The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...: February 2018

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

signs of spring in February

I'm feeling some renewal of my urge to purge. The pile of empty boxes and the stuff on the shelves in the basement are calling to me. I run out of gas in the winter...probably starts about November but I don't really feel it until January. I always blame it on the lack of sunshine and maybe that's it. Or maybe I'm just lazy.
I can hear birds singing outside the window. Cardinals have been calling since January but this is a new sound. Lots of birds at the feeder and the squirrels are ravenous. And mangy looking.
You're either walking on dry pavement or ice. Nothing in between. It's ten degrees over night then rapidly goes up to forty. That makes for lots of meltage and lots of slippery. Walk like a penguin.
I get a few ideas about home improvements, DIY stuff, you know. I usually loathe that stuff but if I can figure out a was to make life easier, well...I'm all about that as the kids say. My current idea is to have a row of hooks installed on the south wall in my living room so we can hang our bags and purses there instead of piling them on the floor and the bench which is what we do now and which looks like hell. Like this. Only lower and without the shelf.

I'm thinking about the gardens and our plot in the community garden. I'm curious to see if all my new hostas and ferns made it through the winter. We have a twenty-square foot plot at the community garden and I have been researching what to plant. Planning is not my forte so I need advice. I always over-buy...dirt, then pots, then plants. Elliot wants to grow peanuts but peppers, beans, and peas are my priorities.
Winter clothes are starting to feel itchy and uncomfortable. Mittens are easily lost because I need them in the morning and by afternoon, I don't. My heavy wool coat is too heavy and too warm. Yesterday I pushed the stroller to the community center in my heavy coat and almost had to strip once I got there. Wool socks are too warm. Yay t-shirts! Yay sneakers!
Thoughts of winter foods are disappearing over the horizon. Chili and meatloaf and heavy soup doesn't sound a bit good. We're yearning for burgers on the grill, smoked ribs, and fresh strawberries.
Woodrow is feeling the call of the wild. He spends a lot of time perched on the table behind the couch, eyeing the birds and squirrels. Every time a door opens, even if he is sound asleep with his paw over his eyes, he bolts for the door.
Our neighbors are seen outside without a snow shovel in hand! Sometimes an ice buster but it doesn't happen overnight, you know.
You need to warm your car up in the morning but by afternoon, you can turn it off and open the window if you aren't going too fast.

There you go. I could probably think of a few more, but I have to go to work. Go out in the sunshine today, my friends!

Monday, February 19, 2018

We braved the icy roads this morning to take Gus for his grooming. (I had to point out that we go to a lot more money and expense to have our dog groomed than we do ourselves.) Then, because the cupboards are bare we headed to Mankato to buy groceries.

My list making habits are constantly changing based on HyVee marketing. Currently, I browse the print ads and make a list on a notebook, but I also use my phone to make a list and download coupons. The problem with that is my phone has to be out and visible.

This morning we finished our shopping, loaded the groceries in the trunk, I put the cart away, and down the road we went. I was digging in my purse for my phone. Calmly, then frantically. There were only two places it could be...on the checkout counter or in the cart. We find the cart corral and I find my cart...and there's my phone sitting in the freezing rain and snow. Good thing I didn't wait until I got home to look for it. Sigh.

I have kind of a day off today (after the morning fiasco) and there are many things rolling around my head that I could do. The problem is that when I have time to do them I don't feel like doing them. But here goes. To the kitchen I go.

Sunday, February 18, 2018

Sunday psychosis

I'm sure I've written about this before...Sunday psychosis. When we were fresh out of college and the working life stretched out endlessly into the future, my good friend Mike talked about the dread of Monday as Sunday psychosis. He said it was so bad he would see amoebas. I'm not sure exactly what he meant but we thought it was hilarious. Still do.

I dislike writing more than two sentences on an electronic device. I see kids type with two thumbs and they seem to be pretty fast, but I'm a one-finger typist on a device, something my typing teachers railed against.

My computer gave me a couple signs that something was amiss. Black screen? Unrecognizable language? So...I'm lounging in the tub, late on a Sunday morning, typing my blog post on my iPad. Sigh.

I've done a couple of the necessary things today like scoop the cat liter and get dressed but now I'm kind of done. Regis got my computer back on the rails. He says we should plan ahead for it going kerplooey, as it surely will one of these days. I love a desktop computer and could easily do without an iPad. I don't read on it anymore so it's really just a fancy way to play Scrabble.

