Don't Look Now

Dear Blogsters -
One just never knows what the day will bring.

Picture this: I'm sitting in my car, in the left turn lane, waiting for the light to change. A small, older truck lurches up on my right, seeming to hesitate a little as it pulls next to me.
I glance over - the driver is alone -
and, let's just say....
she has come to a full stop.


I must have looked agog because she brought her hands up to cover her face,
and then threw them upward in a shrug and looked away.
Mercifully, the light changed,
I made my turn and that was that.
Except - my mind can't seem to leave it alone.
I've been through lists of movies (Coming Home, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,
Comes A Horseman, Come Back, Little Sheba), then music (Here Comes the Bride,
Come Together, Slow Train Comin', Comin' 'Round the Mountain) and finally books -
stopping myself with "Something Wicked This Way Comes"...
Maybe I'm naive, but I've truly never considered that sort of multi-tasking while driving.
Perhaps I don't get out enough.



Forgive me if this post is too off-color for any of you,
but some experiences are like gaseous fumes and
must be dispersed to be dispelled.

Sincerely,
Your ever-intrepid observer

bs

Next week: Everything I have ever put into my mouth

Yesterday brought the first full day of heat and light
we’ve had here since…oh, 1962.
I spent hours digging in the dirt, and by late afternoon
had weeded the gardens nearest the house – and a few inside my head.
A real relief that; I’ve got some overgrowth that needs to be pruned.
Working hard is as close as I ever get to meditation, and even then I
seem to require a subject on which to center myself. Apparently there’s
no shutting off my mind; only a refining of the usual mad roar.
My distillation this day: hands.

I’ve had the same pair of hands for almost 50 years.
They’re fairly unremarkable, rather blunt; some might say mannish.
The nails are horrid, chewed ragged more often than not, and my knuckles
are usually bruised or cut from some job I’ve used the wrong tools to do.
They are just hands, two flappy, fleshy wings hanging from my wrists,
old and used and similar to millions of others all around the world.
But they do have a story all their own.
They’ve made art, made love, made quilts and dioramas and
shoes out of yellow duct tape. They’ve held brand new babies,
washed the face of death, uncovered hidden treasure and offered sacrament.
With them, I’ve fed deer and goats and horses and a crow, shaved legs
and faces and parts of a sheep. Made bread and pasta, jam and stew,
smashed spiders and flies and one diamond engagement ring.
Caught a trout in a creek, chopped my hair off in a rage,
played the piano badly while my teacher smacked my knuckles with a ruler,
broken every plate in the house and grabbed a red-tailed hawk
as it hung tangled in a mist-net.
My hands have wiped up blood and shit and mercury, written hate mail,
poetry and three paragraphs to present to the Utah State Legislature.
They’ve held up evidence for the jury in a federal court trial,
taken a stolen oil lamp back from a shoplifting Hell’s Angel,
and one of them has helped to artificially inseminate a cow.
They once held a pound of pot, a human lung,
and the Nazi flag my father pulled
from a storefront somewhere during the war.
Over the years, my hands have folded and mutilated,
tweezed and braided, burned, doused, slapped, cradled, lent,
borrowed, stolen, returned, ruined, rescued, and more.
They’ve slapped the blackened ground
where suicide left a loved one alone to decompose, and later,
flung his ashes into a creek that ran nearby.
They’ve traced petroglyphs carved in stone 9,000 years ago,
taken an award from the poet William Stafford and nearly gotten
me booted out of Seattle's Art Museum by reaching once too often
toward an exhibit marked “DO NOT TOUCH”.
They’ve been dipped in paint, shoved in snow, bathed in wax,
covered in vomit and stuck to the back of a station wagon with super glue.
Whether raised in retaliation, frozen with fear, moved by pity,
wrung with anguish, clenched in anger or flung wide with abandon -
they continue to do whatever I ask. How incredible is that?
How miraculous, how grand.


I began writing this late Sunday, and received the following message from my daughter yesterday.
“Dear Mom – Did you read what happened to DG? His Bradly tank got
blown up in Iraq. He has third degree burns on 90% of his body, and his
legs were too burned and the doctors cut them off.
Now one of his hands has been cut off too. Mom, he is only 19 years old.”
I could take the time to comment here on so many issues – but really, what’s the point? I think, instead, I’ll dedicate this ‘ode to hands’ to DG, with a prayer that his journey through agony be blessedly brief.



bs

multiple choice tests

Hallelujah, let me sock it to ya
praise the lord and pass the mescaline….
Translation: a long week of doctorin’ has finally come to an end!!
It’s been a blast running all over the county,
laying down huge bank to disrobe for utter strangers –
but every party must eventually come to an end.
I’ll spare you all the grisly details; except to say that
so far I have aced all the really ugly tests.
In other news, spring has finally come to Walton Mountain,
and we are all running around like crazed, naked mole rats
stunned by the glare of the sun.




bs

easter

I know - silly. But it still makes me laugh.
Hope you all found a way to enjoy the day...
we had chicken and spinach salad - and red velvet cake for dessert.


bs

Denial

Here is Dill, relaxing in a shoebox -
even if it kills him.
His refusal to align his thinking with his reality
comforts me tonight; for I am wanting to indulge
in some of the same myself.
The next week will be filled with visits to
doctors - and no matter which way I turn,
I cannot seem to find a good fit for myself
in any of that.
So - I will hide in my own little box,
where I will be comfortable...
I will, I will, I will.



bs

Little wooden head

I was thinking today about Pinocchio,
and how fast he plunged downhill after he
met up with Lampwick. One day, he’s dressed
in happy pants and heading off to school –
the next he’s a dropout, bound for an island
stuffed with chain-smoking losers, where he’ll soon begin to turn into a repulsive little burro.
My point here?
I can relate.

