There Would Have Been A Time For Such A Word

There are high puffy clouds in the sky – not terrifically unlike the cotton ball clouds you see strewn across a Midwestern sky. A gaggle of swallows flit through the front yard while the Crape Myrtle has begun its spectacular fall flowering. Secret Agent Dog sits stoically in front of the screen door – ever a watchful eye. What I like is that when I look out the living room windows, I see mostly plants, green and sky. The season has begun to change and while partly sunny it’s a mere 65 degrees at the late hour of 11 am. The plants seem happier for the shortening days and reprieve from the relentless onslaught of summer in the North Bay.

In sad news, Marge is gone. She was here day before last, but yesterday when I went to check on her in the morning in preparation for introductions to a visitor arriving later in the day, she was no where to be found. Even her spectacular web was gone – suggesting clearly something sinister had transpired. Feeling hopeful that perhaps it was just a mishap, like the run in with Ms Honey Bee described previously, I went to the agapanthus stalks this morning without satisfaction. When Ed arrived home last night I grilled him mercilessly… Is there something you need to tell me? Something that happened in the agapanthus that you’ve been keeping from me? After ruthless interrogation I suspect he mightn’t have been involved. In lament of Marge – she should have died hereafter. There would have been a time for such a word… I suppose it is possible that she simply moved on.

It’s just a shy bit under four months until Zoe arrives – which seems all at once like forever-away and way-to-soon. I can hardly wait to show her the wildflowers in springtime. She’ll likely miss her first season of slink pods, but I imagine she’ll be quite alert when the later blooming wild irises start to parade. Despite the treachery of the trail, I’m determined to take her to the second waterfall at Elliot, to see the wild tiger lilies in full sail. I hope her little face doesn’t get scratched up while we rummage through the dwarf forest on the way. When the water stops flowing I’ll take her to the top of the falls where the little tree frogs live and the Canyon Larkspur bloom. While invariably she won’t have a perfect life, she’ll at least have no nature deficit disorder. We’ll plant flowers and harvest basil together and I’ll teach her how to bake bread and climb mountains. That is, of course, presuming I learn to bake bread in the next few months. All efforts continue to end in peril. Ever the Pollyanna – I’m certain I’ll succeed one day.

It’s nice to wander a bit into the future to a time when perhaps my belly isn’t stretched so taught, I can touch my feet and there’s not a creature inside kicking my internal organs for amusement.

Jump

This ranks as a bad week. Something like food poisoning struck Tuesday night/Wednesday morning of week last. Much pain, an Emergency Room visit, and no small amount of blood later, I’m crawling out of a dark place and readying myself for NaNoWriMo.

A year ago today the Honey Bee had the mishap with the stick, through the leg, and we spent the evening running back and forth from the Emergency Vet while they performed surgery and released the Cookie Pie in quite a state of stupor to our care. This and a night of hundreds (yes hundreds) of trick-o-treaters, left for a surreal evening. A month of tendering, head cones, ripped and re-ripped stitches followed. Last year, November was a cruel month.

Despite my malady, I’m looking forward to a cozy November. The rugs are beginning to arrive, which makes the living room feel so much warmer. The new gas stove/fireplace thing fills the room with a nice ambiance and there’s always hot water heating atop it for tea in the evenings. The evening is brisk now, a biting cold. Sitting in the hot tub under the towering redwood trees, beneath a canopy of stars, while steam rises around my shoulders… sigh. Snuggling into a new soft robe and drinking tea by the fire – the Honey Bee curled in a ball with her head on my leg. Butternut squash with maple syrup. Split Pea soup. Hot apple cider with cinnamon and cloves. All these things, for me, are harbingers of……. spring.

Look Here

I have died so little today, friend, forgive me.” - Thomas Lux

I reach out and up - hand extended into all this space. It’s as though I’m volunteering. It’s as though I’m trying to touch someone. It’s as if I’m reaching for something to grasp, hang on to, cling to – if I found it, touched it, I’d be chosen. Saved.

I can’t hear your voice in this room. Were you speaking to me? With such profound patience and silence I sit waiting for your single sibilant yes.

It’s raining here, above the 37th parallel. The towering spikes of campanula lay prostrate across the garden, heavy with sky and wind. Handfuls of purple flowers kiss the earth. In my white terrycloth robe and red plastic gardening shoes I trekked about the garden this morning, tying things up.

I would make a wonderful corpse – the way I love the smell of dirt. Ah, but I’d miss the taste and smell of coffee like I already miss tobacco. I imagine there would be plenty of things to miss.

And here I sit amidst all this life, squandering weeks, days, minutes, seconds as though I’m a rich man as opposed to the free raggedy popper that I am. Aren’t I pathetic – like a skid row bum drunk on sweet basil and Gerber daisies -content to wallow in the filth, blind by addiction to pastel columbine petals blowing across cut grass and bleeding hearts twining with digitalis in the shade of the faux orange tree. Just who do I think I am? Fancying myself a princess of sorts – ruling over the lilacs and rosemary. A grand ruse.

How do I find the words to apologize for all the lies I have told myself? I learned them from you, my friend. I learned them from you. You with your lives and all their invented meanings. Look here.

