Writing in a rigorous and intentional way...

See? It's out there, hiding behind that man's eye ~ See it, when he looks at me?
Now, it's there in the sentence of that book telling me something other than what I read.
No, it's in that fluttering one eyed machine, a message from the other side, can you hear it?
Didn't you feel it across your neck? Last Autumn, in it's whispering breath on the tailend of the storm?
No it's the singing in the lyric, the melody that makes you pine
I don't think so, it's probably in the colors in the painting,
the form of the sculpture,
the curve at the top of her inner thigh,
the eternal golden wheel turning, burning in the morning dawn
Smell it in the oven? It's in the roast crackling and permeating the olfactory nerve
that fires directly to the Hippocampus and holidays at Grandma's house.
There it is in a secret message at the top of the evergreen from the lung of a wren
It's in a baby or even a creek, whatever is babbling nearby,
In the spark of light on the backside of a firefly,
Or the diamonds on the sea where you grieve for it under the din of the wave
The scent of the gardenia mingles with a desire to chew and swallow
and alchemically join it
Beyond me,
Beyond me,
Just out of my grasp
Skin, flesh and bone and their urges
Heart groans and yearns
You say it's in the rush of my own blood,
my own breath,
the ember of my own mind?
No, no, not in here.
It's out there
It's in the magic of Otherness
And the magic can't be
in the ordinariness
of me.

One morning at church. We went to a Lutheran one. My parents started it with some other families they knew from another church where they'd probably grown discontent with the pastor or the policies or the organist or the sanctuary flower placement. So, in the living rooms of their houses they started a new Lutheran church and eventually they found a new pastor and we all ended up in the auditorium of an elementary school on the Sabbath. Separation of church and state? Never on a Sunday.

So one morning at church. It was a church where I was raised and I knew the people, the hymns, the liturgy all by heart. Sometimes the melody of the invocation, the kyrie or the ones they would play in the middle of communion, or the middle of the service for no particular reason I could understand where we would all stand up and start singing some song, these will come back to me at the strangest times.

(In the line at the bank)Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna in the highest...
(In the shower)Blessed is he, Blessed is he....
(On my bike on a deserted country road) Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord...

Well, it's not all the time, the church-y songs. But they are deeply embedded in the tight crevices in the spongy grey stuff under my skull ~ Memory clips of this and that of the goings-on in the church in the little school are squeezed in there too. Maybe even fossilized. I don't think I could get it out even with a pick and ballpean hammer. I'm telling you, these things, this childhood church stuff, it's there forever and always, amen.

Once my brother was beside me and yawning and stretching his arms way up over his head when we were doing one of the middle of the service standing up things we did for no particular reason, and at that moment, his elongated belly enticed the back of my hand to reach over and clock him there really hard, which doubled him over, and out of his mouth came a really loud, "OOF." Like a Charlie Brown cartoon, it sounded just like that. It was so funny. Ofcourse, he got in trouble for making the loud noise and I got a pat on the head.

Then there are tender things. I still have them. These things I would write to my mom from ripped off pieces of the service handout, telling her she was pretty or that I loved her. Or drawings of us holding hands. She kept so many weird things that we found after she died, and the biggest surprise was the little teensy notes and sketches no bigger than a pebble that she'd kept that I'd written to her as a little girl during the pastor's rattling on about our inability to understand the infinite depth of God's love for us. As if God's love could hold a candle to that.

But so, anyhow, this one morning at church. I was there with my parents and my family, and our friend Cheryl had come with us that day. We, my sisters, brother and me, we always brought friends along. They more often than I did, because I was still kind of a baby. Not much older than 5 or 6.

I was leaning forward with my forehead on my arms on the chair in front of me and everyone was standing in the middle of the service like they liked to do, and the pastor said he had a special announcement. My mom shook me gently to pay attention and so I took a peek at him as he stood there. I could only kind of see him inbetween people's backs and rearends. I can still remember what he looked like though in his long robe and black shiny hair, and he appeared to be looking down through folks bodies trying to see me too:

He went, "I'd like to take this time to present this hymnal to the congregant who has brought the most visitors this year as a gift of appreciation from the church," and he held up a new hymnal. All the others we had laying around were old, blue and raggedy. But this one was bright red and the goldleaf on the cross on the front shined like new money. And then that's when he said my name.

