. At least now I have a reason to feel like an interloper.
It's time to visit friends, for passover, for mending some rough edges I left behind.
The place has changed, as places do. I feel like I know where I am and in the next second I'm lost. Easy to forget that I'm not really seeing it with the same eyes. Eleven years I lived here. I walked through this park, passed this bench right here, wondering when life would change. When would life get better or more interesting? Over there I stumbled over the frozen pond, very drunk, and smashed that night's bottle of JD on the ice. My friends had to drag me away from the dissipating liquid and glass chards. This city was imprinted on my mind. I've flown through here in dreams. And now, warm spring day in the sun, none of those memories steps forward to aid in recognition. I see glass and steel, instead.
Day 2
Of all the years I was here I never once rode the Minute Man trail. My hosts poot me out of the door armed with a cycle and a helmet. It takes me a few false starts to get used to the brakes but I'm rolling pretty soon. Brooks! Trees! Maybe I never properly gave Mass a chance?
I meet up with a woman I knew to be fierce and direct. It's a bit puzzling how, for the first 30 minutes, we can't seem to get our bodies to be in the same coffee shop despite plans and cell phone usage. I know what I have to say but she heads me off at the pass by starting to apologize to me and explaining her bipolar behavior and manic cycles. I didn't even remember whatever she pulled!! Thank god she's on the mental mend now. I look in her eyes and there is still the strong woman I knew in there, but it's a crowded house. Something or someone else bleeds out the tiny cracks. Our 12 steps are the place where she comes back to herself and her dignity. Stepping out side that topic - things get mushy. Win, lady. Don't let this thing pull you under.
Passover
This old city is filled with monuments. There are monuments to ball players, historic oak trees and a past that wants to press forward, if only the monuments remember. There are other monuments I pass. There is the entry to the subway station where I fought with HIM. Well, was it a fight? Is it a fight if it only takes one line to win? This corner I used to wait for the 66 bus during my first summer here. I'd head off through Allston to that job where I went around asking for money for the environment. I bump into myself all over Harvard Square. It's a shifting homage to the bookstore that used to be on that corner and the craft store that remains. I'm amazed at what manages to stay and what has melted away. The bead store is still there. BEADS? But my bookstore? Gone. Comic book store? still there. Anime video store? Gone. Dang. There's new construction all around. Some of it is glass and steel and an improvement. Some of it is oppressive artifacts of bad planning and greed.
Tonight I observe a celebration of freedom. After a day of wandering and getting lost in memory lane's twists and turns, my freedom is in realizing that the vague recollections fashioned around a place are just fiction. They reflect back only bits I repeat in my head and glue together with imagination. None of it needs to be real. It's just another sunny day and I'm free from feeling anything more about it.
Number nine
I just did the only thing that I have yet done to help any soldier.
On the silver line out to the airport I was reflecting on the meeting I had just finished with the last Boston amend. The one with THAT guy. Everyone has a THAT guy - that toxic relationship that, once inside you don't know how you got in and you can't get out because the person you thought was your lover has just taken your sanity as hostage. It was that relationship that I would have chewed a limb off to extricate myself from. HIM. Him who has not learned a single new trick in the past 3 years and will proceed to pull the same shit. "Call me at 10 am and we'll make plans". I call at 10:05. I get voicemail. GAAAHH! He's doing it again! Breathe, shut up, and focus on your own shit.
Something about him stiffens me up. I'm like a snail afraid of getting salted or the sun afraid of a cloud should I have the temerity to pop over the horizon. I just can't seem to talk. I say what I came to and listen. In an hour and a half he did not once ask about me. In an hour and a half I talked for maybe 10 minutes. I listen to his ego fest, how great his work is, how great his wife is. I bite my tongue and let him give me relationship advice.
I roll the encounter around in my head like a marble while the bus pulls out of south station. Next to me a boy with a buzz cut is busy on his cell phone.
"Baby hold on, major's on the other line.... Yessir! Yessir I'm on the bus to the airport and I'm coming in tonight. I'll see you at roll tommorrow....Sorry baby. Yes. I'll be back I promise. I PROMISE!!" But he's crying and incomprehensible.
We go under the bay and he loses signal. "Baby? Sugar? Honey?" the sobbing voice pleads into the dark. I know I have a pack of tissues in my purse. I retrieve one and park it on his lap. Grabbing it he aims for the corners of his eyes. At his terminal he turns to tell me he's going back to "work" after 4 days leave. He's going back to war. I want to grab him and hug him like a mother would and say that he'll be ok. But I just don't know that. How many mothers wish their love was a guarantee against harm? I just waive bye bye at terminal B.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Monday, April 14, 2008
Bad hair day
What are the odds? I'm coming back through the lobby after a lunch meeting and I see this guy standing there with a couple of duffle bags at his feet. How many times do I go through this space, it's filled with bodies heading every which way, and never remark for a moment on any one of them. But something about this one hits a familiar note in my head.
