Just stopping in

Because I had forgotten to introduce:

The Princess Goddess Divine Lucia, also known in the nearerthanyouthink land of Pell-Mell which is inhabited mostly by creeps and geniuses who think they are one and the same, as Noir Dixie Susan the Black Eyed Happy Smudge of Tara in the Night Sky with Diamonds

Puppy, for short.

I straightened up with flowers in both my hands when I realized, I am happy.

It is a watermelon day and the sun is unhurried. It is an ice cream day. It is a wildflower day. Most importantly it is. I've found out something about myself which is amazing which is that I am not afraid. And I am not sad. Not careless. But not sad.
I think whenever I need to wherever I am I can come back here, to right here where I have been firmly planted, with the trees by the water.
It is healthy they say to get feelings out. Right now I feel like a rocking chair which is nice. So I'll only let a little of that out and keep the rest. I am only writing because I am aware. The Paterfamilias just got his new generator and is carrying it back and forth with the tractor like Kiddy does with his toy when you give him a toy and he's not sure what to do with it. Flash is Kiddy. Kiddy is jealous of Puppy. Puppy is sprawled sleeping. So far we are calling Puppy, Puppy. Names for her are hovering - what do you think?

Look who I got to meet

Yesterday when I got home.

The daisy follows soft the sun,

and when his golden walk is done,

sits shyly at his feet.

He, waking, finds the flower near.

"Wherefore, marauder, art thou here?"

"Because, sir, love is sweet!"

...

Emily Dickinson

of wildflowers

The daisies are from my field, the west one: that fills up with them every year,
that the sun loves, Kiddy plays in and I walk
through, while precious things catch my fingers:

my favorite flower.
They remind me of innocence. Winsome.

We are the flower, Thou the sun
Forgive us, if - as days decline -
we nearer steal to Thee
Enamoured of the parting west
The peace, the flight, the amethyst,
Night's possibility.

E.D.

T of the Beautiful Piano's house

I told her I didn't come to her house only for the piano. Which was true and mostly not true, because heaven almighty, I would rather stay there in the center of that tall room at those perfect keys than be anywhere else on earth. There was a boy there too who knew everything, not as in morethanyouandlikestoshowit but he knew his music and what he could do which was everything and every thing, and was the sort that would ease through it all breezily amazingly and then ask you to play. It took me some time to remember I could at all, but I could of course I could and then we played together which was best. The boy who could play anything loved the Beautiful Piano too. He said it just gives back to your hands and it does, it sends the music right back into you and it swirls and grows and makes more and more until you can't ever get away or want to. Later I tiptoed back in when there was no one anymore, like I just wanted it to be and I played the pieces that I always imagine in Beautiful Piano notes because they deserve them, like the Chopin oh my soul the Chopin and I played Satie and I played Schubert and I played Alicia Keys and sang until I could have cried to have to leave mmm sometimes I feel like I don't belong, anywhere. Today I haven't played at all. And I won't until I will; it seems like every time I go from there, for a while my head and hands are left behind.


*

Blogging from work

if the weather gets better we should get together

spend a little time and we can do whatever

and if we get together we'll be twice as clever

so staple it together and call it bad weather


mm hmmm


Jack Johnson

Anything in this godalmighty world

I was peering up through the wire of the fence I was holding a piece of music just large enough for me.. I was asking why, I was shy in my way, I was feeling clear clean and all tainted with love.


-

Right now it's so 90°.

Right now the sun has not stopped being out for seven million or two days and the Cardinals are winning just because I am happy even if they're not really winning but scoreless it's all just as fine

The Young Man we were all supposed to marry is leaving the countryside and I am baking today away to celebrate / the air is swirling with vanilla cakes and kissy frostings and salty sweet macaroons /I'll sell my confectionery candied dreams and never leave my kitchen windows, never be done dancing on this the barest floor. Shouldn't we make divinity? But I don't know how to make divinity and all granddaughters should as all grandmothers did, in the Christmases in big houses. My hands since childhood have been sere like theirs, I suppose. and turn and twirl breathing in spice tastes and you

such an active imagination

You get used to things since it's been like this every time, a sickness like speeding and a simplicity like singing lullabies to yourself and what it all means is I don't know but really
who do I think I am trying to be just me when the field is daisy wild and you and I yeah we were it so baby let me follow you down baby let me follow you down oh I'll do anything in this godalmighty world if you'll just let me follow you down

The little boy

When he came yesterday I was out taking the mismatched blues and pink and smooth white of the linen off the line, and Miss Susie told me he said there's Christina! as they came down the drive. I never realized before that he knows my name. He always just says, hey. He said hey when he jumped out of the car before it hardly stopped. He said hey when he paused his lesson to tell me about his stuffed animals and all their names. There is a dog named Fido and something named Jack and they all live at the end of his bed. He has about as many stuffed animals as I have pillows, and he loves them. I didn't know how to say to him I understood but sure as heaven and sure as hell, I did.

danza

Today everything is hoppin'. The weekend is beginning really early and SEVERE EMERGENCY MODE has begun here in preparation for The Other Reunion. Yesterday didn't happen because tomorrow is so engrossing. So there's a lot of buzzing but I'm hardly involved in any of it. I myself have been walking about in the sun barefootedly and I looked at the garden for a while doing mental weeding and then I picked up the gladiolas the storm had blown down and brought them inside. They are in a vase on the dining table now and I can't stop looking at them. They are so fabulous and bold and tall and content. They make me delighted.

