Like a Bird

Saw a cheesy movie and got inspired: the idea of finally having the courage to stop soldiering and settle down. What would a day be like without the undercurrents, the fraying of the wire I seem to need still? Last night, after my speech, my evaluator in Toastmasters added a word to a line I had used to give me a compliment. "[Her] self sang like a bird (ee cummings.)" If I was truly at peace, would I sing like a bird more often?

That First Cup

Lock-down until 11 a.m. There are those pleasant lie-ins where I turn and shift and turn again, catlike in my contentment. Not today. My cells were slamming their tin cups across the bars, urging me forward, but I could not move. Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys had more than his share of mornings like this. "Sometimes," he once said, "that first cup of coffee is an act of courage." Just so.

Graces

I am reading a book. Bill walks by and pats my head. "Good night, sweetie." The smallest things.

Only the Dog

"A more recent attempt to explore the modern mysteries comes from John Banville. His new book, The Infinities, assumes the gods are still hanging mischievously around our world. The novel unfolds in a single day in the home of Adam Godley, a brilliant mathematician who lies comatose on what appears to be his deathbed. As his family and various friends tend to his needs and squabble with each other, only the dog notices that the messenger god, Hermes, is floating around the house." (From To the Hellenic and Back, Jeremy McCurter for Newsweek, March 29, 2010).

Felicity Huffman

Cried so hard on the stairs last night I left a salt water pond on the step below me. That and snot. Crying, done well, is a messy operation. I've seen it only once captured on film like that, in all its endearing viscuousness: Felicity Huffman with her therapist in Transamerica. Remarkable.

Outside

Sometimes the simplest act, opening windows...and the cold air comes and the sound of birds, a distant car. The world has not stopped just because you have. And maybe it's your one act of affirmation the entire day. Or maybe you think, what's going on down the street that I must know? But for now, the air is bathing your face, your tired eyes.

Wandering

Got lost somewhere around Boren in the rain. Just tromping around. Trying to find my friend Gregory's house. I often seem to get lost when I feel lost. Some kind of muted despair keeps me walking in circles. He finally had to come out and find me. As I suspected, I was only blocks from his house. "I'm so happy to see you," he kept saying. Perhaps he was worried I had been swept away in the deluge or had wandered off to Lynnwood. Or was just happy to see me. As I was to see him.

G.K. Chesterton

Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.

The Amaryllis

The amaryllis bloomed in the kitchen sometime between yesterday and today. Just unfurled itself quietly. Our household greeted its pink quiescence with a photo shoot after dinner. Bill filmed us with his i-phone. I turned off the light. Deb and Phil took shot after shot, the flash on their cameras turning the flower orange in the dark. Phil set his timer then and we gathered ceremoniously under the blossoms, arms around each other. There really are those moments when the ground comes back.

Now

Caught up with me.

Then

Emily Dickinson once wrote, "After a great pain, a formal feeling comes." But what about before a great pain? That's where I am. The pain is just to the left of me, giant on its haunches. It will take its time. Knows it will come to me. Must come. If I were my friend who is Yugoslavian, I would be embracing the pain. I would be dissolved, my fists raised, cursing. But I am Norwegian enough to think I can stare the pain down. At least hold its gaze.

A Ticonderoga

I've started to write in long-hand again. I used to write with pencils pre laptop. When I write, even here, I do so with expectation. I am the hovering face over every word. With a pencil, all my words are free to be boring, ordinary, not unusual, not blessed, just the product of lead. They can be leaden. The callus I got on the third finger of my right hand which has been vacationing all these years is now rising again from the insistent pressure of a yellow Ticonderoga.

God in the Chair

Sam Keens describes his spiritual quest at age eleven in his marvelous book, Sightings. "I [could not] make any sense of the central Christian theodrama in which a loving God supposedly staged a bloody sacrifice of his only begotten son in order to satisfy his internal sense of justice. The passion play in which the lamb of God is sacrificed to take away the sins of the world revealed a god at odds with himself, a god in need of psychotherapy."

Just This

Really, the smallest things save me: a bendable straw in a cold beverage in a tall glass.

One Short Step

Rough couple of days. Felt down earlier. The only comfort food I could think of for dinner was cereal. Went to my cupboard and discovered that for mysterious reasons known only to God and Allah I had stowed away an empty peanut butter Puffins box. I stood crestfallen in the middle of the kitchen until Bill said, "Sweetie, would you like some of mine?" Then, Phil, my new housemate, said, "No, mine." The two competed, ran to show and tell. Phil's had macadamia nuts, Bill's, pecans. Suddenly, I was standing in a circle of light being vociferously offered cereal. Sometimes it is only "one short step to the good ground" (May Swenson).