"NAHH!" I think, still looking ahead. No, look again, there can only one be one head of hair like that on the face of the earth. Sure enough, stringy bleached out curls fall down over his ears making it look like his skull has been used as a temporary resting place for some rag previously used to wash a juice bar or a surf board. Oh yeah, it's J~. Yeesh.
An open elevator barfs out a short girl who comes over to meet him. They exchange a brief hug before she leads him out into the sunlight. She makes him carry his own duffle bags. Good girl.
I know that guy. I went on one date with him. One was quite enough. He's friendly enough and certainly smart enough. From my memory he's also cheap and just far enough down the "opinionated" road as to be "judgmental". A week after the date his hard drive crashed, taking with it his entire doctoral dissertation. He had a month and a half to rewrite his dissertation, no more time to talk to me, and had proven himself too hopelessly silly to be bothered with. Who in hell doesn't back up their dissertation? WHO? I never got a chance to tell him what that one date cost me.
For over a year I used to meet up with L~ for coffee. Once a week we'd get together before work and chat for an hour. I looked forward to seeing her. The morning after the cheap date L~ noticed I was a bit tired. I told her that I had been out the night before and after two sentences of describing my date she interrupted me.
"Is this J~?" She burst into tears. Then she proceeded to cut me out of her life with a series of unanswered phone calls and cold shoulders. Within a few weeks I noticed that any friends we had in common had stopped talking to me as well. I haven't been treated like this since 7th grade.
What are the odds, in a city as big as Chicago, that you could go on a date with someone who dumped one of your best friends 4 months earlier? I had no idea. I knew she was having a problematic dating experience but I never even knew his name. And today there he is, loping along with that stupid hair flopping from his head like a tattered flag in the breeze. I got mad. I got mad that someone so silly looking forced me from the fold of my friends. The anger wants to press it's way forward in fresh tears. It wants to, but I don't let it.
How many times have I twisted and turned myself in knots over something that wasn't working out in the way I hoped? I've done goofy things when anger over one situation came out sideways and spilled itself all over some innocent party who happened to stand too close. Each time, after some time, I looked back and realized that I wasn't rejected, passed over, not getting my phone calls returned, dumped or just plain not good enough. No, I was being spared!
I miss L~ . If she called me up today and wanted to go have coffee, I'd be overjoyed to meet up with her.
"NAHH!" I think, still looking ahead. No, look again, there can only one be one head of hair like that on the face of the earth. Sure enough, stringy bleached out curls fall down over his ears making it look like his skull has been used as a temporary resting place for some rag previously used to wash a juice bar or a surf board. Oh yeah, it's J~. Yeesh.
An open elevator barfs out a short girl who comes over to meet him. They exchange a brief hug before she leads him out into the sunlight. She makes him carry his own duffle bags. Good girl.
I know that guy. I went on one date with him. One was quite enough. He's friendly enough and certainly smart enough. From my memory he's also cheap and just far enough down the "opinionated" road as to be "judgmental". A week after the date his hard drive crashed, taking with it his entire doctoral dissertation. He had a month and a half to rewrite his dissertation, no more time to talk to me, and had proven himself too hopelessly silly to be bothered with. Who in hell doesn't back up their dissertation? WHO? I never got a chance to tell him what that one date cost me.
For over a year I used to meet up with L~ for coffee. Once a week we'd get together before work and chat for an hour. I looked forward to seeing her. The morning after the cheap date L~ noticed I was a bit tired. I told her that I had been out the night before and after two sentences of describing my date she interrupted me.
"Is this J~?" She burst into tears. Then she proceeded to cut me out of her life with a series of unanswered phone calls and cold shoulders. Within a few weeks I noticed that any friends we had in common had stopped talking to me as well. I haven't been treated like this since 7th grade.
What are the odds, in a city as big as Chicago, that you could go on a date with someone who dumped one of your best friends 4 months earlier? I had no idea. I knew she was having a problematic dating experience but I never even knew his name. And today there he is, loping along with that stupid hair flopping from his head like a tattered flag in the breeze. I got mad. I got mad that someone so silly looking forced me from the fold of my friends. The anger wants to press it's way forward in fresh tears. It wants to, but I don't let it.
