A Way Out

A few things I saw on my walk today:

--a half-built sailboat
--grape hyacinth pressing up between cracks in the sidewalk
--a yellow curvy plastic slide in a front yard
--a Japanese flag in a window
--a man setting forms for concrete steps

This New Life

Day 10: Limbo.

Between, neither, nether, without.

An absence of.
An abscess.

Foreign/fallen/futile.

Final.

---

(No ability whatsoever to respond to your unceasingly generous comments. I am struck dumb with this entirely newfound grief.)

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

--Theodore Roethke

The Door is Bolted

I made a commitment some years back -- after 9/11, I believe -- to approach every single day from a standpoint of love. Not an easy thing to accomplish. Some days all I can manage is the faintest glimmer of an expectation that, when successful, gives depth and meaning to every step, every encounter. It's a "practice", much like yoga is a practice (and, I'm finding out, so is law). Allows us some measure of failure, allows repeated attempts at a measure of success. No surprise then that I'm struggling tremendously with this at the moment, attempting to keep the black beasts of spite/bitterness/betrayal/revulsion well back from the door.



But the betes noires claw at it ceaselessly and howl well past midnight, the bastards.

The cruelty of the world knocks me to the ground.

Be kind, to those you love
and those that you no longer love.

My new phone number is 1-800-ANXIETY.

Give me a ring sometime.

Anytime. Really.

I even deliver.

Ironic, I think, that I changed the photo at the top of the blog just about a month ago.

Perhaps subconsciously setting my heels against the oncoming rumble of these monstrous boulders tumbling against my back.

Descending rapidly into the full chaos. [Thanks to Melinda for that one.]

Tuesday Poem: The Quangle Wangle Quee's Hat

What hoojoob madness is afoot?

The Quangle Wangle's Hat, below,
resides inside my skull at the moment;
and the Blue Baboon, and the Pobble who has no toes,
and the Dong with the luminouse nose and everyone/everything else
in this poem are in there clacking and jangling
and otherwise creating their own hullaballoo
resulting in a condition known as Bedlam of the Brain.

Without further ado:

The Quangle Wangle's Hat
--by Edward Lear

I

On the top of the Crumpetty Tree The Quangle Wangle sat, But his face you could not see, On account of his Beaver Hat. For his hat was a hundred and two feet wide, With ribbons and bibbons on every side And bells, and buttons, and loops, and lace, So that nobody ever could see the face Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

II

The Quangle Wangle said To himself on the Crumpetty Tree,-- 'Jam; and jelly; and bread; 'Are the best food for me! 'But the longer I live on this Crumpetty Tree 'The plainer that ever it seems to me 'That very few people come this way 'And that life on the whole is far from gay!' Said the Quangle Wangle Quee.

III

But there came to the Crumpetty Tree, Mr. and Mrs. Canary; And they said, -- 'Did you ever see 'Any spot so charmingly airy? 'May we build a nest on your lovely Hat? Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! 'O please let us come and build a nest 'Of whatever material suits you best, 'Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!'

IV

And besides, to the Crumetty Tree Came the Stork, the Duck, and the Owl; The Snail, and the Bumble-Bee, The Frog, and the Fimble Fowl; (The Fimble Fowl, with a Corkscrew leg;) And all of them said, -- We humbly beg, 'We may build our homes on your lovely Hat,-- 'Mr. Quangle Wangle, grant us that! 'Mr. Quangle Wangle Quee!'

V

And the Golden Grouse came there, And the Pobble who has no toes,-- And the small Olympian bear,-- And the Dong with a luminous nose. And the Blue Babboon, who played the flute,-- And the Orient Calf from the Land of Tute,-- And the Attery Squash, and the Bisky Bat,-- All came and built on the lovely Hat Of the Quangle Wangle Quee.

VI

And the Quangle Wangle said To himself on the Crumpetty Tree,-- 'When all these creatures move 'What a wonderful noise there'll be!' And at night by the light of the Mulberry moon They danced to the flute of the Blue Babboon, On the broad green leaves of the Crumpetty Tree, And all were as happy as happy could be, With the Quangle Wangle Quee.

Ordinary

Pruned my roses at the house today in the wind and rain, neighbors stopping by to chat, my son cooking up a big vat of chili, a Mariner's game on the TV. How spectacularly ordinary that all was.

I admit to a general neglect of my garden, having lived elsewhere these past years. Actually, it's a full-on neglect with English ivy run amok, thorny sprouts from the neighbor's locust tree popping up in too many places, blackberry vines clearly in control of it all.

My neighbor had just listed a nice queen sized bed on Craig's List -- hot deal -- and I snatched it up immediately. Here's a glimpse of its journey:

I'd wanted to get a shot of them walking down the middle of the street but by the time I noticed them, dropped the clippers, shed the gloves, fished the iPhone from my pocket (two, three seconds) they were already stepping up to the parking strip. The sky was ready to let loose, but we tucked the mattress into an open slot in the basement just in time. A spot of drama.