Now let me tell you, we never veered from the routine at chuch, we never had special announcements in the middle of the service. I can remember looking up at my mom and her nodding at me to go up and get it. Our friend Cheryl, who was really my sister's friend, smiled at me and let me go by her to get down to the aisleway.

I wandered up and got the gift of the red hymnal and I flicked it with my finger to see if it made the same hollow sound as the blue ones. It did. Pastor looked very pleased.

Excited and pleased at hearing the word fronds tonight. I was watching a cooking show and the woman was making roasted fennel out of the root which I really can't imagine why anyone would want to eat a fennel root, but what a wonderful word, the part that shoots out of the top and grows like wild hair is called fronds. It's the part of the plant that is used as an herb. I think I remember chopping it and putting it on fish once...

You can pull happiness out of a hat like that, it's a trick. Like melting a little bar of dark chocolate in your mouth, eyes rolled back, an immersion in satisfaction, delight in contentment, convinced that it is delicious even though it is bitter, in the same way, you can form a word around your lips or it lights across your tongue and you find that it has the same effect.... Even though it sounds funny the 5th or 6th time you say it aloud, and you start to notice it coming out of your throat like you have a British accent and you even roll the 'r':
Fr-r-r-onds.

But the same kind of glory-making works with scent ~ the stinky worminess after rain which stirs an emotion, sort of a memory, a reminder of the beginnings, of ozone and dirt where we maybe crawled out of the sludge and evolved nostrils and little lungs, something provided a dose of environmental cpr in our ecological niche, a cough, then maybe a deep inhalation and it could be that was the smell of the first day. Happiness.

I suppose it's time to create a new post, but I'm not in any particular space where I have anything to say that would be noteworthy.

While making a sandwich out of a bagel yesterday, however, I did have a flood of memory and the words started forming in my brain about how I might tell a very old story to make it interesting to myself.

I was in the bathtub one night, and it happened I was in heavy labor with my 3rd child. The sun was going down mid summer so it must have been around 9:00, and my midwives were waiting in the dining room downstairs. I was sitting on my feet in the water, with my eyes closed and my hands on my belly kind of leaning forward and my sister was rubbing my back with a warm wet cloth. They like to say that the sounds coming out of a woman's mouth while laboring is a birthing song, and I was surely singing it to beat the proverbial band. The groaning is such a natural way of making a calling, not only for the pain, it's a comfort. I've read of silent birthing and I can't imagine a more inhumane way for a woman to labor, to not be able to make the noises she so naturally makes... the asking and the cry to the child to come out....

And oh my god that child wanted to come out in the worst way, and I called to him loudly, but it take so much time to work ones way out of dark places. It is a good first lesson for the baby human ~ Tunneling and squeezing through the obscurity to the unknown, and the pain is tremendous. I've always felt that way about birthing pain ~ it is a great, big, huge thing. It is tremendous. But one is compelled to struggle and free oneself from a tight place after it becomes unsuitable and no longer accomodates one's growth.

The contractions came so fast I could hardly make it to my bed, but it was there I had prepared that day for my baby to arrive, and it was there I was determined to be when he came. I could barely make it, my legs wouldn't let me walk and my body was so ready to propel him out of me by this time that all I could to was wait through each deep squeeze of my womb to subside, and go slowly. When I got to where I wanted to be, the last steps I crawled there so I was on my hands and knees when I climbed onto my mattress, my body was moving back and forth with my big belly, his baby hammock, hanging below me. There we were in a rhythm all our own, me singing him forth, and him blindly wiggling his way to the light, me helping him to help me to help him. It's a private, personal thing ~ an intimacy like making love that, for me, belongs best in a bed that is at home.

