August 17, 2004

I have officially broken my blogging streak, but I'm not going to let that stop me from getting back on the write-everyday horse.

The flight home Sunday night was delayed by three and a half hours, so I didn't get home until 1am. Knowing I had to be at work at 6am, I just couldn't blog. I am weak. And then last night I chose sleeping over writing. Again.

The delay at the airport was a good thing, though. I love hanging out at airports and watching the people. I think about why they're traveling, where they're going, who's waiting for them at the other end. Or who isn't. And why not. I love the power of the planes taking off and landing, the over-priced gift shops, the food joints with people reading or working on laptops while they eat. There are people with tattoos, dressed in crumpled ill-fitting clothes, and people wearing the best suits. Some dress for comfort, some still dress especially well for travel.

I even enjoy studying how people respond to the new security measures. The men who protest about taking off their shoes, the mothers trying to juggle four children and all the little bits and pieces that go with them: blankets, dolls, gameboys, books, pillows, snacks, drinks.

I’m much more alert at airports than I used to be. I evaluate people more for hidden motives. I decide who is an undercover Federal Air Marshall (or who is IS, Kate). I try to avoid racism, but it’s hard not to give an extra glance to a young middle-eastern man traveling alone who looks nervous. Then I think, “I’d look nervous too if everyone in the airport were scrutinizing me.”

On a completely different note, today my older brother is 44 years old. My oldest brother turned 45 at the end of July, and my sister turned 36 a week ago. I'm next in the line-up. I used to joke that by the time they got to me, my parents were out of money for birthday presents.

August 14, 2004

I'm at my mother's house in Hemet, California. I've called this town the mobile home capital of the West, but I may have to change my opinion of it. Last night, my mother & sister gave me a tour of the newly opened Club House and facilities at the housing development where my mom lives. It's downright palatal. It's like a Palm Springs resort, only a tad cooler.

There's a marble-tiled high-ceilinged lounge with an enormous fireplace, a bistro area, a massive ballroom, a billiards room, a library, a gym with top-of-the-line equipment, and a game room. I think the idea for the last room is poker or chess, but the way I think, I see "Game Room" and I picture four or five wrinkled, stooped octogenarian sitting around with cranberry juice and goldfish crackers at midnight croaking things to one another like, "Okay, so you see this manor house guarded by three Orcs. What do you do, Violet?" "I pull out my broadsword and charge the place, Vernon!"

My favorite perk here is the Theater. It's a private movie theater with a big screen and a DVD player. Every seat is an extremely comfortable stuffed chair with a cup holder built into the right armrest. They show a different movie every week (this week it's "I am Sam"), but if no one is using the room, you can bring your own DVD and have a private screening. Between this theater and the incredible palm-tree surrounded courtyard, state-of-the-art BBQs and huge swimming pool, I'm thinking this is the place to be if you're 55 or older and don't mind living in Hemet. The hot tub is nice too. I estimate you can fit about thirty-two well-sized senior citizens in it easily. Some people's built-in backyard pools are smaller.

Today we slept late, had home-made eggs Florentine and coffee for breakfast (after I did a short jog), and then I payed my bills and we swam. For lunch, we had Chinese food. It had a very soporific effect. My sister and I napped. My mother played solitaire on her computer, and my daughter read all of Espiranza Rising.

I think the three of them are watching the Olympics now. Television, which does not exist as a medium in our house, has already cast its evil spell on R. Maybe I'll blog about WHY I HATE TV (by a former addict) soon.

On a lighter note, Spellcheck has once again brightened my day with its highly-evolved sense of humor. I just quickly checked this post, and I knew I'd said "yes" to fixing something I didn't mean to fix, so I reviewed once again.

I'm glad I did. I wouldn't want word to get out that the Four Seasons at Hemet has "a bigotry area" instead of a Bistro.

August 13, 2004

This weekend R. and I are flying to visit my mom and sister in Southern California. I'll leave R. there for a week with Grandma then will drive down next weekend with S. to spend a few more days and head north again before they start school. The summer is almost over. S. will have one more week of preschool and then we will have reached the milestone of having both kids in elementary school. At the same school. Dropped off at the same place, at the same time M-F.