But there's a rosebush I've been loyally pruning every March for twenty-four years -- a bush with the most perfect coral blossoms -- keeping it in check even during the neglectful years. And this year I'm late with it all, and for the first time I discovered that it's actually a climbing rose who has never had to opportunity to climb. It isn't what I've thought it was, all this time. (Oh, those metaphors keep popping their little reminders into my consciousness, don't they?) But these immediate times being what they are, it got lopped yet again. Planning on a transplant next March.

Watched a silly Queen Latifah movie with C., piled on her sofa with the dog and assorted cats and a bottle of wine. Happy ending, etc., no terminal disease after all, she gets the man/the man gets her. She kept saying that she couldn't figure out if the setting was the French Alps or the Czech Republic, and I said, "Connie, the set(ting) is Hollywood." (And no, I didn't vocalize the parentheses, but that was my emphasis when I spoke.)

Perhaps this can all be just a movie?
I'm ready for the closing credits.
The End.

Alas.

Unmoored

Morning is the advent of a pure and ill-wrought terror.

The same words from everyone: it will pass.

Tick.
A minute went by.

I recall something the father of my first (and late) husband said to my chosen brother Tom as we were walking down the steps of the funeral home after the visitation (oh sweet jesus this was only a little more than eight years ago):

"I just got through another minute."

Tock.
There went one more.

From Mary Oliver:

A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.

I welcome grace, but for this moment, and, I expect, many still to come, there is only the heave.

---
Your comments are sustaining me. I don't have the energy to respond individually yet but know that I've read them time and again for the light they shine.

Playing House

Playing Life.

My most overwhelmingly generous and kind friends Connie and Charlie have set me up in their duplex furnished apartment until the end of the month, two blocks from work, a cozy nest.

I placed my most treasured icons on the sill -- remnants from this life whose path has taken unexpected and zig-zagged switchbacks. Out of breath, this time. Gasping, too far above my accustomed personal sea level. Oxygen -- well, I could use a tank of it right about now. These altitudes contribute to a dizziness with every step, an inability to focus on the inexorable task of moving one foot in front of the other. It's all sludge. It's quicksand. It sucks. And it sucks.

While packing up today, I recall telling myself "now I am going to get some boxes so I can pack up the stuff in the bedroom" -- as I'd repeatedly attempted this task of box-fetching and failed. Speaking the words activated my brain, a direction, command to which I responded. My friend Robin commented on my organization as I labeled every box. Ha! My attempt at sanity included writing something -- anything -- on the top of each box. Funny, though, the categories kept shifting. What/where/who?

Distractions. A bit of my life here, a remnant of memory there, every step up and down recalling such sweet/now-bittersweet events, moments, dinners, the quiet holding that lovers indulge in, no words necessary.

And while I anticipated that my accumulated possessions would overfill the newly-vacated space in my Brandon Street house basement, there was space galore at the end, which felt good, cleansing, finally a clearing of all that I/we no longer need/want.

But blow upon blow: two of my paying renters have decided to give notice, young men that they are, not wanting (most understandingly) to live with a "mother". We roll and roll in these waves.
Yet it's a high and crushing surf.

And then there's scheming and more scheming: how to compound dollars to balance the crush, the deficit. I'm open to suggestions here. Rooms for rent!

But oh....the wreckage.
The rubble/flotsam/the-undoing.

I am undone.

I am pretending.

And a glass of white Rhone wine makes everything better.

xxoo

Friday Night

It's just fucking too much.

Clearing out tomorrow, from one chaos to another.

Your comments have kept me afloat as I gasp for air.

Dissolution

I might be absent from this blog for a while, dealing with some profound and unexpected changes in my life.

On Monday morning, I left for work saying "goodbye, love you" to my best friend & husband, and arrived home that evening to an enemy. The marriage is ending. Relationships, children, lives -- complicated things. He wants me out of the house immediately.

It's yet another death, with the searing pain of rejection and abandonment heaped on top of it.

And of course it's not only the marriage, but the loss of his extended family, whom I love dearly. It's the loss of our life together, which I have treasured beyond words.

There is a grief which fills every cell of one's body, and it is all that I know at this time.

With love to every one of you who takes the time out of your day to stop by here. I treasure all my blog friends -- yes, you.

xoT.

Happy Tuesday Poem Birthday!

It's the one year anniversary of Tuesday Poem, the New Zealand based blog I stumbled into last April, resulting in my being pulled kicking and screaming back into the poetry scene, albeit an online one.

Other than my monthly writing group (which has met continuously since 1991), when my first husband passed away seven years ago, I pretty much made an exit from any public poetry life. Not exactly sure why. I stopped going to readings, lost interest in any weekend poetry events. I've continued to write, and to submit poems for publications (but much less than previously). Priorities shift when one's life is dumped out in the middle of the freeway.