How many times have I twisted and turned myself in knots over something that wasn't working out in the way I hoped? I've done goofy things when anger over one situation came out sideways and spilled itself all over some innocent party who happened to stand too close. Each time, after some time, I looked back and realized that I wasn't rejected, passed over, not getting my phone calls returned, dumped or just plain not good enough. No, I was being spared!
I miss L~ . If she called me up today and wanted to go have coffee, I'd be overjoyed to meet up with her.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Mouse chronicles
Mouse sighting begins:
A streak darts across the kitchen floor that I catch out of the corner of my eye. I am having a bad day but this makes me wonder... what am I bitching about? I have a home so nice that even the mice want in!
Four days later:
I know they are potentially cute with their furry little bodies, round ears and sniffing noses. But when I see one of them streaking across my kitchen floor at 2 am, when I discover a new hole chewed in my kitchen wall, when I see more tiny flecks of their dung (one my stove top no less!), I get mad! I have no intention of sharing my space with tiny little mammals. Or any of those roaches, for that matter.
I clean the kitchen, again. I vacuum up turds, again. I put out more poison and stuff the newly discovered holes with steel wool. darn mice!
The next day:
I wake up in the middle of the night. I'm forced, once again, out of a dream. Then I see the dark blob in the middle of the floor in the half light. I dont' remember dropping anything in that spot. In the morning I see it is indeed the little grey mouse, dead. It seems to have been halted in a march directly toward my bed by the grim reaper. Perhaps this lone rodent was trying to show me the death I was inflicting on its colony with my little poisonous treats.
You're not so cute with your legs in the air and your eyes absent of life like two black marbles. I'm so angry with you mice. I'm angry at finding your dung on my floors, in my closets, on my stove, on my countertops. There's not a lick of food sitting out to be had in my apartment. There are no piles of dirty dishes or garbage. What are you doing here?
Maybe they see me as a big germy pest? Well, I'm the one paying to live here and subsidizing your warm winter scamperings. So it's time to move out, mousie. Out or up.
The next day:
The mice still win battles; leaving droppings on my stove and in my shoes. But I took photos of their little set up today to send it to the land lord. I'm amazed at how much evidence of them I see about. I'm amazed at how brazen they are. 10 minutes after I turn off the light at night I hear them coming out. I hear the noise of the bricks of mouse poison being pushed across the floor by their gnawing. When are they going to die, already?
The next day:
Dear Mr. landlord
I spoke to you a couple of weeks ago regarding a problem I was having with mice in my apartment. I had noticed their droppings behind my refrigerator and you gave me the phone number of an exterminator. I have phoned this exterminator a few times and they have yet to return any of my calls.
In the mean time the mice activity increased. Every day I clean up more droppings. I have found droppings on my stove top, by my kitchen sink, in my clothes closet, even in my shoes. I don’t understand why they are coming into my apartment as I do not keep food outside of my refrigerator unless it’s in a can, a jar, or it’s an onion. I do not leave the sink filled with dirty dishes. I stuffed any opening which looked like a mouse hole with steel wool, but still they came in.
Finally, I went out and bought a box of mouse poison and placed portions around the flat. Because of this I noticed that the greatest area of activity is by my back (kitchen) door. The gap at the bottom of my back door is big enough for a mouse to fit through and right outside that back door is my neighbor’s trash. When I stepped out to see if there was evidence of mouse activity by the trash, I noticed quite a few pigeon droppings. There is, in fact, a pigeon nest with two little eggs in it right on a bend in the stairs which heads up to the third floor. I found another nest at the bottom of the stairs, in the basement.
Today I went out and bought more mouse poison and more steel wool. I have stuffed the steel wool into every crevice that I could fit a finger into around the entire apartment. I know that this is only a temporary solution and that an exterminator should be sought before the rodents simply chew different holes. Should I seek out a different exterminator?
Please let me know what you would like me to do.
Mouse home, day 9:
Heading out for work, I shove the brass key in the lock, knowing that there is no safety in my home, now. In less than five minutes a party will start in my closet and kitchen. A mouse party.
I don't like the sense of some little creatures that I can't control running around in my home while I'm not there. It bothers me that the space I pay rent on is invaded by these rodents, unwelcomed. I turned off the lights last night before bed and within five minutes I could hear them. They squeeked in loud protest that all entry points had been blocked by steel wool. The mouse in my closet was more successful. It seems to have a point of entry that has eluded my examination thus far.
