Keep a good head and always carry a lightbulb

There was something I was forgetting.

Spiraling

if you just spent 25
minutes in one aisle
agonizing over which color notebook
is the right one you've probably
completely
lost it

it will keep raining

So it started normal but I feel something now, complete and unclear in my head. I am so restless I might have a fit and so fatigued it might do me in. I want something certainly. Release. make. create. hatch. I am going to make something I can pour into, to let out some of it no all of it everything inside that is not quiet. There is something that must be said. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is. I don't know what it is.

I don't get it

I ate the whole thing, and I still miss him.

I use three boxes of Puffs Plus a day and have started coughing like a horse but I feel better now. Still stopped up in that spot right behind my forehead, a little unclear. I've been poking around in the garden most of the morning, in the mud and strawberries, in my hat and wellingtons. It is raining again. Again. Here in the Midwest we are trying to make up for seven years of drought in one go apparently. But the strawberries like it. I picked half a bucket today and yesterday and ate most of them. In other news my nose is peeling off. I'm slightly concerned I won't have one at all by the time I'm fully recovered but at least feeling better will be some consolation. Oh vanity vanity. Since I skipped on work again I am considering driving to Wal Mart now for no reason at all. It's just such a thing-to-do. I might wear my hat and muddy boots and a faded purple tie-dye t-shirt and jean cutoff shorts that are too big for me. I probably won't do that but the thing that's grand about Wal Mart is no one would notice if I did. And it would keep me from sitting. I start to feel miserable when I sit because I think an awful lot. I might buy another notebook while I'm at it. My whole mind is pouring out my hands lately, though not here. Not here. I don't really want to write here anymore. Plus I forget everything I was going to say when I come here. And that may be one reason I like this place.


So here are the strawberries.

Well this was fun

There have been some ripping storms here. We drove 40 miles in one last night, the Pater familias decreeing Sunday night to be the best time for a family trip to Home Depot®. This was a great idea because we love bonding. We love car rides when the A/C is broke. And we really really love Home Depot®. But I could tell this was going to be good. I had been watching the sky. True to that violent blue, it was the worst weather we've ever been on the road in. It was brilliant and shaking and then there was hail and all the while the pounding rain. I'm 93% sure we drove half the trip in a zigzaggy pattern through some fields and creeks and things as the highway got more and more elusive but no one could see to tell. I was in love with it. Mum was in hate with it. The kids in the back were taking sides and saying woah a lot. The Pater familias, stoic. We all couldn't stop watching, even though we were ordered from the front to stop breathing because the windshield was fogged over. There are bad times for your A/C and defroster to break and then there are bad times. I was thinking too, about how even though I question most of his decisions I have never been afraid while my father's hand was on the wheel. Home Depot® was closed by the way. Betting on any decent establishment being open at 9pm on a Sunday while a tornado was forming one county away might have been yet another questionable decision, but you didn't hear it from me. There have been some certain times living with my dotty, unbalanced family of W's that I wouldn't have liked to miss.


The best thing was being silent and sitting in the lumberyard entrance with the windows down, watching water gust under the streetlights, and hearing faintly the wail of storm sirens. I hadn't heard that sound since I was very small.

Well this was fun Part Two

Or, the Forty Miles that Took Like Five Hours

I forgot to mention that there was a flash flood and water over the highway on the return voyage. We had to wait in a long line of headlights for a long time. It's funny how people feel closer to you when you are all waiting for the same thing. To pass, to move. To get to home. People were walking around and talking through open windows. Aaron Copeland's Rodeo on the classical station. I was thinking again, laying on the seat while K hugged my knees to her as her pillow, mostly about what is precious to me, a lot about why it is such a useful thing to have a bladder of steel, and about the difference between the storms in my family and the ones surrounding us, and about being safe and about beef it's what's for dinner and about the silhouette of my Daddy's face against the headlights in my sleepy brown eyes and

promise

I just slept for an hour, or more than an hour disorienting sleep losing track of the world. Curled up tightly under my blue blanket. I felt my mother come in. She covered my cold feet. I woke up at 4:07 and I was breathing in time with a piano. Mozart. Salzburg concerto C Major, Amadeus. Theophilus, Gottlieb.

Aperto. My heart is open and full.