Anyway, it's been a delight making fresh connections around the globe and being part of this energetic & inspired/inspiring community. Thank-you, fellow Tuesday Poets!

This week, on the masthead blog, something new and ambitious:

Welcome to our First Birthday Party! We're celebrating with a communal poem that will skip backwards and forwards across the world and between time zones over the coming week (NZ, Australia, UK, US), with the finished poem posted next Tuesday.

Our tag team of Tuesday Poets will add their lines to the unfolding poem at the rate of four or five entries a day until Sunday, and then the full poem will be up for a week.

My contribution goes up tomorrow -- Wednesday -- evening. Fun!

A pensive moment, from the 1980's...


Happy birthday to my son Reilly!
A quarter century!

Glass Breaks.

We have a saying at work, at my job where we skedaddle regularly around tipsy fragile martini glasses and delicate vases whose structural integrity has been compromised by an abrasive blast of sand: glass breaks. No matter how careful we are, it still happens. Sometimes it happens spontaneously, which is freaky. I'll be working on a piece and suddenly there will be a cracking sound and bingo! Glass breaks.

This evening Paul and I were hosting his school group -- five fellow students and assorted spouses, some whom I've met briefly last fall. I was up to my elbows in pizza assembly, chopped salad, platters of chocolate. We'd anticipated half-wine-drinkers/half-beer-drinkers, but tonight the desire was for wine, and I had to reach up to the back of the top shelf of the cupboard for yet one more glass. Paul was in the other room, being the charming host. The doorbell was ringing. The timer was tick-tick-ticking. I reached, reached, grabbed the glass -- and suddenly the shelf tipped towards me, loaded down with pint glasses, champagne glasses and lord only knows what else. The bracket had snapped off, and a top shelf of glassware came roaring, tumbling down towards my face, onto the granite countertop, onto the stacks of glass & china plates on the countertop, the liqueur glasses ready for Cognac and Vin Santo -- Glass! Breaks! Holy crap! The shattering tumble seemed to go on and on in glassy aftershocks as I tried, in vain, to catch every piece, and of course I caught nothing.

When the screech finally subsided, an acute silence filled the room. I said, "Paul? I need some help here." The guests who had been ringing the bell appeared around the corner, looking as if they'd just arrived into chaos, which, of course, they had. I tried for some presence of mind as I attempted to hold back the tide of shards, actually managed to laugh. No blood, no severed veins -- all good. But there were fragments and splinters everywhere -- in the unbroken glassware, on the plates, on the coffee pot, on the counter, spread out and splayed across the floor. Good god almighty! What a way to make a first impression!

I admit I always do like a little drama, but this was off the charts. Significantly off the charts. Yikes.

Anyway.

The four pizzas were enough of a distraction to divert everyone's attention from the wreckage:

1. Italian sausage and crimini mushroom
2. Sopressata and artichoke hearts
3. Feta, Kalamata olives, oregano
4. Ricotta, garlic, Italian parsley, mozzarella, parmesan, etc.

Mmmmmmm.

Dessert, though, was, and is always, the prime distraction:

1. Scottish shortbread
2. Strawberries
3. Five types of chocolate, all bittersweet, all marked with little flags designating their country of origin: Iceland, Mexico, France and god only knows where else I'm too tired to think any more.

But one of the guests, the wife of one of Paul's classmates, said, just prior to dessert, that she felt as if she was at a play: the broken glass act, the pizza act, the chocolate act. Said that the platter of chocolate looked like a platter of little boats, with tiny paper sails.

At which point I thought that perhaps I should take a bow, exit stage left, and retire to my dressing room.

Which I did, shortly thereafter, upon chasing the guests out the door. Bye now!
Ta ta! Crash crash!

---

Tomorrow evening: different script, new audience, and I'm determined that there will be not a single piece of broken anything.

Weekend

One of these moons I'll figure out that I'm no longer twenty-five and stop planning back-to-back dinner parties on the weekend after a full week of work. Or maybe not. This compulsion to entertain might be incurable.

Tonight Paul's school group and significant others are coming over for homemade pizza -- last count, there were going to be twelve of us. Tomorrow is my son's twenty-fifth birthday, and I have no idea who's coming, but there's a five pound beef chuck roast in the fridge, and a cake waiting to be whisked/whipped/wrangled. The painters finished Wednesday, and we've been reassembling our disassembled interior(s). The house is beginning to look habitable again, finally. Inch by inch. A little domestic shake-up can be a good thing, after all. (The cats heartily DISAGREE.)

Meanwhile, March rains have prevailed into April, a constant wet curtain through which to trudge. Part of me actually loves this rain, with clouds settled in at treetops, the world at hand snuggly swaddled. But I'm itching to sit out on the back porch under the Douglas firs and Western Red Cedars, martini at the ready, listening to the robin's evening trill.

Soon.

Turn Around

My sentimental husband has been playing a Rosemary Clooney/Keith Carradine version of this song (which unfortunately is not on YouTube), and I've had to tell him to stop. It makes me cry every time! This Kodak ad, which features the song, made me cry as a child, alas. I'm a damn sap, that's what I am.