I am considering in my mind a complete overhaul of the Spinet. I was considering in my mind chopping it all to splinters with the Paterfamilias's machete and making a resolution to give up every other luxury I would ever want to use money for like education and food, and taking all the money I have and buying a sleek black grand piano, a Steinway I think, a really really really big one. But then, I thought, where would I put it. Plan B is overhaul. First I'm going to dust it off lovingly. This is what we call small steps.
My dear little piano. We are both so poor and beautiful.
I am very untroubled and silent, only being Now and only thinking about the little boy coming today in four hours. When I was looking at the spinet earlier doing all that considering, I noticed that it has slowly and surely changed since he began to come play it. There are sheets of smiley faced stickers where all my Beethoven used to be and there's a glass full of colored markers on my pile of staff paper and little scraps we've practiced drawing treble clefs on and the metronome is sitting open and askew in a prominent place because all of the sudden it is fun? Whence cometh this? My piano is becoming a teacher piano. It's a mommy piano. This is terrible and different and so OK.

When it rains

Sometimes you can hear the sound of the creek, even if you're not near it.


*

























*

And somehow everything seems good, even if it's not.

All quiet

When I was back from work the house seemed calm and whisperful, while it thundered outside, and I found some people who had locked themselves behind doors away from each other and us because sometimes when you are a mother you cry trying to remember what started it all and sometimes when you are a boy you just want to hurt everyone like you are hurt. For me, I see why some people who I could never understand before want to pull over themselves work and offices and things that are so importantly gray and silent, I think it must be because it is simple compared to the enterprise of families and fathers, because your heart can fall asleep. My heart has been still all day since it started hurting at noon but I am OK in an odd way and the second thing I did here was I walked in the rain and now, inside, the bottoms of my jeans are cold and muddy and I remember I am home whatever kind of place home is, and I remember that since I came in the door I have needed my piano my horribly untuned unregulated choppy piano that I beat my fists on more than I play and I don't care I don't care I don't care because even when I don't love anything music still loves me.

Only today

When I woke up I was perfectly surrounded by my pillows and I was holding one comfortably in my arms with my head on it, and the morning was gentle and my hair was brushed away from my face and I didn't never ever want to get up from that. Monday is my day to straighten myself out, and I put my dreams in order first. There was 1)about a fast food place and meals called things like Visa Combo and MasterCard Platter, which made me laugh when I remembered because at my fabulous office job I just started running the credit cards and apparently I can't get work out of my head even if I don't ever think I'm thinking about it and 2)another about a deer who ate all the good things from our garden but no one thought of being angry, she was so fawn coloured in the sun. When To Do's are done today, I think I should sing and I probably will, because I feel alright after not feeling so alright and I didn't dream about the things I had for three nights previous and it is summer. It is still and hot outside. REALLY HOT. I like it. L of the quarry cliffs just came back from Colorado where it is, I am told, not humid at all. I'm not sure how people there remember to start dreaming of sprinklers and fairs if there's no oppressive and suffocating mugginess to remind them what season it is but anyway what I meant to say was she came to see me twice in the past week because friends help friends do hard things, like kicking habits. L's a good kicker. Last night when she was here we sat across my bed and talked about the things that are happening for each of us and how they are different yet so the same and she asked me are you sad and I smiled and said no, a little sadly but not a lot.

Yesterday evening I went on the smallest walk, on the road in front of the house back and forth never leaving its sight because I didn't want to be far but I did want to be with the fireflies, and twilight and thumbnail moon. The dirt road is smooth as paper. I was just now wondering why I am writing any of this but it is obviously important and sometimes if you're smart you just stop that wondering and haul yourself out of bed, and have a day.

K

Dreamer of horses and the county fair.

The best thing

About being gone

is knowing somebody misses you.


Kinda.

Being Bobby's girl

The best thing to do was be away, seven hundred miles of highway away; to see family, to wonder about home and why it means more to me than anywhere in the world.


Mississippi is more loving by far than the flat land we had been through. I may love that place if only for the trees. I could touch a window and say pine forest at every one that passed, and smile. Everything reminded me of dreaming.

Reunions are probably grand were you ever unioned in the first place. No one really knows anything or one. Nice, quiet on & off, for me. Strange to be shy around family, to have the sameness and yet want to be different (yet want to be same). I realized this half of my crazy clan could split again, when reintroductions faded, and the grey and older ones talked under tall trees, being those who know the purpose from before and speak in remembrances, being walls removed from the insiders who speak the streets, who know bass and music loud enough to start your heart, who, if you aren't careful, will make you dance.

What I liked was that to everyone I was uncomplicated. She's Bobby's girl, and being this daughter and not so much else, I didn't mind me.

-

Been there,

came back.