You know you love me

If not you probably wouldn't put up with my pity parties or bother to read my whining.
I love you too so I'll be funnier.
I've gotten dressed finally and wrapped my pathetic self up in the blue felty illness blanket. I am listening to the classical station and becoming slightly delusional and eating some quaggy carroty mushy soup. I won't say exactly what it looks like. And it tastes like rot too. If I sipped between the pulpy orange bits there supposedly is some sort of tolerable liquid I daren't call it broth, but I don't have the will for it and hardly the appetite. I think quaggy is a word. When the sun comes out I'll delete all this anyway. I promise. I wonder if there is a hospice like service that sends someone to your house to love you when you're miserable and have only got one can of quaggy carrot mush soup rot to eat. One that doesn't necessarily require you to die after it's all said and done, though I suppose I could if it came down to it. Mum used to take care of me at times like these, but presently she is 1)Too busy and 2)too susceptible. Actually this morning when I announced my condition from my pillow she said something along the lines of oh shnike I can't get sick and ran off to search for a gas mask, now she's my shadow with the can of disinfectant. I laugh so I don't have to cry. I think shnike is a word.

When the sun comes out I'll delete all this anyway. And it will, the sun.

-

I wouldn't mind rainbows.

Raining still

At this point I feel terrible and I wish it had something to do with my being sick.

Sick day

My throat was burning when I woke up. I'm still in what I wore to sleep which is most of what I wore yesterday too, so from my head to my toes I look like trash. I'm not leaving the house so I can't care much. It doesn't matter if my eyes are redrimmed from pollen or tears. They both come suddenly, artless and natural this time of year. It rained half the night. It's raining now. I know because a minute ago I stood out on the grass in my bare feet watching the west. I forgot for a while that I feel like crap, it is so incredible to be outside on a morning when all you can smell are blossoms and thunderstorms.

A mystery for nicodemus

Thirteen years ago on May 21, something amazing happened.

Doggie Evil's to-do list

1) Run away
2) Chase neighbor cows
3) Come back
4) Get grounded
5) Feign contrition
6) Get ungrounded
7) Repeat steps 1-7

How to have fun at the movies

Suspense. Crucial battle scene. Touching deaths of minor characters. This being the perfect time, I write PRINCE CASPIAN IS HAWT on a piece of paper, underline it three times and pass it down the row.

5 more minutes

It seems I can't sleep past 7:30 anymore, but there's nothing that says I have to get up.

And goodnight, moon

Falling asleep on tuesday's shoulder

Pater familias + 900 miles away = Sleepovers. fun. every time.

Resting and reading and writing. No friend here for me. But my book and the lamps and the allergy meds that make me drowsy, well I am worn and fine. Now that I move so much, here, there, back, forth, leave, stay. Tomorrow finally thank a merciful God and the blessed planets that fell into alignment, I don’t have to go to work. I am for a while at home.

What should I do with the while? I think I'll play. At the spinet. In the hose. With Flash. Not all at the same time. Flash doesn’t like the hose and neither does the piano. I do when it's warm. But with the way I feel now I may sleep until Thursday. Something every day tells me there is always a chance of rain.

New York, New York.

I hear giggling through the wall. They will be up a while yet. Not me. I'm so very too old for these late night shenanigans. 10 pm? Y'all youngins. Must be a'crazed.

Good night green and red and blue, sweet dreams for me, sweet dreams for you.

The little boy and I had our second lesson last night. I'd had this sick feeling more than before the first one, this time having no time to be ready. We got through it somehow. I don't know which of us is having a harder time, equal suffering I expect. We're not sure if we like each other yet. But in certain ways we empathize. This obviously could be a very bad thing for his development's sake. Example: he says I hate practicing. I say, me too. Of course I don't say it out loud, I say we're almost there and he wants to know when we can go outside and I try to push a little piece of learning just one more into his ears and then slowly begin to say OK we're fin-- I'LL BEAT YOU TO THE TREE he busts through the door, is gone.

We race between them up and down the lawns while our mums talk. I wear out between the 2nd and 3rd maple after working all day and he keeps running and running and running and running. I swear he is that pink rabbit with the drum, I have him for a piano student and I can't keep up. Waiting patiently, for something quieter to click, a like a love for the sounds. For music.