Tuesday Poem: Nettles

Nettles

For so long they contained all

that was evil, fear comprehensible

as a bully, a threat

to push me deep into the stinging

heart of a thicket –

I hacked a risky path.

And while dreams sifted through green nights

nettles sprang up, impossibly –

silvery undersides welting my ankles,

a poison assuaged with fern sap:

thin veil of defense

only a child could believe.

© T. Clear

---

Please do take the time to visit the Tuesday Poem masthead site for a bevy of poetry from New Zealand, the UK, and the USA.

Ireland: Postcards

St. Patrick and the Spider

Old News

From 5,000 New Answers to Questions, by Frederic J. Haskin, copyright 1933:

What was the largest cake every made?

Probably the largest cake was that ordered by Frederick William I, King of Prussia, in June, 1730. It is said that this contained 36 bushels of flour, 200 gallons of milk, one ton of butter, one ton of yeast, and 5000 eggs. The finished cake was 18 yards long, 8 yards broad, and more than half a yard thick. It was so large that 30,000 soldiers could not eat it all.

---

Just in case you wondered.

Benign Chaos

The family room is in the living room, the master bath is in the closet, the basement rooms are heaped into themselves, boxed and condensed. Closets lie in silent linen white, emptied of the accumulation of years. The kitchen is yet negotiable, stalagmites of cookbooks rising from the counters. The cats creep these sudden new alley-ways between paintings leaned against a wall. Fumes pervade everything. An architecture of ladders on the porch. Change is afoot and each newly brightened wall glows with its own light, delight, a calm uplifting of winter spirits cast out with the waning month of March.

I had sushi with a friend last evening and listened to her travails in dealing with her irrascible, ninety-year-old failing father who lives 1800 miles away. The father who, on oxygen and refusing to move to an assisted living facility, insisted on driving twice-weekly to the senior citizen center to play poker. When my friend's brother quietly confiscated the car and locked it up, the dad called the police on him. Three times. And then tried to convince his home-care-giver to drive him to his son's house, break the lock on the garage, and get the car back.

There is a blessing in timely death, I suppose. My own father died an untimely death at age 46, and god only knows the kind of elderly man he would be. In my few short years with him, we were very close -- we fished and gardened together -- but after so many years, in some respects he's like a fondly remembered character from a novel that someone read to me in my early years, from the past of the previous century, mythologized ever more with each fleeting year. There's a bittersweet blessing in these preserved memories, absent of the trials of the teen years, and of what would inevitably be his own declining vitality had he lasted longer than four+ decades. I look at my sons, also facing adulthood with their own abbreviated version of a father -- gone seven years now -- and wonder which glimpses of him they'll carry with them on their own roads into the future.

But enough of that. The painters have arrived, weighted with spattered drop-cloths; paintings are stacked out of their way. Paul is just back from a trip to the vet with one of the cats who has a giant swollen mass on her abdomen, which turns out to be a bruise. I cooked him up a plate of bacon and eggs, and there's a moment of quiet peace in the house before I launch myself into traffic and another day of shuffling glass vessels from paintbrush to packing box.

%$&*(#$

Something nags at me to sit down in this space and type a bunch of letters that make sense. So.

Isn't there some rule where you shouldn't work on two houses simultaneously? We're nearly finished with the seven-year excavation of the Brandon Street house basement; this afternoon I got all the way down to vinyl, which I mopped, until the mop did itself in. This is the rule: stuff fluffs. When you think you're finally done with most of the stuff, the remaining stuff plumps up to fill the newly vacated spaces. It's not just a rule: it's a law. The Law of Stuff Plumping. My advice? Throw it away. Now.

My son informed me that the furnace died today, and I discovered that the main floor shower is leaking and rotting out the floor. (%$#&*$!) (But mostly just $$$.) (Again: #%$&*#!)

The Redmond house, where I actually do most of my living, is boxed and dismantled for painters. And then it will be the wood-floor refinishers, and then the carpet installers. It will be beautiful, eventually. But the general lack of order and disarray addles my brain. This morning I continually tripped on box edges, caught my elbow on stacks of bowls sticking out from where they don't belong. At one point, fallen nearly face-flat, I decided it was wise to just lie there and straighten my banged knee for a few moments, let the sharp sting of the tumble pass. All balance is askew, all centers tilted to the left.

But the good news is that Spring has officially kicked Winter off the calendar. Not much in the way of seedlings in the garden yet -- a few straggly daffs, some teensy violas. And we have new neighbors -- from Hungary -- who pre-empted us yesterday in the Welcome Wagon department when they showed up at the door with a plate of Hungarian apple cake. Neighbors! Friendly neighbors! Almost feels like I'm back on Brandon Street.

