While I was collecting rudenesses, something else was stirring.
While Churchfolk were singing His praises, she made other plans.
As if I had hit my cartoon head,
white petally wings encircled me,
bursting forth, disturbed when
I opened the door,
bruising my self dimentia beyond restraint
fluttered
flustered
awake.

Not much good to anyone yesterday or today, with most of what I ate outside of me through violent ejections,
Drifting between the coolness of conditioned air and shivering fever heat I dream
of buying another house with Craig, a two bedroom we will cleverly make into three and
make a ton of money.
Meanwhile the light rises and swells over the smidgen of prairie
behind the Farm and Fleet,
where most of all I love to see the pale reflexive petticoats curling away,
bedraggled ballerinas who have smoked too much and possibly succored too many callers in need of nectar from their blossoms,
all worn out, triumphant.

I fell asleep early on the couch last night, and now it is time to read a little before work so my brain doesn’t catch fire.  Therefor, I am stealing (re-typing) a poem by Galway Kinnell for today; I took the picture.

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog head half out of the water utters
the cantillations he sang in his first spring,
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away among the stones, one sees
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one’s kind, toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one’s own singing
is to come back, if one can, to one’s own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens,
when one has lived a long time alone.

In a year (give or take) when my dependence (and interdependence) on others couldn’t have been clearer (or humbling) to me, I have discerned the following principles:

1) Gifts given graciously can never be adequately reciprocated;
2) No amount of compensation can ever even the score for favors done with reluctance; and
3) For a Bear of Very Little Brain, such as myself, it can be tricky to tell the difference.

I think I imagine you, dear reader, as someone I can truly be myself with.  Hence the power of this blog for me, if not for you – to enjoy a few moments asking myself what is true for me today, when most of my day is spent facing those whom I have irritated or alienated or bored.  The irony is not to be overlook, that the world wide web of strangers is where I can safely unveil.  But you are not a stranger.  If you have stopped here, and seen the pictures, you know there is nothing here but me, and my world.  It is the opposite of anonymous, and you are not an audience but a co-creator, attending with heart shaped eyes to what has emerged.

(I went to Elkhorn flea market today and all I got was this awesome pair of mortally wounded china ladies.  Ok.  That’s obviously a lie.  I was treated to a tummy full of steak and cast iron shoe lasts by Maryanna, and a gift from pal Angela, in honor of nothing in particular except that her eye is always in the right place at the right time.)

Despite a lingering morning chill, something like summer has sunk its teeth into the air, creeping like a farm cat toward imaginary prey.  The corn is already knee high, and anything that can be green, is.  It doesn’t matter how many virtues you can name for crunching leaves, or drifting snow; summer needs no tally of seasonal pros and cons.  We sit outside without justification, delighting flagrantly in our lack of ambition, never wondering where our coats are, because we didn’t need one.  And like all humans since the Flintstones roamed the earth, we abjure such incantations as “It’s too hot,” or  “I like winter,” for fear of offending the gentle breeze, and scaring it away with our ingratitude.

Whatever this is, I don’t know where its going.  But I do remember standing in the ankle high water of Lake Michigan and watching the minnows flit back and forth, and little flecks of light that rocked on the surface of the waves;  the muddy cold of the sand as I clenched my feet; the weedy smell of vast fresh water in summer, and Marv standing nearby, in his red, plaid swim trunks.  And learning that, when I reached for the minnows, they scattered like shards of glass; but if you scooped the water up, surrounding it with hands as big as Daddy’s, then minnows could be held, swimming still, close enough to see.

My Window, June 24, 2011

Driving home from Columbus, engulfed in the last landscape to receive her, the place that never really left her, the penny finally dropped:

She kept my sensitivity at arms’ length because it so perfectly mirrored her own; and not knowing how to live with hers, she couldn’t bear to look at mine.  So, for this and all the other gifts that passed into my life from hers, unbeknownst to both of us, and for a day that once held my heart as much as I ever knew how to give it, I say, Amen.

Not every image is a good one; I’m not sure the indifferent ones even count as practice.  Sometimes there is more to see later, after the thinking part has quieted down; or it could be that I’m cutting back on caffeine.  Either way, here is a little note from today, good at least for holding the door open until tomorrow.

Welcome to my world.  Look out for the butterflies!