-

As an aside, I have been dreaming that people are searching for me. Before these few nights I hadn't dreamed in probably about a hundred years. I don't know if they are good or bad people or why they want to find me. I just know that I don't want them to.

So alrighty then and goodbye for now. I am presently supposed to be working.

My favorite tree

It is both steady and broken, and sometimes just seeing it makes me stronger.

Jumping into the week, full scattered

Mostly everyone said I looked beautiful. They would say congratulations, because they think I am my sister. They pass me by and think I am young.

The first time we think about boys is a summer dressed Sunday, a singing in clover, a pause, wondering what color the sunlight looks through our hair. Becoming women in this place, I have wondered if we really knew what we are doing or ever will. I liked riding in his car, bass heartbeating through my skin, and that one's eager call, his clumsy hand, this one's gentle smiles, yet loving and inside loving most, the Boy with a silver hart. I am told there is a time for timing. So you do what is right and then wait, and wait. Wondering each moment if I am alone. I was a million times wrong, and we all more than we knew meant never to hurt anyone.

Under the ash tree yesterday we opened the door to Rabbit's cage. A few soft wonder steps and a lightning leap to the field, ears toward Sanctuary. Spring. Life. Timing.

I learn it through the losses.

Commencing

By now I should be asleep. S is graduating tomorrow. I am more excited than she is. I've been up and down and all over flighty inside about it for a while because I get to play the grand piano on the church stage not caring if anyone is listening or not because that's called a prelude and with preludes it doesn't matter much. Last night I rescheduled the Little Boy's lesson for next week and took a solid inch of the load off my mind. Did I tell you about him? No because I am all busyness. My head is wrapped in the busiest week of spring so far. Tomorrow I get to wear all black to somewhere that's not a funeral. Graduations are grand. I'm sleepy now and this is boring and for the first time in a while I can't wait for tomorrow. If I'm really good maybe this time I'll meet Mozart's nephew.

I am here I swear I am. I only hide.

This happened. I wanted to run away but it was too cold. There were no words for why and I wanted to know more than anyone else. I fell and found my fault and knew and so suddenly it's yesterday. I didn't write because there was more than could ever be said.

It feels simple that no grief comes now. It feels right to open my hand. And yet my heart is not strong so I asked, hold me. I am ready now. Let go and go.

You don't have to understand this, the only ones who know or try are the angel of smiles, the boy who sits near me and the one who held my face in her hands, they are enough.

So. My voice still shakes. so?
It has still been raining in Missouri until today. So, so green are all of us and the rivers well from their soul. I don't care, flood me away. Here is peace now. The sun becomes perfect at 7:21 pm and I walk a little at times when there is no other thing to do which is never. I am working and working and most times in a way I can't understand I remember to be funny in the day and then comes night, I become small, see golden things. transude brokenness. Drifts of sunlight and how uncertain it is to have so little sadness.

Secret

In one hour I am giving a very first piano lesson to a little boy. He is only six and I'm scared to death.

Flash wants you to know

Even though his human has been so neglectful in writing about him, he is still here, and as things brighten he waits to stick his slighted nose back in at any time.

Mercy's tears

I have tried to write what it was and why. I will try again even though I don't know how and may never fully find it. But it is simpler than all that I have in words, because it is written on each of us in no English, deeper than the mind or heart and the only way to share is to speak it quietly inside to each other as small children speak with their eyes. It is about the times we make ourselves lost. When we wander with crippled feet trying again and again and again to run farther away, clawing at earth to find old rags to try to pull them back on. When hands become tools of desperation and our eyes are stricken with what we see, no longer under the shelters given to us from our Birth and it is about the coming of doubts like crawling things, fear that freezes and grief in every breath that chokes before it starts and then it is sorrow and finally a breaking comes. Enough pain to bring us to our knees and become silent, to empty our hands and listen. It is about knowing a father and great kindness. And it is in every part about believing that his spirit is stronger than pain and that he heals my sicknesses and that every time it comes I can fight it, never alone.

To whom it concerns

I once was lost.

Now I am found.

Eventually I will know how to write about what came in between.

I took a walk down to the river

to lay my burdens down.

All I want

Is to be for a while.