It's gray and sloppy outside. Regis washed my car for me in the middle of the night but I went through one puddle and woosh...the end of that.

I had a drawing lesson this afternoon but that didn't inspire me much either.

I wish someone would invite us to dinner.

Saturday, February 17, 2018

time passing

Many things have been conspiring lately to force me to recognize just how fast time goes. Other people's children who I thought were still small enough to ride in strollers are off to high school, or college. I see high school friends of mine have children in their forties and some of them are great grandparents. And then there is Ella.

Ella was my first granddaughter and I was waiting in the hall the day she was born. I heard her first cries and I wept. She had food allergies as a tiny baby that caused her much misery. We would stare at her little sleeping face and talk about how sweet she was, but when she woke up and started to howl, our eyes bugged out and we froze.

Then she was a little girl who liked to play with makeup, dress up fancy in long dresses, hats, and jewelry. She loved the camera. She loved to bake and cook. She loved to read books in bed.

Suddenly (to me) she is 12 and she wears heels when we go out for dinner. I'm shuffling along in flat, fur-lined boots and she comes down the snowy sidewalk in 4-inch heels. She's almost as tall as I am and she's pretty self-sufficient.

The past two days she came to the Arts Center with me and learned the docent duties...how to open the doors and turn the lights on, how to check the mail box in the alley, how to empty trash and recycling, how to keep track of guests in the gallery and in the clay studio. The Square POS, which has caused no end of consternation among our older staff was a snap for her. Less than five minutes and no instruction and she had it down. She was amazed that I was amazed.

Alex and Elliot turn ten this month. Easton is almost walking. Zoey has dance recitals and walks to school by herself. The two babies, Sully and Natalie, are doing something new every time we see them.

It's wonderful and it's scary.

I talk to my friends and to Regis about how we don't feel old, but I guess we kind of are. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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Winter Grace

by Patricia Fargnoli

If you have seen the snow
under the lamppost
piled up like a white beaver hat on the picnic table
or somewhere slowly falling
into the brook
to be swallowed by water,
then you have seen beauty
and know it for its transience.
And if you have gone out in the snow
for only the pleasure
of walking barely protected
from the galaxies,
the flakes settling on your parka
like the dust from just-born stars,
the cold waking you
as if from long sleeping,
then you can understand
how, more often than not,
truth is found in silence,
how the natural world comes to you
if you go out to meet it,
its icy ditches filled with dead weeds,
its vacant birdhouses, and dens
full of the sleeping.
But this is the slowed-down season
held fast by darkness
and if no one comes to keep you company
then keep watch over; your own solitude.
In that stillness, you will learn
with your whole body
the significance of cold
and the night,
which is otherwise always eluding you.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Permission Granted

by David Allen Sullivan

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don't have to bury
your grandmother's keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube—the machine's wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world's pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes ...

See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides.

"Permission Granted" by David Allen Sullivan,

from Strong-Armed Angels.

Gratitude by Barbara Crooker

This week, the news of the world is bleak, another war

grinding on, and all these friends down with cancer,

or worse, a little something long term that they won’t die of

for twenty or thirty miserable years—

And here I live in a house of weathered brick, where a man

with silver hair still thinks I’m beautiful. How many times

have I forgotten to give thanks? The late day sun shines

through the pink wisteria with its green and white leaves

as if it were stained glass, there’s an old cherry tree

that one lucky Sunday bloomed with a rainbow:

cardinals, orioles, goldfinches, blue jays, indigo buntings,

and my garden has tiny lettuces just coming up,

so perfect they could make you cry: Green Towers,

Red Sails, Oak Leaf. For this is May, and the whole world

sings, gleams, as if it were basted in butter, and the air’s

sweet enough to send a diabetic into shock—

And at least today, all the parts of my body are working,

the sky’s clear as a china bowl, leaves murmur their leafy chatter,

finches percolate along. I’m doodling around this page,

know sorrow’s somewhere beyond the horizon, but still, I’m riffing

on the warm air, the wingbeats of my lungs that can take this all in,

flush the heart’s red peony, then send it back without effort or thought.

And the trees breathe in what we exhale, clap their green hands

in gratitude, bend to the sky.

From Line Dance (Word Press, 2008).