But it's increasingly getting me thinking about the mouse as an icon in our culture. The mouse is always the hero in the cartoon, defeating the silly and hyper aggressive cat. But I also got thinking about the "MAUS" books by Art Spiegelmann in which the Jews are depicted as mice and pursued by the germans, who are cats. Spiegelmann is associating the Jewish people with something that is considered a pest. These mice come in and go where I dont' want them. They could be spreading germs all over my home with their filthy feet and dung. They eat things I don't want them getting into. They must be blocked, limited in access and, well, poisoned.
Is it possible that I'm that wrong about the mice or that our human thinking can be that flawed in its attitudes toward whatever we see as "not like me". Is it possible that the mice I hate are not doing anything wrong at all? They are doing what I do, only on a different scale and in a place I don't wish for them to be doing it. Maybe there is something bigger than me which wishes I would stop my scurrying and feeding and just die? I don't like that thought at all.
So I have a new plan: deter. I will get rid of all poison food in my kitchen. I will stuff in more steel wool, spray, and just hope they'll forget about the tasty toxic morsels that my kitchen once provided.
Day 10:
I had a mouse free night. I've noticed that they are quieter when it rains. Perhaps they have left my domicile alone in frustration over all of the plugged entry points? Perhaps the poison has finally done its work and they're all dead somewhere inside the walls? Many of them certainly should be dead by now, considering how much poison they've chewed up. The last time it rained I woke up to find a 3.5" mouse dead on the floor.
Just the same, I'll leave my fancy, new, no-touch snap traps out to catch any new adventurers. I'll continue to scout for droppings. I've realized my eye catches and gut panics on any tiny black fleck I see. A poppy seed bagel could probably give me a nervous breakdown. It panicked me to see those droppings around the room. I instantly visualized the tiny grey monsters scurrying uninvited through my closets, in my shoes, along the walls.
Today, while I felt relief at the absence of mouse signs, I left the radio on. Perhaps the sound of human voices will help drive them away. Either that or I will come home to find them all deep in slumber in the living room while the radio plays NPR.
Day 14:
After so many mouse free days, I found one tonight, dead. My biggest puzzler was, how in hell did that thing get IN here to die in the first place? I have blocked just about every possible orifice in the place with steel wool, but there it was. It's little feet were paused as if it just keeled over mid-step. At one moment it was choosing to run toward the bathroom and in the next it decided to die instead. I wonder how it happens? Do they take a while to die and crawl along in pain? Or does it hit them suddenly?
I was right that the rain was keeping them from coming out. Now that we've had a dry day they might try to emerge again. Should I leave the radio on so they hear the human voices and stay away? Should I put out more poison? How can it take so long for poison to kill something so small? I couldn't help but notice the details of its face and it's ears. This was an animal that had been conceived and grown in a species effort to propagate. They are no more pests than humans, really. We've evolved these big brains and some big problems to match. They've evolved grey coats to blend in with our shadows and big ears to hear us coming. Whenever I mention the mouse issue people tell me to get a cat. It's never so simple as cat and mouse. I, personally, would consider the proposed solution to be a problematic pest in its own right.
I pick it up by it's little tail using my hot dog tongs. Hey, when one doesn't eat hot dogs, what else ya gonna do with tongs? I plop the soiled grocery bag that has become a mouse's coffin into the garbage and look around. I spy a tiny gap under the bathroom sink which could have provided a point of entry and grab for more steel wool. Traps, exterminator, blockage, poison, do the mouse chronicles ever end?
A streak darts across the kitchen floor that I catch out of the corner of my eye. I am having a bad day but this makes me wonder... what am I bitching about? I have a home so nice that even the mice want in!
Four days later:
I know they are potentially cute with their furry little bodies, round ears and sniffing noses. But when I see one of them streaking across my kitchen floor at 2 am, when I discover a new hole chewed in my kitchen wall, when I see more tiny flecks of their dung (one my stove top no less!), I get mad! I have no intention of sharing my space with tiny little mammals. Or any of those roaches, for that matter.
I clean the kitchen, again. I vacuum up turds, again. I put out more poison and stuff the newly discovered holes with steel wool. darn mice!
The next day:
I wake up in the middle of the night. I'm forced, once again, out of a dream. Then I see the dark blob in the middle of the floor in the half light. I dont' remember dropping anything in that spot. In the morning I see it is indeed the little grey mouse, dead. It seems to have been halted in a march directly toward my bed by the grim reaper. Perhaps this lone rodent was trying to show me the death I was inflicting on its colony with my little poisonous treats.
You're not so cute with your legs in the air and your eyes absent of life like two black marbles. I'm so angry with you mice. I'm angry at finding your dung on my floors, in my closets, on my stove, on my countertops. There's not a lick of food sitting out to be had in my apartment. There are no piles of dirty dishes or garbage. What are you doing here?
