communing

Do you know,
I love
the very sound
of the words
Columbia County,
the Berkshires,
and the Litchfield Hills
-- poetry
the Catskills have their own quirky charm

***
Should I go see Crazy Heart? I see it's playing at the Fairview. Ned Depew didn't find it very realistic. I think I'll be able to suspend disbelief just fine. Though I'm not twenty-some years younger.

***
I imagine you and me at a Date Night at the Rhinecliff - or at a Sunday jazz brunch there. That place sounds so awesome. Woke at dawn this morning to a KZE ad for it and had a 0 min/10 sec weep over it right there on the floor, imagining the two of us there dining and dancing.

Not that I can ***dance*** -- more, move my body--

***
My eyes met those of a beautiful watchful angel this afternoon, I believe, through doubled windscreens

***
I kissed the image of a narcissus today

***
saying yes to swimming pool restoration


photo credit:
Barry Knights, “Daffodils Last Spring”

wild world (live)

The most amazing view just now from the aerie. Wish you were here - or I there. Later. Kisses.

Friday on my mind

Pollyanna sittin here in limbo
eatin stripmall Chinese
lovin you
I wish the man behind the drums
(you know - the big boss man)
would let my long tall texan go
pale horses couldn't drag me
from my dreams of you
car carrier dreams
of quality time food shopping
I'll pick up the change
not throw it all away
then walk in the park
for bird song
maybe spin by the new home
all through the day
in a gossamer haze of parasol ants
your love falls like rain
baby I love you
here I am
oh what a world
a mystery train
ah well respected man--
beloved--
your "annalee"

my evolution

Good morning, darling. I'm not making pies at the moment, but rather going about the house attending to chores. I coordinate what I'm doing with what's on radio. (Like that Buster Keaton short of the ramshackle house, paired with the song you can shake it you can break it you can hang it on the wall - I'm all over the place.) Vacuuming goes on during commercial breaks. I looked up Columbus, Nebraska, the once (and future?) proposed center of a rail-oriented highway of cities, while Natalie Merchant sang Motherland. I'm wearing my apron. I miss you. The cupboard is bare. I really should do food shopping today. Let me start a list: dishwashing powder, bath soap.

Last week I packed the possessions I wish to bring along with me. I was surprised at how few they ended up being. They're all in the living room. Most fit right on the coffee table, and then there are a couple of boxes of books and papers. That's it. I didn't pack many books since where I'm going there's a wish for access to every book ever written. Add to that my wish for a copy of every album of every performer that KZE has been playing in the weeks since I glommed on. A musical education, on top of all the wonder & pleasure.

But in trying to decide which books to take or leave behind, I glanced at the arrangement of book titles on my shelf. My books are in a hodgepodge, not organized at all (though my gardening books are all in one place). As I looked over the titles, they spoke to me - as resonating with aspects of my own life's journey. Strange. I don't buy many books (not as many as I'd like) - was my subconscious - or a mind not my own - buying them for the titles, pieces of the puzzle?

Throwing my arms around you with passionate abandon, darling. Stealing a kiss.

dau

Myths, in the very old days, were as endlessly flexible as gossip, and gossip is how, in essence they began...

starting a rumor about you & me...

sometimes it's not the end of the story
there's a better ending
a coda on the coda
a canal gets superfund status
that seems like a good thing
not a "blow" at all

I fished out a paper I once wrote about it
and thus found my autographed copy of Hugging the Shore

this morning on my walk
I hugged the shore of the creek
the water was grey-green, like sea water
on the opposite shore one white-tailed deer
chased another

***

italicized texts

NYRB review of Tiepolo in Pink
John Prine, We're Not the Jet Set (on KZE)

factchecker: No - not John Prine - Delbert McClinton, Starting a Rumor
(but still, we're not the jet set)

poking the fire

Dearest John, Maybe I just needed a little change of scenery. So I've lit a fire in the fireplace and am sitting on an old jacket on the floor next to the radio, journal on my lap. (It's gonna burn so bright - set this heart on fire.) The jacket is because the floor is cold, floorboards that D painstakingly restored original to this 1885 house. Pine planks. Southern pine? I have no idea. But I feel that I am sitting on the floor of trees that came up, were growing at the time of the first Revolutionary War. I like that thought - growth, renewal, recycling, restoration, reuse.

Now is an ad for Custom Forest Products, that builds to suit using local wood.

Now there's a song about massacre. I read once that in the 19th century and before there were so many birds in Pelham Bay that the sky was dark with them but that birdshooting on the part of the interlopers went on on such a manic scale that the birds dropped and soon enough the skies were cleared. Why this mania for destruction - the "triumph of human will over nature" as the NYT crowed about the blasting of Hell Gate's crags in 1851, and has basically been crowing ever since.

Earlier, Watching the Detectives. Now, I've got my eyes on you, I'm watching every move.

Ow. Word.

I'm looking for the someone I love. You're not here, and I care. Kisses, my dearest love.

opposite shore

My dearest, sorry to be scarce today. I have just fixed myself a cup of hot tea and am up in the aerie. Songs are streaming on the radio downstairs. I have been feeling watery today, at low ebb, not verbal. I found my copy of Hugging the Shore, with John Updike's autograph on the first page. Nice handwriting and the dot is directly above the "i." I started to page through it but stopped because on a day that English feels like my 17th language, that feeling can only worsen if I encounter his prose. I love his writing, but when I was young I was cowed by it and it gave me writers block. So I'll just look at the cover for now. The book is sitting on the file cabinet next to me, far away enough that I can imagine that the image on the jacket, a black and white photo from so long ago, is actually of you smiling, seated in that little boat you and your brother restored.

I took a walk this morning, dressed in sea monster colors, moss green fleece and brown denims. I wished you were there beside me. It was pleasant and peaceful, with tonic sounds of running water and of bells, hints of spring. I noticed little meaningful touches that people in this secluded hamlet have placed in their gardens. A lacy black mandala hung from a porch eave. A collection of pretty lanterns was strung in trees. A laughing Buddha sat against one house and a prayerful one at another. Placed in one front yard was a single ornate ceramic object, Indian or Chinese, like a fountain or maybe a lantern - well, I don't know what it was. I think you might have been able to name it. The tag of a freshly planted tree clicked musically against the trunk. Crows cawed and there was birdsong. I walked on the road alongside the creek. The water was grey-green, like seawater. On the opposite shore I saw one white-tailed deer run after another. Echo and Narcissus, I thought, you and me. Bare brown limbs stretched up farther and evergreen fingertips pointed skyward, pointedly.