nothing but

Don't panic

I was not sleeping. There was this lightning that was darting in and through and around the whole house and wouldn't stop. It was a tremble-lip child lightning, frightened and pale and thunderless, a baby giant's tantrum sky. And when the sounds and winds and rain came I curled up small on the floor under my blanket, looking at all of our faces and listening. We were all there in the basement, hearing one a.m. and windows and crackling radio. The voice of forecasters of talkshowhosts of Democrats all droning into one voice. It is all uncertain and I hardly remember stumbling into sleep. I dreamed at least two dreams and in one an aged worn man I have known a little while was going away and I said, when will you come back and I hugged him and knew he wasn't and I would not let go. I don't know why I dreamed about him. There was always something about his eyes that I trusted. The storms of spring have been immense. Now, it is fallen calm and I wish I was not stolen in all directions and being so aware of my feet, left standing on nothing but road when the newness fell through. I couldn't answer. See, my breathing wrenched. It is just cut and break, so when you please you might lift my head from the floor. If you would walk across the wide brown land, you could climb up next to me. I'm sitting on this wall looking for horizon stars. Looking for you looking for me.

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

Rainy day

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. to release. make. create. hatch. I am going to make something I can pour into, to let out some of it or 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