Ho, Earthling!
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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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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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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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Ordinary
Yesterday we went for a walk. It was raining a little and I put my hood up to cover my hair, missing my favorite black beret that disappeared last week into The Land of Misfit Hats when the mighty wind blew and trees toppled. We wove our way through art galleries. I admired some pieces and took away new inspiration. There was nothing that needed to be bought, not even the beautifully-colored large glass octopus that called to me from its waterless perch. I turned my eyes quickly away from a young woman’s impossibly large nose, even though she is probably accustomed to nasal scrutiny. A plate of untouched and…
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Forest Love Song
It started two years ago (or was it two millennia?). I rented a wee dollhouse in the forest space high above the rock-strewn beach of Pt. Roberts, WA, a tiny peninsula that juts from Canada into Boundary Bay and that because of oversight or a mapmaker’s joke actually belongs to the U.S., requiring border crossings and passports. My dollhouse-in-the-woods was to be the perfect writers’ retreat — difficult to get to, remote, quiet. I could overlook the tiny bathroom/shower combination, sit on the wee sofa built for two, and write. I found myself drawn outside, though. Late-season blackberries still dotted the tangled vines marking the steep trail down to the…
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OCD Much?
It has recently been pointed out to me — not thrown in my face, since that would be, well, awkward, wouldn’t it? — that I might be a teensy bit controlling. The world “rules” was used, maybe even the phrase “lots of rules.” Repeatedly. Ahem. This may or may not be true. But in visiting my house, there are a few things you should know. 1. Anything that touches or may possibly touch my naked or sleeping body (or the naked or sleeping body of anyone whose body may at some point touch any portion of my own), including but not limited to sheets, blankets, pillows, duvets, towels, and clothing…
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My Coming Out Story
When I moved to the house I’m living in, I made a decision. I would throw open my blinds, my heart, and my life to the outside passing-by world. No more hiding behind fears of being seen. I would challenge myself. I would join the rest of the world. For keeps. Every day, I see the same people walking by. Sunglassed mothers pushing jogging strollers. The old woman in the plaid shirt-coat who walks as if she’s recovering from a stroke. The Steve Martin lookalike who wears the same royal blue shirt and iPod earbuds every day. The runner who sprints upright down the middle of the street, first this…
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I Hate Your Dog
Somewhere along the way I must have offended the Dog Gods, because dogs and I have had a hate-hate relationship all my life. And when I say I hate dogs, I don’t mean just any dog. I mean your dog. Dogs have been pissing me off since I was a little kid. When I was three I remember walking down the block from the babysitter’s to the corner candy store to pick up a pack of candy cigarettes. I hated the flavor of these cigarettes — they were a horrid spearmint monstrosity with a powdery coating of cornstarch, not exactly kid-friendly if you ask me — but I adored sucking…
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Local Color
I’ve always enjoyed the places I’ve lived, at least until the worms began crawling out of the woodwork and infiltrating my brain with messages of malaise, causing me to long for U-Haul boxes and the feel of newspaper-wrapped dishes in my hands (I am very good at packing, ask anyone). But no place I’ve lived — and there have been many — has given me the utter joy I feel these days when I step out my front door and face west and the water and the sky and the islands beyond. Oh no, I take that back. Colorado did that, too. The nightly sight of the Front Range silhouetted…
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Sitting Shiva
They say that caring for the dead body of a loved one is the most intimate act a human can perform. ~~~~ I drove home in silence today. It was two hours of after-airport surreality, the shotgun seat and the back seat now oddly silent after having been so full for the last ten days. I came home to the smell of bacon frying, the love of a man wafting to greet me at the front door, trying to fill the holes in my heart left vacant by the two who now occupied seats 27A and 27B headed back to humid-hell Pennsylvania after ten days of forest trails and waterside…