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I Must Be Dreaming
You could not make this stuff up. I can’t really tell you what’s been going on with me lately because, well, I can’t really tell. I hate not being able to tell, because not only could I make it into a good story but there’d be a certain poetic justice in the telling that would be immensely appealing to me. Like chocolate cake. But I can’t tell. But this world I’ve been living in as a result of the [redacted] situation I seem to be in that is the fault of the [redacted][redacted] is surreal. Life is but a dream. Add to that the thing that is going on with…
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Proof Of My Powers
An actual IM conversation with my son, 14. He had a headache and I said I could fix it for him: Karen: Go to sleeeeep, you are getting sleeeepy NW: yes Karen: look into my eyyyyyyyyes, you are very sleeeeeeeepy NW: yesssssssss i am sleeeeeeepppyyyyy Karen: you will do everything I sayyyyyyyyyyyyy Karen: you arrrrre in my powerrrrrrrrrr NW: yessss i will follllowwww commanndsss Karen: cluck like a chicken! NW: bock bock Karen, to herself: IT WORKS! THREE HOURS GO BY Karen: when you awake, you will not remember anything. You will not remember being a chicken, or robbing that bank, or running naked through the halls at school. But…
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The Time I Blew My Nose And Brains Came Out
I’ve been sick as a horse. Wait, do horses get sick? And how would you know? Whenever you ask them questions, they just say “neigh.” Ba dum bum. You can tell I am feeling better, because my really bad jokes only emerge when I’m feeling pretty good. So I went down to Portland a couple of weeks ago, the place that was built atop an ancient unicorn burial ground (I did not make this up — it’s on Facebook so it must be true — but they only bury the really really ancient ones so they leave the perky young ones to prance around and make rainbows)(unicorn euthanasia)(don’t you love…
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Sick No Longer Means Sick. That’s Sick.
Seething with a virus, I stumbled on to a series of airplanes the other day that took me from northwest to southwest. I coughed and tried not to blow my nose with too much proximity to anyone else, but after a two hour drive, a parking shuttle, an amble through security (which really was an amble and was eerily quiet), and a wait at the gate my inner energy reserves had become depleted and it was Time To Die. Oh, figuratively. Whatever. So I brought my virus to my friends, who are cheerfully helping me either feed or quash the little buggers, I’m not sure which. I have been in…
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Drifting
I think this is what they call flow. Either that or I can’t be paid to care about much. When I say care, I don’t mean care. I mean get my panties in a twist. And that just isn’t happening. Nope, I’m afloat on the Wonder Barge of Life. Somebody up ahead (it might be me but I can’t be bothered to get up and go look just now to see for sure) is poling us gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily. And along the sides of the stream I see the things we slowly pass, but I’m not grabbing for any brass rings these days. It’s okay just sitting…
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Just Like An Ordinary Day
I have lost my pendulum, or it’s conveniently misplaced, so instead I decided to use a pendent I wear sometimes (when I can remember to put on jewelry). It’s a ceramic disk that hangs from a black cord. The disk is green and blue in a Celtic design and I can almost remember where I got it. Ireland? Maybe. Anyway, I asked it if it would stand in for my pendulum, which I rarely use anyway but prefer to use over my Tarot cards, which I never really got into despite having the beautiful Robin Wood deck. The pendant said yes. My questions tumbled out in a heap, and the…
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Not Alone
The room was spare. The single bed, covered in a mauve quilt, was pushed against the wall. A gray and white stuffed dog sat atop the nearby dresser. A single, empty chair filled the space next to the bed. The woman lay on her back with eyes closed and mouth open, her body slight under the quilt. Her breaths came hard, ragged, with spaces in between. The sound of her labors filled the room. We quietly arranged ourselves on chairs we had brought for the occasion, facing the woman in the bed. She kept on with her breathing. One of us whispered. “We’re here to be with you on your…
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Oh, Haiti
Like many people whose eyes, ears, and fingertips are connected by the vast Interwebs, I heard the news of yesterday’s devastating Haiti earthquake via Twitter. 7.0. OMFG. I’ve been in a 5.5. I know that 6-point-something is pretty damaging. Every point-something is a factor of 10 in magnitude. So this 7.0, in a country where most people are painfully poor and (I imagine) live in the kind of rickety shack housing I’ve seen elsewhere in the Caribbean, is huge. And it is. According to what little I have read (and I avoid TV news like the plague), 100,000 people could already have died. And the inevitable deaths from disease due…
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If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Haiku’s Day
From My Window Gray-blue sky, still wind Buddhist prayer flags hang from branch Monday morning cars ~~~~~ Sing Us Peace, They Said Lapping waves at feet wheeling seabirds cry above Sun warms driftwood seat
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Snowed In
Last week the flurries started. They really began on New Year’s Eve, the day I drove away from a warm heart and to a cold empty house that I wanted to fill with all my wishes for the coming year. Wishes full, I lay down at ten minutes to midnight, not realizing that the standard way to bring in a new year around here is with all the leftover July fireworks. Someone even torched a minivan just a block away that night. I’ve considered torching minivans myself, and might have had I ever actually owned one, but likely not as a way to bring in wishes for the coming year.…