Life's Menu

Don't sense that she's anywhere nearby. She could live on Pluto or in Toledo, run a bookstore, be one of those slightly drifty kind of people who light up when they talk about authors or their favorite sandwich or when they look at you. My friend Kath talked to me today about her husband and how when she needs an hour, he finds it to be with her, how's he's her best friend. Did I forget to mark that box on life's menu? Is is too late?

Absent

Perhaps we were absent from our third grade compassion class when they talked about taking ourselves into our heart. (Stephen Levine)

The Little Fictional People

If I'm not careful, antennae will grow out of my head. I was in bed most of the day with a cold, so channel surfed. But channel surfed much of yesterday too. And the night before. I am worrying about the my diminishing savings, hiring freezes at community health clinics, bad news about the economy seemingly at every turn. What I think the little fictional people in the box can offer me, I don't know.

Free Advice

Today's Tip for Fiction Writers:

To make your writing more vivid, insert a literary device.

Weak: Detective Jake Turmoil slowly opened the door to the killer's room.

Strong: Detective Jake Turmoil slowly opened the door to the killer's room, and a metaphor sliced off his head.

-Dave Barry

Straight Lines

Yesterday, a woman led a group of toddlers past my house. They were wearing rain slickers and brightly colored rubber boots and hanging on to a rope but straggling around the way toddlers do, noticing snails, poking each other, stomping in puddles. The woman said, "Why don't you all see if you can get in a straight line?" They looked at her like "are you kidding?"

Harvey Milk

"Without hope, not only gays, but those who are blacks, the Asians, the disabled, the seniors, the us's; without hope the us's give up. I know that you can't live without it, life is not worth living."

Wings

"So those bars I see that restrain your wings, I guess you won't mind if I pry them open." (Rumi)

The Monsters

On Gray's Anatomy tonight, the narrator said that sometimes what we are afraid of at night, the monsters under the bed, are things like loneliness and regret. Brilliant.

Windows

I love opening windows. Just the physical act of opening every window in the house.

Row, Men, Row

Tonight, I spoke at a NAMI Family to Family group, support for people with a family member with a mental illness. I wandered through an elementary school near Sandpoint looking for my room. I saw dioramas in one hall and beautiful sketches of pens in another. A boy named Finn had this poem featured in a display:

Owls hooting
Weird monsters
Laughter in the windows
Superheroes

I also liked one by Lily B.

Dark
Awesome
Radical
Kindle the fireplace

I loved grade school, except for second grade when I had a teacher who didn't care much for children. Mrs. Satcher in third grade was marvelous, a kind face, alight with interest. Mr. Bartlett in Fifth was a bear-like man who at the end of the day used to rub his back luxuriously up and down on the door post of the door and lead us in a countdown as the seconds ticked by ... 10, 9, 8, 7... and then, at the bell, let us rush out pellmell. I finally found my group. Gave my talk, did a Q and A, and went home. Tried to go home. Missed three buses. Was challenged by my directional dyslexia. Couldn't figure out what side of the street to be on. Sang old spirituals and car songs to myself for an hour. Row, men, row to save this Jonah, row, men, row to save this Jonah... My parents, sisters, brother, foster brothers and I used to sing that song and others in the car all the time when I was in grade school. Got nostalgic about that. It's nice when I can hang out in the good of my childhood.

I Am a Hat

Tonight, celebrated a friend's birthday in Fremont and passed a window with knit hats for babies. One looked like a pink cupcake with a cherry on it. Another was cream with a brown stripe and a profusion of brown feathers sprouting from the top. That's me. Have been in mourning all day because my writing class is over. Need to write creatively. To have feathers.

Let It Be

"I'm back." My traditional greeting to myself returning from a depression of any degree. Except I never really leave. I'm always here, however altered. Wish I'd come back from a vacation, say, Canada. Victoria, where I once bought a cherry wood pipe. La Conner, where I once had dinner at The Black Swan with my first lover. Okay, now I could make myself blue again. I'm back. Just let it be that.

Ghost

Don't want to admit how bad it is. The hardest part is I become this other thing. Looking down in the shower just now, I saw my legs but they were somehow not my own.

A Proximal Tenderness

Not One Day at a Time or even One Hour but just this much, the space between the forefinger and the thumb. Just this much can hold a cup of coffee, a shower, another few lines on a resume, a call to a friend. The next task. I have friends who adore me, but now, a proximal tenderness needs to come from me. From inside. "Darling, dearheart, just this much.

Relief

My shrink called back. He always hesitates just a second before he says, hello. How I know it's him. Fifteen years of relief flooding my system when I hear that micro-hesitation.