Maybe they see me as a big germy pest? Well, I'm the one paying to live here and subsidizing your warm winter scamperings. So it's time to move out, mousie. Out or up.
The next day:
The mice still win battles; leaving droppings on my stove and in my shoes. But I took photos of their little set up today to send it to the land lord. I'm amazed at how much evidence of them I see about. I'm amazed at how brazen they are. 10 minutes after I turn off the light at night I hear them coming out. I hear the noise of the bricks of mouse poison being pushed across the floor by their gnawing. When are they going to die, already?
The next day:
Dear Mr. landlord
I spoke to you a couple of weeks ago regarding a problem I was having with mice in my apartment. I had noticed their droppings behind my refrigerator and you gave me the phone number of an exterminator. I have phoned this exterminator a few times and they have yet to return any of my calls.
In the mean time the mice activity increased. Every day I clean up more droppings. I have found droppings on my stove top, by my kitchen sink, in my clothes closet, even in my shoes. I don’t understand why they are coming into my apartment as I do not keep food outside of my refrigerator unless it’s in a can, a jar, or it’s an onion. I do not leave the sink filled with dirty dishes. I stuffed any opening which looked like a mouse hole with steel wool, but still they came in.
Finally, I went out and bought a box of mouse poison and placed portions around the flat. Because of this I noticed that the greatest area of activity is by my back (kitchen) door. The gap at the bottom of my back door is big enough for a mouse to fit through and right outside that back door is my neighbor’s trash. When I stepped out to see if there was evidence of mouse activity by the trash, I noticed quite a few pigeon droppings. There is, in fact, a pigeon nest with two little eggs in it right on a bend in the stairs which heads up to the third floor. I found another nest at the bottom of the stairs, in the basement.
Today I went out and bought more mouse poison and more steel wool. I have stuffed the steel wool into every crevice that I could fit a finger into around the entire apartment. I know that this is only a temporary solution and that an exterminator should be sought before the rodents simply chew different holes. Should I seek out a different exterminator?
Please let me know what you would like me to do.
Mouse home, day 9:
Heading out for work, I shove the brass key in the lock, knowing that there is no safety in my home, now. In less than five minutes a party will start in my closet and kitchen. A mouse party.
I don't like the sense of some little creatures that I can't control running around in my home while I'm not there. It bothers me that the space I pay rent on is invaded by these rodents, unwelcomed. I turned off the lights last night before bed and within five minutes I could hear them. They squeeked in loud protest that all entry points had been blocked by steel wool. The mouse in my closet was more successful. It seems to have a point of entry that has eluded my examination thus far.
But it's increasingly getting me thinking about the mouse as an icon in our culture. The mouse is always the hero in the cartoon, defeating the silly and hyper aggressive cat. But I also got thinking about the "MAUS" books by Art Spiegelmann in which the Jews are depicted as mice and pursued by the germans, who are cats. Spiegelmann is associating the Jewish people with something that is considered a pest. These mice come in and go where I dont' want them. They could be spreading germs all over my home with their filthy feet and dung. They eat things I don't want them getting into. They must be blocked, limited in access and, well, poisoned.
Is it possible that I'm that wrong about the mice or that our human thinking can be that flawed in its attitudes toward whatever we see as "not like me". Is it possible that the mice I hate are not doing anything wrong at all? They are doing what I do, only on a different scale and in a place I don't wish for them to be doing it. Maybe there is something bigger than me which wishes I would stop my scurrying and feeding and just die? I don't like that thought at all.
So I have a new plan: deter. I will get rid of all poison food in my kitchen. I will stuff in more steel wool, spray, and just hope they'll forget about the tasty toxic morsels that my kitchen once provided.
Day 10:
I had a mouse free night. I've noticed that they are quieter when it rains. Perhaps they have left my domicile alone in frustration over all of the plugged entry points? Perhaps the poison has finally done its work and they're all dead somewhere inside the walls? Many of them certainly should be dead by now, considering how much poison they've chewed up. The last time it rained I woke up to find a 3.5" mouse dead on the floor.
Just the same, I'll leave my fancy, new, no-touch snap traps out to catch any new adventurers. I'll continue to scout for droppings. I've realized my eye catches and gut panics on any tiny black fleck I see. A poppy seed bagel could probably give me a nervous breakdown. It panicked me to see those droppings around the room. I instantly visualized the tiny grey monsters scurrying uninvited through my closets, in my shoes, along the walls.