I moaned deeply but all those around me were hushed and only my sounds and their movements of quiet preparation disturbed the once empty room. So as the noise ensued and the tension built and there was no where else to go or anything else to do, I turned my body wanting only to stand, begging for the pull of gravity to help me, but there was no tree to hang onto, or pole built for me in my birthing hut to grasp. But, at the right time I needed it, I felt two strong arms underneath my shoulders pulling me up. I looked behind me and the man who'd started all this ruckus in this same bed one night the autumn before, had lifted me and planted his back against the wall and his feet gripped the sheets to keep his balance and I fell into him, my back to his belly and he held me up while I bellowed, screamed and pushed. Baby was working too, I could feel him squirming deep within me, through my vagina, his head and shoulders working like a fish gripped in someone hands just trying to escape to be free, and my precious body and it's ancient intelligence, in its earthy knowing, laboring and spewing forth my evolution.

A few minutes later, just a little past midnight, it was almost over between the three of us, from this place where we had all started together those many months before, and my partner behind me departed, setting me free to lay down against my soft pillow. My baby was delivered from his confined space and finally at rest in my arms at my breast, sucking and content. His nakedness still warm from being in my body, he was still attached to me because his placenta hadn't worked its way out yet ~ so our hearts were still in synch, we beat together for the last time during those first few moments of the new day. Our heat still wrapped up in each other, almost done, and his eyes blinked at the subtle light from the lamp on my bedside table, and his sweet lips were so red and he smelled like fresh bread, a scent that I didn't wash from him for days.

Closer To You
By The Wallflowers

How soft a whisper can get
When you're walking through a crowded space
I hear every word being said
And I remember that everyday
I get a little bit closer to you

How long an hour can take
When you're staring into open space
When I feel I'm slipping further away
I remember that everyday
I get a little bit closer to you

These are the days
That I won't get back
I won't hear you cry
Or hear you laugh
But when it's quiet
And I don't hear a thing
I can always hear you breathe

You know there's nowhere else
I've wanted to be
Than be there when you needed me
I'm sorry too
But don't give up on me
And just remember that when you were asleep
I got a little bit closer to you

This New Place

When you broke away
I see now that it was time

But before.

The ending came and I would not let go
And the beginning called and I turned my blind side

To sit it out and shroud myself with
the dark cover of night where tomatoes flower
and roses bloom

In the stasis that stops hearts from beating
while the surgeon takes over and removes
the blockage from doing anymore damage
And the day that is now tormorrow
finally came and the moment arrived
where it will be better soon

And driving west does not pull me to keep moving
to find you anymore and my breathing does not quicken
at the ring of the phone and my toes are colored
pale and my face is bright and there is a tune
that says to me how much it meant to me
that you brought to me how beautiful it is to be here
but the lyrics are mine and I won't give them to you anymore.

Goodnight Steven

Oo, little sleepy boy
Do you know what time it is?
Well the hour of your bedtime's long been past
And though I know you're fighting it
I can tell when you rub your eyes
You're fading fast, oh fading fast

Won't you run come see
St. Judy's Comet
Roll across the skies
And leave a spray of diamonds in its wake
I long to see St. Judy's Comet
Sparkle in your eyes when you awake
Oh, when you wake, wake

Little boy
Won't you lay your body down
Little boy
Won't you close your weary eyes
Ain't nothing flashing but the fireflies

Well I sang it once and I sang it twice
I'm going to sing it three times more
I'm going to stay 'til your resistance
Is overcome'
Cause if I can't sing my boy to sleep
Well it makes your (pretty mommy)look so dumb
look so dumb

Won't you run come see St. Judy's Comet
Roll across the skies
And leave a spray of diamonds in its wake
I long to see St. Judy's Comet
Sparkle in your eyes when you awake
Oh, when you wake, wake

Little boy, little boy
Won't you lay your body down
Little boy, little boy
Won't you close your weary eyes
Ain't nothing flashing but the fireflies

Oo, little sleepy boyDo you know what time it is?
Well the hour of your bedtime's long been past
And though I know you're fighting it
I can tell when you rub your eyes
You're fading fast, oh fading fast

(Paul Simon)

South Mountain sunset and Pop on top of Phoenix

Getting through the winter doldrums....