Wig, Four Ways

---

And when we weren't modeling blond curly locks,
we did a load of painting:

Sitting here this morning, aware and grateful for even the most elementary of blessings:
--clean water from the tap
--a roof
--an abundance of food on the shelves
--calm
--safety.

---

Glaringly aware of the near-impossibility of wrapping my brain around the scale of devastation in Japan. Consider this photo:


Besides my being nearly completely unable to conceive of a massive ship perched on a breakwater, there is the question of how exactly does a city/country cope with this amount of chaos? And then there is the fact that this photo of a single thing is but a fraction of the disaster.

This is a brutal reminder of our vulnerability, as residents of the planet. Nature is without mercy, and cannot know mercy. I stand in awe.

Sleep Country

We went to a mattress theme park yesterday. Free admission!


Upon entering, a child, who was bouncing from mattress to mattress, was joyfully belting out the theme song! We removed our coats, were given our own pillows, then were encouraged to lie down on any of the many beds while the attendant operated the controls. Lying there, side by side with eyes closed, our legs were raised up slightly, then our heads were raised up, then were lowered down! Amazing! Boy was I glad I hadn't eaten anything for several hours!



The park was organized by theme; our favorite attraction was the Foam Mattress Display. We bought extra tickets for this one so we could return and lie down time and again. The movement was very subtle: upon lying down, we could feel the foam beneath us slowly relax and conform to our bodies. Wow! What a ride!


The Beauty Rest Display was not terribly exciting -- all you could do was lie there. No up-and-down action, no sinking into oblivion. Yawn.


The Stearns & Foster Display had some mighty pricey tickets, so we didn't even bother getting in line for that one. (Actually, there was no line.)

And then there was an interesting set of mattresses with black trim. For these, you paid extra. What the heck? Aren't mattresses usually covered with layer upon layer of decorative trim anyway, trim in which one sleeps? Why spend more for extra (ahem) trim underneath all the usual trim?

We were so impressed with the Tempurpedic Ride that we decided to purchase our very own! It's being delivered Wednesday! Instead of cotton sheets I thought I'd get us some pink cotton candy
and now I have to redecorate the entire room so that we can lie in bed and throw impossibly soft pillowy balls at a pyramid of glassware. Maybe Paul will win me a mammoth turquoise stuffed elephant. Damn, but life is good!

The Five American Sisters

In a short two months time, I'll be on a plane to Ireland with four of my sisters. (There's one more, who will not be joining us.) We'll stay a week at Holly Hill, then three will depart, leaving my oldest sister and myself for another week. As seems to happen in families with lots of women, the pre-trip gossip has begun to simmer. It's already been decided who rooms with who (as the host, I get my own room -- ha!). I've winnowed down the possible day trips to two -- Achill Island and Doo Lough/Leenane. So much to see in so little time! Most people who stay at our house, once they get there, don't want to leave. Why would you, waking up to this each day?


One of my brothers-in-law thinks we're nuts: five middle-aged women, some of us outspoken, most of us opinionated, with varying degrees of tolerance and adaptability (myself included). Will we revert back to our roles we played as children? (God I hope not.) Will we all respect the individual each has grown into during her lifetime thus far? (I hope so.)

I'm working on a set of rules to which we must abide, the first one being:

1. No whining about malfunctioning body parts. Holly Hill is a place of refuge from all ills and whatever ails you. This rule prohibits the discussion of cholesterol levels, arthritis, colonoscopies, mammograms, biopsies, valves, joints, supplements, pharmaceuticals, carpal tunnel syndrome, etc.; except in the event of a medical emergency.

However, the following anatomical-related subjects are exempt: menopause, teeth.

This list will be updated as more rules make themselves known.

In the meantime, the countdown has begun.

The Blog Brain has been mysteriously silent of late. No accounting for it.

---

We're revved back up to ramming speed at the Ferdinand Street Glass Factory. M. returned from her wholesale show with an armload of orders; her best show yet. Yesterday we received back from Philadelphia the three pallets that we shipped out a month ago, and as I was unpacking I contemplated just how many times these pieces of glass go up-the-stairs/down-the-stairs. I think that I don't really want to know. It comes in, it goes out, it comes back, it goes out again, etc. Lots of tinkering & fussing occurs in the interim. I often feel like a dentist with a drill and my tiny knife-tip: scrape scrape scrape. When M. gets the photos back of the new work, I'll post some here. The newest line is called "The Dream Line" and it's indeed dreamy. I'm all in a swoon over it.

---

Part of the recent silence reflects my desire to write, in this format, something that matters. There's so much crap out there in the way of navel-gazing and self-aggrandizing. (The letter "Z" twice in one sentence! I love Z.) It wears me out.

Tuesday Poem: The Cheese Report

On the coast today expect
gusty shredded mozzarella
with foggy cottage
in the morning hours.
Partial Edam in the afternoon,
with periods of bleu.
Highs in the 50's.

Inland expect increasing Manchego
with scattered wet Stilton.
Windy and mostly Jack on Saturday
with possible feta flurries.
Lows around 30.