Starfish by Eleanor Lerman

This is what life does. It lets you walk up to
the store to buy breakfast and the paper, on a
stiff knee. It lets you choose the way you have
your eggs, your coffee. Then it sits a fisherman
down beside you at the counter who says, Last night
the channel was full of starfish. And you wonder,
is this a message, finally, or just another day?

Life lets you take the dog for a walk down to the
pond, where whole generations of biological
processes are boiling beneath the mud. Reeds
speak to you of the natural world: they whisper,
they sing. And herons pass by. Are you old
enough to appreciate the moment? Too old?
There is movement beneath the water, but it
may be nothing. There may be nothing going on.

And then life suggests that you remember the
years you ran around, the years you developed
a shocking lifestyle, advocated careless abandon,
owned a chilly heart. Upon reflection, you are
genuinely surprised to find how quiet you have
become. And then life lets you go home to think
about all this. Which you do, for quite a long time.

Later, you wake up beside your old love, the one
who never had any conditions, the one who waited
you out. This is life's way of letting you know that
you are lucky. (It won't give you smart or brave,
so you'll have to settle for lucky.) Because you
stopped when you should have started again.

So life lets you have a sandwich, and pie for your
late night dessert. (Pie for the dog, as well.) And
then life sends you back to bed, to dreamland,
while outside, the starfish drift through the channel,
with smiles on their starry faces as they head
out to deep water, to the far and boundless sea.

Do Not Expect That If Your Book Falls Open

Dana Gioia

Do not expect that if your book falls open
to a certain page, that any phrase
you read will make a difference today,
or that the voices you might overhear
when the wind moves through the yellow-green
and golden tent of autumn, speak to you.

Things ripen or go dry. Light plays on the
dark surface of the lake. Each afternoon
your shadow walks beside you on the wall,
and the days stay long and heavy underneath
the distant rumor of the harvest. One
more summer gone,
and one way or another you survive,
dull or regretful, never learning that
nothing is hidden in the obvious
changes of the world, that even the dim
reflection of the sun on tall, dry grass
is more than you will ever understand.

And only briefly then
you touch, you see, you press against
the surface of impenetrable things.

Riveted by Robyn Sarah

It is possible that things will not get better
than they are now, or have been known to be.
It is possible that we are past the middle now.
It is possible that we have crossed the great water
without knowing it, and stand now on the other side.
Yes: I think that we have crossed it. Now
we are being given tickets, and they are not
tickets to the show we had been thinking of,
but to a different show, clearly inferior.

Check again: it is our own name on the envelope.
The tickets are to that other show.

It is possible that we will walk out of the darkened hall
without waiting for the last act: people do.
Some people do. But it is probable
that we will stay seated in our narrow seats
all through the tedious dénouement
to the unsurprising end — riveted, as it were;
spellbound by our own imperfect lives
because they are lives,
and because they are ours.

"Riveted" by Robyn Sarah from A Day's Grace: Poems 1997-2002

I Was Always Leaving by Jean Nordhaus

I was always leaving, I was
about to get up and go, I was
on my way, not sure where.
Somewhere else. Not here.
Nothing here was good enough.

It would be better there, where I
was going. Not sure how or why.
The dome I cowered under
would be raised, and I would be released
into my true life. I would meet there

the ones I was destined to meet.
They would make an opening for me
among the flutes and boulders,
and I would be taken up. That this
might be a form of death

did not occur to me. I only know
that something held me back,
a doubt, a debt, a face I could not
leave behind. When the door
fell open, I did not go through.

Sometimes, I Am Startled Out of Myself

Barbara Crooker

like this morning, when the wild geese came squawking,
flapping their rusty hinges, and something about their trek
across the sky made me think about my life, the places
of brokenness, the places of sorrow, the places where grief
has strung me out to dry. And then the geese come calling,
the leader falling back when tired, another taking her place.
Hope is borne on wings. Look at the trees. They turn to gold
for a brief while, then lose it all each November.
Through the cold months, they stand, take the worst
weather has to offer. And still, they put out shy green leaves
come April, come May. The geese glide over the cornfields,
land on the pond with its sedges and reeds.
You do not have to be wise. Even a goose knows how to find
shelter, where the corn still lies in the stubble and dried stalks.
All we do is pass through here, the best way we can.
They stitch up the sky, and it is whole again.

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