Last week D. and I had dinner out;
a little place downtown where the Mexican food is good. We got a booth, and as we plowed through our chips and salsa, D. asked if I would mind if he had some Merlot with his meal. After we ordered, D. went to the bathroom, so I was alone when the waiter brought the wine. I raised up my arm to say oh no – over there – and somehow the glass ended up in my hand.

I wish I could say that it didn’t really matter,
that without a second thought I simply set that glass aside.
Or better yet that I could say I also had a glass –
and the world stayed on its axis,
and everything was fine.

But the truth is,
I replay that evening often.
The way I loved that glass,
the way it spoke to me.
C’mon Pinocc,
live a little, wooden head.
And I hear the way I answer,
the way I always answer:
I want to,
I want to.
I swear,
I really do.

Crazy Quilt

Continuing on with my quest to clean up and clear out,
I purged my e-mail today. Why did I still have mail
saved from 1963? I do not know… but going through it
gave me an idea. What follows is a patchwork of 'used'
chunks of e-mail; held together only by the fact
that I received every piece in the last year or so.
I added nothing – except for the* that
identifies each individual bit.

Dear BS:
*Might I point out the curcial facts that lurk here?
*We discovered that Human filth is rapidly shared when
certain conditions are met.
*And, You are my sister, so I hope that we can co-exist civilly
in the same state, (if not the identical state of mind.)
*Please understand that the survival of either of us would be
the most advantageous outcome here, and remember
*I am both spleen less, & devoid of the appendix,
and I am a recipient of a synthetic zeugmatic arch.
*So, I am replying against my better judgement,
in fact against the advice of my sisters and close friends.
*You know, there were questions that used to haunt me when I
was younger. These days, being older, I'm haunted still.
*I am not trying to excuse what I did, or said - (what did you hear?)
'cause I don't remember saying anything untoward...............
*So now, please answer my one question. Do you surely must agree that
America is employing pot as a political whipping boy?
*Now, granted my social demenor does surely want for modification
at crutical times....
*But, Be it thusly Dear heart,
*remove the infection, flush it with 10 liters of anti-biotic fluid,
pack it with slow release anti-biotic beads
(I din't even know they had such things)… and sew her up.
*I am now, even a little more than usual, pissed off.
I need some new pants.
*But, trying on underwear is such a fuckin drag.
*And, the most disturbing element to our society is that we Americans
praise the effort & skill taken to create such rube goldberg'esque contraptions.
*Regarding ethics, charisma and diggety dank, it’s safe to say that
even if your current employers doubled your salary, I would hate
to think of you garnering success while surrounded by a fetid pool
of rotting leaves and monkey urine.
*So, Thank you for the kind words, but as a rule of thumb
it is generally a poor idea to send an email to my work that
talks about how my employers are assholes and I should leave them.
*In closeing, I'd greatly appreciate knowing that my own flesh & bloody blood held me in enough regard to remember these pertenant things:
*2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
6. Sarchasm: the gulf between the author of sarcastic wit
and the person who doesn’t get it.
17. Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

*P.S. Re: BARBARA'S SKULL: What happened to the picture?
Oh, I have a feeling that thing will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Somewhat nonsensical, but an amusing exercise nonetheless.
Or...maybe not.

In other, likely more interesting news - I saw part of Smoke Signals again today. I had forgotten how much I liked that movie, and how much I loved
the book (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.).
I also re-watched the Sopranos "Fleshy Part of The Thigh, and
have a few ideas about what the hell is going on in Jersey.
Basically - the lie is out, the curtain is lifted and people are going
to be forced to look at who and what they really are.
Paulie is not a loving son, Vito is not a macho gangster,
A.J is none of the things Carmella says he is - and Tony
is neither a stand-up bossman or a hard-working dad/husband.
There is no loyalty, no respect, no 'family bond'...
It's like a nest of lies inside of lies...
My predictions: A.J. kills somebody and goes to prison.
Paulie dies - soon.
Christopher screws Tony over big time.
And Tony - I think maybe he turns state evidence.
Oh, and speaking of liars and predictions - I told D.
long ago that future generations would look back at Bush
and his administration as one of the most dishonest in history.
Newest weasel - Brian J. Doyle - (Homeland Security's
deputy press secretary/on-line-kid-seducer).
Pathetic.
Or - to steal one last line from my purged e-mails:
* I think …. To summarize………… he is a freaky creep.

Okay - enough postulating..

bs

Sunday Evening News

Woah…. whadda week.
In a nutshell - 7 exhausting days of people
and their tragedies – culminating in a mass
effort to move our friend from the country
to the city.
As is usually the case, moving day was fraught
with upset and stress, but this day was made all the
more strained by the eerie presence of the ex-husband,
(who owns the house and was none-too-patiently waiting
to move back in). He showed up uninvited at 7 a.m.,
walked over to a huge cedar tree near the edge of the yard –
and stood there until 11:45. His ex went out and pleaded
with him not to do that, but he said “You can’t stop me.”
and that was that.
All of us movers had been friends of his at one point
(before he went off the deep end and became
threatening and kind of crazy), so it was fairly wretched
watching him watch us carting bits of his old life away.
There was a lot of laughter and beer drinking and rushing
around throughout the day, but there was also always him,
off to the side, alone beneath a tree in the rain.
I know I could have found a metaphor somewhere in all of that –
but for once I was happy just to go home and crawl into
my own bed, where I slept like the dead for 12 fabulous hours.
Which I think I will head off now and try to do again.

Peace like a river to all you fine blogooligans -
until we meet again.


bs