In the mountains: Roquefort advisory
with accumulations of up to 3 feet.
Gouda becoming easterly 20-30 miles per hour.
Pecorino warning on the northern slopes.

Extended outlook calls for frozen Limburger
off and on through Friday,
with partial afternoon Brie.
Cheddar level, around 500 feet.
Chance of cheese: 100%.


---

© T. Clear 2011
A version of this originally appeared in Poultry.

---

Please visit the Tuesday Poem masthead site
for this week's installment!

Illusion/Disillusion

Sussah, of angels and people/life in New Orleans, left this comment on my previous post:

Do you have sleeping dreams so sweet? I hope so.

These past few days I've been contemplating a blog entry centered around a long-recurring dream where the light in the dream matches the light in the photo below. But I know that other people's dreams are dull dull dull, and so I've prevented myself from going any further with this theme until I read Sussah's comment.

Sussah: you're in my head!

One of the (many) wonders of technology is that I've been able to reproduce, through photographic manipulation, the intense blue-green light of a dream from which I always awaken feeling exhilarated, stunned with the possibilities that life offers.

So if I haven't lost you yet, here it is:

In the dream, I arise about an hour before dawn, to a mostly-sleeping universe, except for myself and maybe one or two other people. And we are suspended -- in time & this luminous light -- for several hours. Nothing much happens other than the fact of our being present and allowing this light into our consciousness. It's a balm, a restorative, a limbo of peace with the intense awareness of everything being right coupled with a heightened sense of reality. If I could go there every night, I would.

When Jodie Foster, in the movie Contact, stands on a beach with her long-dead father, we don't know if she's in an altered state of consciousness or has successfully navigated to an alternate universe -- but -- the screen was lit up with that same light from my dream.

In Philip Pullman's book The Subtle Knife, Will Parry discovers an invisible opening into another dimension, and while there finds a knife which allows its bearer the capability of "cutting entries into countless other worlds." [Random House] Is the dream my metaphorical knife? If so, I want to hold it in my hand, honed to a keen edge.

Desire

Let me exist, for a time, on the beach just below these cliffs, in this ocean-green light. On canvas. With gauzy edges. No schedule, no cold, no worry. And no shoes.

Criminal, Redux

A year ago I blogged about my limited contact, thirty+ years ago, with the Green River Murderer. (Here's a link to that piece.) I opened the Seattle Times this morning to, once again, his reviled face: he's confessed to yet another murder, a woman whose bones were discovered just last month. And yet it's his mother whose face I see, she who made my life -- at age 18, 19, 20 -- a particular kind of hell. (He's about the age his mother was when I worked with her.)

A while back while dining out, Paul and I struck up a conversation with a woman who was dining, alone, beside us. She was a psychiatrist with the Washington State Department of Corrections, and this man (whose name I'll not utter) is one of her patients. Needless to say, the conversation heated up at that moment. Apparently, he sees himself as a celebrity, and struts around before her when they are in session asking, repeatedly, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"

What really gets me though is that this beast receives counseling, compliments of the State of Washington. Counseling? WHAT??!! Gee. I wonder how that's working for him. Sure hope he can work out all those mommy issues.

Anyway, I'd prefer to never see his face, anywhere, again.

There's an argument for not going to Hawaii in the middle of winter because re-entry is quite possibly worse than not going at all, but I'm not going to pursue that argument, because, in spite of mid-February malaise and airplane air it IS worth it. (I'm not sure if that all makes sense but who cares.)

Quiet at work, by myself. Melinda is off to Philadelphia to accumulate a year's worth of orders. Check out her current blog post here.

Having grown up in a large family, I want and need a lot of people around, most of the time. I know there are others who, having experienced the same early familial hubbub as me who crave alone time, but not me, or not so often. So it's just been me and the cat in the Wee Glass Factory aka Melinda's house. Come visit! Today was the first day of the Philly show, and early reports look good. I'll post pics when I can; no new ones available yet. The new work is literally hot out of the "kitchen kiln". But there are some real beauties!

nine things more-or-less related to today

1. The average adult human heart weighs about 10 ounces.

2. I once gave a poetry reading on Valentine's Day, and only read poems that contained the word "love". Fourteen poems. Paul was there -- we'd only just begun to date -- and the reading was hosted by one of my bakery customers with whom I'd gone out a few times.

3. When I was newly widowed, I received, at the bakery, a bouquet of tulips with a card signed "from one of your admirers".

4. I've always coveted those lapel pins with an outline of a heart in red rhinestones.

5. Heart-shaped, iced sugar-cookies are sublime.

6. My son Nelson, at age four, for shoes wore only a pair of red cowboy boots.

7. Those old valentines, where you had to cut out and glue the envelopes? Bad idea.

8. Valrhona 85% Bittersweet Dark Chocolate + a glass of Ruby Port = Heaven.

9. When I say "Happy VD" I want to hear you clap.

Even better than the road to Hana....