Today, while I felt relief at the absence of mouse signs, I left the radio on. Perhaps the sound of human voices will help drive them away. Either that or I will come home to find them all deep in slumber in the living room while the radio plays NPR.
Day 14:
After so many mouse free days, I found one tonight, dead. My biggest puzzler was, how in hell did that thing get IN here to die in the first place? I have blocked just about every possible orifice in the place with steel wool, but there it was. It's little feet were paused as if it just keeled over mid-step. At one moment it was choosing to run toward the bathroom and in the next it decided to die instead. I wonder how it happens? Do they take a while to die and crawl along in pain? Or does it hit them suddenly?
I was right that the rain was keeping them from coming out. Now that we've had a dry day they might try to emerge again. Should I leave the radio on so they hear the human voices and stay away? Should I put out more poison? How can it take so long for poison to kill something so small? I couldn't help but notice the details of its face and it's ears. This was an animal that had been conceived and grown in a species effort to propagate. They are no more pests than humans, really. We've evolved these big brains and some big problems to match. They've evolved grey coats to blend in with our shadows and big ears to hear us coming. Whenever I mention the mouse issue people tell me to get a cat. It's never so simple as cat and mouse. I, personally, would consider the proposed solution to be a problematic pest in its own right.
I pick it up by it's little tail using my hot dog tongs. Hey, when one doesn't eat hot dogs, what else ya gonna do with tongs? I plop the soiled grocery bag that has become a mouse's coffin into the garbage and look around. I spy a tiny gap under the bathroom sink which could have provided a point of entry and grab for more steel wool. Traps, exterminator, blockage, poison, do the mouse chronicles ever end?
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Are the daffodils afraid?
Just poking tiny green tongues up through the earth to taste a bit of sunlight, the bulbs are coming out. I feel the chill and wonder if they shouldn't stay hidden for a few more weeks. Wouldn't it be much safer to stay in the dark, protective dirt and avoid the hostile blasts of late season snow and sleet or the heartless tromping of careless walkers? Wouldn't it be better for them to wait until they were SURE?
I don't understand why a spate of warm days must end. Somehow, despite the fact that my eye balls no longer freeze out of their sockets, it feels colder now that there's been a taste of 65 degrees and sunshine. This morning's wind is a bitter slap.
This edge between green and grey, between winter and warm, is crazy making. I want spring to happen NOW! Some 'mother nature' I'd make... tugging at the flowers to grow faster, wiggling the branches to let loose their green sprouts on my timeline and killing everything in the process. But this is the season of in-between. I hate in-between. I want to know the answers, control the outcome, have some insurance of satisfaction at the end of this endurance test. Instead I get mud on my shoes for trying to sniff flowers that have yet to bloom.
Grampa Joe used to pick us up in his truck about this time of year and take us out on the sugar wagon. It was late March, early April, mud season, in-between season. The ground was melting and the days were growing longer, but there was still wet snow on the ground in the deep woods. We ran around pulling buckets off maple trees and emptying the clear sap into a large tank that was being pulled by a tractor. Up and down the hills we would go until finally, when the tank was full, we stopped at the sugar shanty. The tank was emptied into a long trough outside, filtered, and fed into the boiling beds on the inside the shanty. sap would boil in the first tank before being filtered into the second. By the time it reached the third tank there was much less liquid and we were given samples of amber syrup to taste as a reward for all of our work. Grampa Joe would then return us home before bed time. He smiled sheepishly as he presented the two mud-crusted ruffians to our mother. We were filthly and smiling excitedly with our bellies full of the sweetness that in-between season can yield. When did I decide to stop enjoying states of uncertainty?
Are the daffodils afraid? Do they come out despite knowing that any manner of hostile conditions face them? Do they understand that to be the first sign of something growing is a dangerous, fearful, exciting place to be? Do they do it anyways because they must? Do any of us get a choice in the matter?
I crouch down next to the wee plants. I'd like to warn them about the impending cold weather, to protect them somehow. But that wouldn't change anything, really. I sing a tiny song. I'm still one of those crazy people who sings to flowers and talks to birds. Maybe it's because I've been offered more wise teachings from rose bushes than from any pulpit.
"Can you love without needing? Lift it up as a silent prayer.
Can you open your heart without bleeding? Take that open heart everywhere.
Can you hold a place within your breast for someone you've never met?
Well then love's not through with you, I know love's not through with me,
I pray love's not through with us - yet."
I don't understand why a spate of warm days must end. Somehow, despite the fact that my eye balls no longer freeze out of their sockets, it feels colder now that there's been a taste of 65 degrees and sunshine. This morning's wind is a bitter slap.
