Wake Up

out of the stupor of vacation

i had nothing to do but sleep and love and eat the breakfast/lunch/dinner made for me by my love of all loves and do my hair if i felt like it and read bits about a midwife named Martha that lived over 100 years ago. nothing to do but be

awake and i barely did that.

and now i am back to the clean room, the clean bathroom, the dirty kitchen sink dishes overflowing and i have to get dressed to go to work, just got out of the shower, sitting here in my underwear with blow dried hair trying to decide what to wear for the cold outside, so cold so says the radio.

but there are things to do that i forgot, never remembered to look at the syllabi that rule my life still, assignments due this week that i didn't know were due cause it is so easy for me to forget that i'm still a student that needs class to learn, i learn so much on my own just sitting here.

i need to put my papers in order so that i know what is going on and fill in my calendar with dates that will worry me.

i am home the sun is shining through the cold wind barely blowing. the dishes will have to wait until i get home from the night class that will get me on the bus after dark.

i am home.

if i was a lily

out

i'm out of clean underwear
i'm out of milk
i'm out of patience, of shampoo, of gin, of long distance phone cards
i'm out of town
out of the hospital
out of love
out the door
out side up side in side out

i'm out i 'm gone i'm out of here

tomorrow

i go and leave and shut the door behind me, my little borrowed suitcase full of the important stuff but not too full, no work with me save a couple of papers and Middlemarch but that is hardly work, my plants all watered enough hopefully to last, Mona meowing cause she's going to miss licking my forehead as i sleep, no food in the fridge to go bad, the freezer full, my mind full, my heart full.

in love
in side

heart dance

this is how it works

it is night

and the music comes out of my brother's room in waves lapping then crashing then lapping again...the light over my head is in mimicry of the sun and somewhere i want to believe there is a bird calling dawn. but it is not so. it is night and i am not maria wanting the sun to set but the opposite, wanting it to maybe start all over again or at least be the next - no more waiting.

this is what night class does to me, brings me down and then brings me up when i'm home i'm on uppers cause it should be the afternoon or dinner time not sleep time as i'm not ready, my brain isn't ready to stop running now that it has just begun. and the music. it is the beat of my thoughts, the pulse in my neck after out of breath running.

and it is not that i dislike it here. it is bright despite the night and there are pillows and blankets and socks to keep my feet warm. there are words i can dive into and paint i can put on like makeup if i want to be creative. i can write here until the words go to sleep. and i agree with whomever said that everything has a beat - a heartbeat even if inanimate. i can feel it, in my fingers and in my toes and i am waiting for it to dance all over me - the running pulse.

perceiving the sacred

"It is hard for us to understand how as a society we cannot just look at something, recognize the beauty of it and say we will leave it as it is. "

-Franklin Paibomsai
Whitefish River Chief

Here fishy fishy

The Fish that Got Away from Aquarius

It's February. A few days ago when the groundhog saw his shadow it was my grandma's birthday on my mom's side. she died in 2000. i miss her and was thinking about her all day that day but didn't get around to writing it down cause of chores and the barrier between my thoughts and the paper. so now it is all different changed by the days.

i wanted this to be a memorial. not a morbid one like the cenotaph at home with the lone solider surrounded by wreathes that come in november and stay in some sort of disarray until they blow away. this isn't a eulogy or a column in the newspaper when you write down life in 100 words or less. this isn't a biography or true hollywood story or any of that crap. this was for me to tell her and the world that reads this that i miss her and she hasn't disappeared.

her name was bernice and she thought that that she looked like the queen cause they had the same hair.

(this was all different before. i wrote this under the title Aquarius and then deleted it out of impatience thinking that i button i was pushing would make it all go faster but it erased and now i am trying to piece it all back together but it won't go, the button is too big for the button hole and so now i am just disappointed thinking that i 've lost my words of brillance forever.

but they weren't really brillant words. no. just selfish ones where i talk about me and those that make me up and the novel that i'm trying to write but can't get past how huge the topic and there is so much more i need to know and those who know it best are gone. it was a selfish piece that you will never read and i will never read again and i guess that fate made me forget for a reason but it is still here in my head but the words are all backward and i can't put them here again. it was more eloquent than this and that is what i am always chasing, eloquence and now i am hating this because before i looked insightful and now... i don't like things disappearing when i haven't said goodbye.

this was supposed to be about her but i was about me, the other one, the fish that got away. but it ended up about me anyway.

it's over. now i have to get all pretty and go out and celebrate my birthday. my aquariusness. and what is this but swimming. )