....and less crowded is the Kahekili Highway in West Maui, where the "highway" is indeed one lane most of the way, razor-narrow one lane, mirror-scraping-rocks one lane. The landscape is entirely different than anywhere else on the island, more wind-scrubbed by the wide-open waters of the Pacific, plants and trees hugging the ground. It's cattle-country, and hunting country. Red dirt country. It actually reminded me a lot of the sodden coastal West of Ireland, but with heat.

There is a single village of a dozen or so houses, nestled in a steamy valley --


-- where an old bus anchored to the cliffside serves up deep-fried hot dogs and mahi mahi & chips --


A bit further down the road, a banana bread stand sold mini loaves, still warm, complete with a plastic knife for slicing....


My favorite sights, though, were the fruit stands, unattended, with a jar for payment: the honor system:








This felt more like an authentic Maui, with taro plantings and chickens wandering, no hurry. The resort scene is a world unto itself, fascinating to observe, relaxing and a kick to be a part of. But today I entered into an older world, minus a single gas station or mini-mart. (No Starbucks!) And imagine this: no cell phone service. Remote? Indeed. But with a luxury of breathing space that one is hard-pressed to find in the land of multi-lane roads and five-bar phone service.

Yum

Living in fish heaven here. Except for some bits of bacon in my salad last night and a pig taco, I've been practicing piscivorism. No, not some tropical golden-idol worship, but the worship of fish: ahi, ono, mahi mahi, crab, shrimp. Hot temps make me crave it. Seared, macadamia-crusted, pan-roasted: bring it on. Still on the list: poke (po-kay) -- a raw fish salad.

There's only been one dish I've not devoured: a pohole fern salad. Overloaded with the Hawaiian variety of the fiddlehead, very bitter, with nothing in the dressing to balance the flavors. I did my best, really hating to waste food, but after chawing my way through half of the large plateful, I pushed it aside. Felt like a horse with a feedbag.

And last night's dessert was a swooner. If Paul hadn't also ordered it, I would've been forced to erect the Portable Electric Dessert Fence: white chocolate filled malasadas (Portuguese doughnuts) with coffee-caramel dipping sauce. Sublime, divine, glorious, etc.....

I know. It's gotta end at some point. Forty-eight hours from now I'll once again be enduring Seattle's perpetual winter gloom. But that still leaves plenty of time for more pleasures of the plate/palate!

Road to Hana

Known for its 600 switchbacks and 52 single-lane bridges, the road to Hana, on the northeast end of Maui, adjacent to the West Maui Forest Reserve, is situated in the last undeveloped swathe of land on the island, and the most remotely situated region in the state of Hawaii. Driving it yesterday, strip malls quickly gave way to sugar cane fields, which faded into vine-strung tropical rainforest where rainbow-bark eucalyptus trees and banyan trees alternated with impenetrable groves of bamboo. African tulip trees towered above, their mammoth crimson blossoms -- flame tongues -- clustered at branch-tips. I was in fern heaven: entire hillsides and banks of lush, giant ferns. Trying to capture any of it on film seemed hopeless: you just have to go there yourself.

Luckily, I was not behind the wheel. Paul, trained on the back lanes of Ireland, is a pro at narrow winding roads -- more than once he proclaimed "This is NOT a one-lane bridge!" Nonetheless, they were narrow, and most drivers perceived them as such, and the ever-accumulating quantity of them -- coupled with the fact that you have to go back on the same road (unless you have a 4WD) -- makes for some dizzying travel. I just did the math: 1200 sharp turns and 104 skinny bridges. Here's a detail from the map:

I guess that makes anyone who drives this road and back in a single day a saint. I hereby cannonize St. Paul the Husband. Down on your knees, heathens.

At a rest stop about a dozen feral cats made begging rounds among the pick-nickers. When a man threw a scrap to one of the cats, at least a dozen feral hens came sprinting out from the bushes -- and I mean sprinting -- and one snatched up the bit well before the cat was able to take possession. These were some tough old hens; easy to see who's at the top of the, uh, pecking order here!

We stopped for Kalua pig tacos at Up in Smoke, an open-air BBQ stand situated among a cluster of shacks in a clearing carved out of the jungle. Always on the lookout for ruins of a sort, I spied this car back in the weeds, with a smashed windshield, littered with African tulip blossoms, with a coleus growing out of the wipers.....




Most of all I was enchanted with the bamboo groves: I could live happily for the rest of my life surrounded by bamboo. I love the speed at which it strikes upwards to the sun, I love its scent, the texture of the green stalks, the sound of those thousands of leaves fluttering in a breeze. I love that it sends its rhizomes out horizontally beneath the surface of the earth, a secret that will not be controlled. I've grown it myself in large oak casks, but this just seems wrong: a plant in a cage that belongs in the wild.