This edge between green and grey, between winter and warm, is crazy making. I want spring to happen NOW! Some 'mother nature' I'd make... tugging at the flowers to grow faster, wiggling the branches to let loose their green sprouts on my timeline and killing everything in the process. But this is the season of in-between. I hate in-between. I want to know the answers, control the outcome, have some insurance of satisfaction at the end of this endurance test. Instead I get mud on my shoes for trying to sniff flowers that have yet to bloom.
Grampa Joe used to pick us up in his truck about this time of year and take us out on the sugar wagon. It was late March, early April, mud season, in-between season. The ground was melting and the days were growing longer, but there was still wet snow on the ground in the deep woods. We ran around pulling buckets off maple trees and emptying the clear sap into a large tank that was being pulled by a tractor. Up and down the hills we would go until finally, when the tank was full, we stopped at the sugar shanty. The tank was emptied into a long trough outside, filtered, and fed into the boiling beds on the inside the shanty. sap would boil in the first tank before being filtered into the second. By the time it reached the third tank there was much less liquid and we were given samples of amber syrup to taste as a reward for all of our work. Grampa Joe would then return us home before bed time. He smiled sheepishly as he presented the two mud-crusted ruffians to our mother. We were filthly and smiling excitedly with our bellies full of the sweetness that in-between season can yield. When did I decide to stop enjoying states of uncertainty?
Are the daffodils afraid? Do they come out despite knowing that any manner of hostile conditions face them? Do they understand that to be the first sign of something growing is a dangerous, fearful, exciting place to be? Do they do it anyways because they must? Do any of us get a choice in the matter?
I crouch down next to the wee plants. I'd like to warn them about the impending cold weather, to protect them somehow. But that wouldn't change anything, really. I sing a tiny song. I'm still one of those crazy people who sings to flowers and talks to birds. Maybe it's because I've been offered more wise teachings from rose bushes than from any pulpit.
"Can you love without needing? Lift it up as a silent prayer.
Can you open your heart without bleeding? Take that open heart everywhere.
Can you hold a place within your breast for someone you've never met?
Well then love's not through with you, I know love's not through with me,
I pray love's not through with us - yet."
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
A belly full of Rumi
I fall in love too easily. In a snap I'm head over heels with some new paintings that must be painted, some new project that must be completed or, when I'm lucky, some new relationship. And that love is so satisfying when I first engage it. It makes me want to just jump over the edge and let myself get completely saturated. I crave getting lost in it and stuffing my belly over full with sweetness.
But every practical voice pushes me back from that precipice. Don't forget that you have a day job and can't just sit around thinking about art. Don't forget that you have other responsibilities and can't just focus on what you love to do. Don't go too far, too fast. It's important to remain steadfast in your own identity and play cool in your approach. Plan, and don't get lost in that love; it could make you crazy. I always pull the caution card. Muffle enthusiasm. Play the game. Can't have someone thinking you're one of those crazy people who loves shit and shit.
How can any love, no matter its distance from the divine example, be bad? Is the fruit of love such the danger or the ornaments of need we also hang from her branches? How could it be such a problem to fall helplessly in love with - whatever is there that can be loved - an it, that, or him?
What if I just left myself fall into that ocean? I could go overboard, get carried away, exert no control over the outcome. I might dissolve and disappear and lose my life as I have, up to now, enjoyed life. This is exactly what I've avoided.
But perhaps I would emerge from the deep again - bathed of some misguided apprehensions and expectations. I don't know.
But every practical voice pushes me back from that precipice. Don't forget that you have a day job and can't just sit around thinking about art. Don't forget that you have other responsibilities and can't just focus on what you love to do. Don't go too far, too fast. It's important to remain steadfast in your own identity and play cool in your approach. Plan, and don't get lost in that love; it could make you crazy. I always pull the caution card. Muffle enthusiasm. Play the game. Can't have someone thinking you're one of those crazy people who loves shit and shit.
How can any love, no matter its distance from the divine example, be bad? Is the fruit of love such the danger or the ornaments of need we also hang from her branches? How could it be such a problem to fall helplessly in love with - whatever is there that can be loved - an it, that, or him?
What if I just left myself fall into that ocean? I could go overboard, get carried away, exert no control over the outcome. I might dissolve and disappear and lose my life as I have, up to now, enjoyed life. This is exactly what I've avoided.
But perhaps I would emerge from the deep again - bathed of some misguided apprehensions and expectations. I don't know.