Again and Again

I arrived in Boston the day before yesterday - on the 20th (February). I clarify that because I think about writing here often, put thoughts on the page, and then think the better of posting, or maybe I don’t think at all and I just don’t post. I walked through Boston Commons yesterday, the 21st, during a brilliant snow storm. Nearly six inches. It was crisp and cold and clean snow blanketed the park as I walked the mile and a half in less than sensible shoes.

Later…

I walked on the mountain with Secret today – on the 28th (February), back in the Bay Area. Cassie contends that it’s not spring yet – she says, ”the trees don’t lie.” But the Madrone’s are flowering, wild irises are beginning to pepper the hillsides, Indian Paintbrushes flaunt their blooms and the buckeyes bear leaves cupped in the shape of small hands the ways hands would be shaped if they were displaying Easter eggs on their fingertips. Ha. It’s true, the trees don’t lie. It was only a matter of time. There was a mild breeze, high cottony clouds in a field of bird’s-egg-blue sky and sun shining through like grace – like grace on a divine day. It was perfect.

Later still…

I finished McGuire’s Mirror, Mirror on the airplane. I read through the notes provided for discussion groups. I used to be such a deep reader. I don’t know who the fairest one of all is – which leaves me feeling like a dork.

Again…

It’s March-something and I’ve never seen the desert in such spectacular bloom. I say this and still the ocotillos and beavertail cactus, except in the lower and warmest desert, have barely just begun to unfurl their buds – just the tiniest splashes of red and pink in seas of verbena, desert sunflowers, poppies, and dandelions, lupine, Canterbury bells and the bouquet of more goes on and on.

We drove to the base of Edom Hill to wallow in a landscape of delicate desert sunflowers wafting in the breeze – while ATVs corrupted the serenity. Joshua Tree was awesome. Although even the hills that abut downtown Palm Springs, running parallel to Palm Canyon Drive, are covered with such green it’s downright trickery – lush and tropical – not resembling a desert at all.

Home again, home again…

The Saddest Proof

To be interested in the changing season is a happier state of mind than to be hopelessly in love with spring. - George Santayana

Just yesterday (or was it the day before?) I was saying how much I love this time of year – mistaking it for springtime. I pointed at the first wildflowers – little purple buttons of color - as proof. It was barely the winter solstice and there I was prattling on about spring. Some cultures don’t have a way to express a journey away from home. You are always either home or returning home. Your first step on a long journey is your first step toward home. This is how I feel about springtime. We’re either there or returning. I suppose this makes me hopelessly in love. Ah, Springtime - in my world the earth circles the sun for Her.

Sometimes I imagine him rifling though my things, looking for some evidence of my infidelities and instead coming across mysterious things that he simply cannot understand – scrawlings that intimate something he feels just not right about – but ultimately he can’t decipher as proof of well, frankly, anything. One day his heart will break (like mine), “I gave her everything and all she wanted was the Springtime.”

I’m no writer, no poet, no artist, no seamstress – all these creative things I wish I sometimes were – I am not. Perhaps the most glaring evidence that I am not these things is the very fact that I wish to be them. Wanting to be something is the saddest proof that that thing is something you certainly and definitely are not. When we are something, we rarely wish to be it, we simply are it.

The three of us, Ed, Secret Agent Dog and I, snuggled on the day bed and brought in the New Year together. I made us all focus on how much we loved each other as the seconds counted down on the old year and unfolded on the new. We closed and opened the year loving one another intensely. Ed and I toasted with chambord spiked champagne and spoke on our hopes for ought five. Among a laundry list of rather practical things, I said I wanted to figure out, this year, what I want to be.

I know who I have been. In that regard I have a leg up on most people. I also know who I am. It’s who I want to be that’s been somewhat of an allusive beast. I think half the time I’m hiding in front of myself – being exactly who it is I want to be. If that’s true, then half the work’s done. I guess the trick is figuring out which half, eh?

I mean, we already all know that I’m leaving Ed for the Spring.

Turning Corners

The mountain was beautiful today. Forget-Me-Nots and white wildflowers (I don’t know what they’re called) are popping out early. I see them and smile, like I’m opening a present that’s been waiting in a box since last spring. I took the short loop today, hoping that maybe I’d spy the first wild iris of the season. I didn’t. But I did see the purple ones. I don’t know what they’re called either. I’d seen a few fairly heavy with buds and thought that perhaps in a few days.. then I rounded the corner and there they were. Ms. Secret and I did a little spring dance right there on the hill. We climbed up off the trail. I spun in circles while she watched me then she started spinning about too – tucking her back end in and running about in that excited playful way dogs do.

These antics of mine used to frighten her. She’d look at me in a suspicious way and cow. Now as soon as I set foot off trail she seems to know that there’s something to celebrate. It truly is a wonderful life!

I still feel pretty toxic on the inside but at the same time I feel like I’m slowly turning a corner. Haroomf. Don’t we spend out entire God Damned lives turning corners? Just walk around it for crying out loud. Can we just get on with it already?

I was thinking, I was wondering… was I more intelligent when I smoked? Did I think more quickly, were the synapses firing just a bit more rat-a-tat-tat? Or was I more dull and did somehow the addiction and the drug lead me to believe I was more clever? Right now I find myself rather dull. With most other drugs, people just think that they’re more interesting but they’re not. So on some level I hope I just thought I was more interesting - and now if and when I have a thought that I find remotely compelling – well, maybe it will really be brilliant. Or something. I’m not sure.

You know.. one to lie and one to listen….