We drove back in waning sun, left behind the black sand beaches, the glistening black crabs scuttling across lava rocks, the waterfalls, the 52 single-lane bridges. The brazen hens. Too soon civilization reappeared: a yoga studio, a coffee shop, a gallery. A three mile rush-hour traffic jam, luckily going the other way. Safeway. K-Mart. Wal-Mart. Home Depot. Had to remind ourselves that we still were in paradise, even though the road to Hana and its 600 switch-backs was, alas, behind us.

On Lahaina Bay

Fifty-foot sailboat, humback whales breaching, slapping their flukes. A mom-whale swam directly under the boat when her baby got too close to us; she quickly headed him off. We were able to see most of her when she arched up out of the water: spectacular. It's a thrill unlike any other. The first mate said that she's about as long as the boat and weighs three times the boat. No whale photos -- I didn't want to be fussing with the camera and then miss the actual experience.



But in the lulls between sightings, the horizon beckoned, as did the West Maui Mountains, and Lanai and Molokai in the distance. This Hipstamatic lens (on my iPhone camera) I'm using takes the shot and then reverses a part of it and superimposes it on the photo, and it's different every time, with some pretty thrilling results. Today it seemed to capture where my head is in this exotic landscape: a shifted perspective, images layering themselves one upon another in my consciousness, and hazy at the edges. Sometimes up is down, and vice versa --

But then, that's what a vacation is supposed to do, I think: shift the brain into a new place, shake up the vision a bit, open ones eyes to a changed landscape, where there are colors whose names you could have never imagined before this day, this place, this moment --

What I Have Resorted To

I keep starting blog entries then deleting them....still sponging up the local scene, the upwards temperature shift, taking note, as per usual when I'm away from my home setting, of the many nuances in human behavior. Primarily, I've noticed that most "holiday makers" (as they say in Ireland), or more appropriately, "hula-day makers", fall into a few categories:

1. First timers, characterized by an obvious goggle-eyed expression and an indeterminate stride.
2. Honey-mooners, goggle-eyed for each other, bound at the hips.
3. The "let's give this one last chance" couples, silent and bored at dinner, blankly staring into their pink-umbrella-topped Mai Tais. Wife almost always with a flower in her hair. Husband generally agitated. Loosen up, folks!
4. The retirees. Most conversations I've overheard from this group concern their most recent cruise."Last month we were in Bora Bora blah blah blah." More like Boring Boring.
5. The pros: they know where they're going, they walk chin-out, chest-forward, they laugh too loud and boom their voices, know all the "rules".
6. People like us, for whom I'm always on the lookout. (I like to believe we defy a category, but I may be mistaken.)


Last year, my first time here, I was in a daze the first few days, and was amazed that I was surrounded by what seemed to be Professional Huladay-Makers. Where had I been all my life?! (I'd been eking out a living, scraping up the rent, inventing a dinner from Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard, penning a poem or two when the muse graced me with her appearance.)

---

At Safeway, rambuton (a tropical fruit related to the lychee):


Late afternoon sun viewed from the lounge chair --


Paul's and my alter-ego silhouettes:

Zero to Paradise in Eight Hours

From this:


To this:


More later.
Gotta get my hula on.

Evanescent

I ran across this sentence that my son R. wrote as part of a spelling assignment when he was in 5th grade (the spelling word was "brief"):


We were golden for a brief moment.

---

And by Robert Frost:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

---

My advice to you:

Be golden today.

This Particular Harmony

I don't remember the song, but we were listening to a Chet Baker CD at work today, all going about our separate jobs -- Melinda resizing imagery, R. making photo-masks, I was packing pieces for the big wholesale show coming up -- when I suddenly became aware of the fact that all three of us were singing along, each with our various vocal talents (or lack thereof!).

There was not much that was conscious or even self-conscious about it. We were more just part of the symphony of background noises (rolls of packing tape unfurling, the click-click-click of the exposure mechanism, footsteps on the wood floor, the heave of heavy boxes, the rustle & crackle of stiff sheets of plastic, the printer spitting out a new transparency, glass vessels clinking into each other) but we were singing! On the job!

There are few delights more delicious, I truly believe, than feeling a freedom to sing in the presence of others. Not to perform, but to just let the music move the soul forward into a melody of its own, with no reward other than the joy of feeling ones voice lifted into the atmosphere of the moment.

Wait!I recall the song -- here it is (minus the glass-girls-chorus):


(Thinking back, it's not the first time this has happened. I recall the group of us singing gospel along with The Blind Boys of Alabama, as well as I Feel Pretty from Westside Story. I believe we've done this -- are you ready? -- time after time....)

Sometimes everything in the universe lines up just right.

The other day, Melinda, my boss, came back after running errands. C. and I were working down in the studio, and had left the iPod blasting a Johnny Cash playlist in the house. Melinda stepped into the house, and there was the momentary between-songs silence. Wondering where we all were she called out, "Hello?" And just at that moment, Walk the Line queued up where Johnny begins, in his deeply resonant voice, "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash!" --answering Melinda's query.