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
The honest Jello
Why do you say "truth" like it is a rock that you can stand upon? You seem to think that using that word gives you something solid to hold in your hand and ponder before, perhaps, throwing it at some unsuspecting nincompoop's skull. But what if I took that away from you? What if the truth turned out to be... fiction?
I'm not making this up. Even physicists say that simply by observing an event we change the event. The act of perception necessarily leads to an out come of "here" or "there" being picked out of the millions of simultaneous possibilities. That doesn't even get into how this feeble bunch of neurons inside our skulls massages what it sees based upon what it already knows and understands - or assumes.
When I was little my well intentioned parents took me to church every Sunday and on all holy days of obligation. Lining the walls of this church were the Stations of the Cross as they had been conceived by some 1960's era relief sculptor. I looked at those stations with my child brain and assumed they were about Jesus taking a long walk and loosing weight. In the earlier stations, covered by his robe, Jesus looked portly. By the end when he is stripped and hung on the cross, he is thin looking. The artist didn't put the hands and feet of the crucifiction into the image.... the sculpture frames only his thin, naked chest. The cross Jesus is supposed to have carried also didn't fit into any of the tableaux. I thought he was carrying some school books. The nails being driven into his wrists looked like a pile of lolly pops. I saw what I could and my nimble grey matter filled in the details out of my own life and what I saw on TV.
I'm sure we said the stations of the cross on many a Good Friday. I should have known the story. But i didn't. Saying the stations or praying the rosary was more about keeping up with the ferocious rhythm of the old ladies filling the front rows of the church. I saw those stations hanging on the wall when I came back to St. Mary's as an adult and only THEN realized what it was meant to be. If you had asked me what was truly in those pictures on the wall, I would have answered one way as I was small and another as I grew older. At both times I would have been telling the truth.
And then there's the truth we want to see. We have the obfuscating factor of desire and expectation. Mom is SURE that I said this or that or that some such bad thing has happened. But she created those details in her mind out of wishing for or fearing that such would take place. Now, you think I'm going to call my own mom a liar?
So maybe the truth isn't such a solid thing at all. Look in your hand, that absolute you are holding has just turned to jello. Throw it and it's only plastic. It adapts to the surface where it lands and then melts away.
But there are absolutes, right? There is a thing that is our rock upon which we can ground a total understanding, right? There is a truth to be had out there, in a God, right? We just can't seem to manage to get very clear on what that God is saying. But God is truth, right?
God? GOD? God invented jello.
I'm not making this up. Even physicists say that simply by observing an event we change the event. The act of perception necessarily leads to an out come of "here" or "there" being picked out of the millions of simultaneous possibilities. That doesn't even get into how this feeble bunch of neurons inside our skulls massages what it sees based upon what it already knows and understands - or assumes.
When I was little my well intentioned parents took me to church every Sunday and on all holy days of obligation. Lining the walls of this church were the Stations of the Cross as they had been conceived by some 1960's era relief sculptor. I looked at those stations with my child brain and assumed they were about Jesus taking a long walk and loosing weight. In the earlier stations, covered by his robe, Jesus looked portly. By the end when he is stripped and hung on the cross, he is thin looking. The artist didn't put the hands and feet of the crucifiction into the image.... the sculpture frames only his thin, naked chest. The cross Jesus is supposed to have carried also didn't fit into any of the tableaux. I thought he was carrying some school books. The nails being driven into his wrists looked like a pile of lolly pops. I saw what I could and my nimble grey matter filled in the details out of my own life and what I saw on TV.
I'm sure we said the stations of the cross on many a Good Friday. I should have known the story. But i didn't. Saying the stations or praying the rosary was more about keeping up with the ferocious rhythm of the old ladies filling the front rows of the church. I saw those stations hanging on the wall when I came back to St. Mary's as an adult and only THEN realized what it was meant to be. If you had asked me what was truly in those pictures on the wall, I would have answered one way as I was small and another as I grew older. At both times I would have been telling the truth.
And then there's the truth we want to see. We have the obfuscating factor of desire and expectation. Mom is SURE that I said this or that or that some such bad thing has happened. But she created those details in her mind out of wishing for or fearing that such would take place. Now, you think I'm going to call my own mom a liar?
So maybe the truth isn't such a solid thing at all. Look in your hand, that absolute you are holding has just turned to jello. Throw it and it's only plastic. It adapts to the surface where it lands and then melts away.
But there are absolutes, right? There is a thing that is our rock upon which we can ground a total understanding, right? There is a truth to be had out there, in a God, right? We just can't seem to manage to get very clear on what that God is saying. But God is truth, right?
God? GOD? God invented jello.
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