Flowers

Summer wild flowers emerging all at once. Part of my surrendered yard has evolved into a forest of milkweed which draws the Monarchs. It's blooming now too. Poison ivy has crept in like a thief beneath the uncut grass. Take the bad with the good. 

Tepid Idiot

"Dance in the sun, you tepid idiot." 

I appreciate the tough love, Tommo, but I think even getting up to tepid is a bridge too far right now. 

What is this I'm mired in here? Sloth or depression? 

Don't fall in love with your suffering, advises a speech impeded Eastern European philosopher in passing.

My youngest headed out for a summer camping trip yesterday with friends and was tested through his first night in a tent by thunderstorms, lightning and torrential downpours. 

Texas is cooking at over 110 Fahrenheit degrees. Quebec is on fire and ruining the air quality for some of our outdoor weekend events down here. How selfish.

The sun wants to see you dance, party people. 

New Swans

 

Line

There's a line there somewhere. I've lost track of what side of it I'm currently located on. 

Restorative

Days of silence and forgetting.

My phantom limb

 

No one knows your songs anymore

Walking in a cemetery after sunset, sending and receiving text messages. 

Understanding another person is approximate, at best, but miraculous and spiritually nutritious. Something elemental is served when it occurs. 

A ladle of cool pure spring water with the sun glinting off of it offered to the Sun Dancer parched and burned. Sacrifice is required and never rewarded.

Walk at night. Be quiet. Be alone. Accept loss and death. 

Learn to live.

Almost

Take six weeks, go to the woods and write a book, she said. So far I've walked in the woods three days in a row, nearly 25 miles, and I've also managed to consistently procrastinate on the sitting down to write part. 

Singapore

 

Nine of one thousand

I walked seven-and-a-half miles in the woods yesterday. An older deeper wood than the one I usually walk in. I found a trap that looked like a barrel with a sliding guillotine-style door with portholes in it's side. Designed for something large. Bears, maybe? 

I came back to that same area in the afternoon after a visit with my son, and heard a branch break. The sound was a sharp snap, something heavy walking. I stopped to look, there was a bear sort of grazing in the brush about 25 five feet away. It seemed relaxed and unaware of me, blacker than a shadow. 

I was walking on a dirt road deeper into the woods. My car was a quarter mile back in the other direction. I imagined the bear becoming suddenly aware of me in close proximity and attacking. I imagined her cubs, which I hadn't yet seen, trundling out of the woods and into my path causing mama to get defensive. I imagined continuing quietly on and the bear catching my scent and stalking me deeper into the woods. The quarter mile back seemed the most prudent route. 

I drove a few miles and found Gate 12 and walked back into the woods. Downhill to Purgee Brook Road where I discovered a pile of moose droppings beside the brook. Later, a healthy looking brown coyote, then a thin doe standing in my path watching me. Black and yellow butterflies, blooming mountain laurel, dragonflies, ants, a salamander scurrying to hide in the mud, bull frogs croaking at dusk, mighty oaks and maples and pines towering up from a floor of green ferns. 

No people at all. The fragrance of the woods alone was enough to settle me down. It was the first day in a very long series of days that felt good for my mind.

You too

The car has been having fainting spells while stopped in traffic, at intersections, for about the past month now. I took it into the shop today for a diagnostic workup. Two of the cylinders are putting out almost nothing leaving the others to take up the slack. The motor's on its way out, he said. The mechanic didn't even charge me. There's nothing to be done. 403,000 miles and change. We'll keep going until she stops. 

Weird Thursday

This morning, on the car radio, a voice called today a weird Thursday. I knew it was true. 

I could feel change occurring in full effect like I am surfing down a landslide. I'm already beyond the sting of it and can sense somewhere in that tangle of dread and defeat the spark of possibility. 

Having made it over the roll of wire at the top of a high fence, here now is the wild thrill and danger of running at top speed across open ground still well within range of the machine gun in the tower. A glimpse of freedom. 

Keenly aware of the utter strangeness.

A patient approached me outside the nurse's station and put a small transistor radio in my shirt pocket. She took my hand and we walked the length of the unit together. At the door, she gracefully let go of my hand and I departed. 

Later, I opened a birthday card while sitting in my car. It was adorned with Marvel super heroes and had arrived nearly a month early. The message written inside was indecipherable. A secret code sent to a very special little boy from someone who knew him when.

Two weeks

A weekend in the hospital gave us time to marvel. Just two weeks ago she was able to recall. She could write. Now she pretends to laugh her way through the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, but she is afraid and frustrated because she cannot find the answers. We look on in horror which we try not to let show. Later, her children ask questions. They're searching for the cause, for reasons. Something that can be treated and cured so that she might clear and return as her complete self. 

A good one

A variety of dreams. 

One was astride my first motorcycle with a woman and child as passengers and no confidence as a rider. There was a confrontation with a more seasoned group of bikers, but it didn't go as badly as I'd imagined. 

Then there was one with you in it. You'd hurt your elbow. We were in transit in some kind of vehicle. You were leaning on me. And then we were holding each other. There was this silence and that feeling of this feels perfect returned to me. 

You said, I like you and used my name. I said, I like you too and used yours. I knew enough not to say any more. There was no need to. 

Looking around

I can't write about, or even face yet, what's happening in my real life. All my focus has been on work expectations, looming deadlines, pressures imposed from without and within. Meanwhile, elders get older and sicker. Youth matures and sends wisdom in a text regarding how, if you're not very careful, you become your own prison. I look up and around.