Kindergarten is half-day. We have no idea where S. will go for after-school care. I might even have to line up baby-sitters at first. This may seem amazingly irresponsible of me - not having this figured out yet - but it is dependent in part on the other Kindergarten parents at our Charter School who are trying to organize a co-op or hire someone to do on-site afterschool care. This is one responsibility I'm not stepping up to take hold of. Yet.

The charter school, although good in many ways, is notorious for its poor communication skills. I could tell lots of stories to illustrate this, but it wouldn't be charitable. And I have other, better stories to work on anyway...

August 12, 2004

This year marks the centennial of my maternal grandmother's birth.

Allison Dorsey Hale Fadeley was born October 13, 1904 and died July 14, 1996. She was my mother's mother, the relative with whom I was closest. We shared a love of books, of education and English comedy, of coffee, and sour dough toast with red current jelly. I still miss her terribly.

The last few years she was alive, her sight was very poor due to macular degeneration. I would come to her house about once a week and help her with her bills and writing checks for charity (she was quite a philanthropist). We would talk about religion and politics and biographies and the day-to-day annoyances that came with growing older.

After her vision failed, Nana’s hunger for books had to be satisfied by books on tape and by me reading to her. She had me read the entire Mapp and Lucia series by E.F. Benson. She also had me tape myself reading it so she could listen to it while I was gone. So I have something like 30 tapes of me reading books to my grandmother. The tapes also captured her coughing, the long-dead dog’s tags clinking together while he scratched himself, and us laughing at the story and making random comments to one another. It’s a strange thing.

I also have her last driver’s license and her tax returns from the 1930’s, and pictures of her in front of a little plane she flew in sometime around 1920. I have cards and letters from the many close friends she had all over the country, and tapes from an oral history she and I worked on.

I’m transcribing the tapes. I hope to put them on paper and print it out for my mother and brothers and sister in time for the 100 year anniversary of her birth. Maybe later a fuller biography will come, but for now, setting down what she had to say about her life is enough.

August 10, 2004

Is there some reason that we can't all wear sari's and salwar kameez if we want to?

The day I gather my courage and buy such an outfit and wear it, I will be declaring independence from the opinions of others. Some of you may already not give a fig about what other people say, but I am not so thick-skinned or self-confident.

Indian clothes are beautiful, and practical and comfortable. (I think.)

And I know I should be able to wear what I want without caring, but I'm just not quite there yet.

I'm working on it.

When you see me in a sari, you'll know I've arrived.

August 9, 2004

I'm trying to feel no pressure to be brilliant, witty and insightful just because the people I care most about in the world (and whose opinion I value most highly) are reading this blog. This should help get the pressure out of my system: blah blah blah. There.

(I'm really writing this Tuesday mid-morning from work, in between telling people we can save their RAID arrays but that it will cost them over $20,000. And I must quit and post.)

August 8, 2004

All the extra sleep I got last night is now wasted and I'm going to start the week in a deficit again, but it was fun to stay up and watch Wasabi one more time. Without subtitles, so I had to work hard on both my French and Japanese.

We finished the gravel for the courtyard today. Or at least, everything we could without figuring out the fountain and a few other details.

D.'s mom came up for a while and told some very interesting stories about growing up in France and why her mother and older sister stopped speaking to one another. Family history. You gotta love it.

Who just tried to call me 15 minutes ago, though? Hmmm.....
You can try again, but I am going to bed now. Really.

August 7, 2004

Today after R. had her riding lessons and I picked up S. from a playdate, we went next door and met our neighbor's friends from Montreal and swam and chatted. They are nice people, kind people who are bright and friendly and have a good sense of humor. To see a couple who obviously love one another and their children, and to see them play with their children (two girls, 11 and 13) is very refreshing. It reminded me again of what I want with my family.

Tonight the local gym hosted a Parent's Night Out. For $25, we were able to take the kids to play in a fun safe environment from 6:50-10:20pm while we had a chance to be alone together. (With the added benefit that I didn't have to clean the house for a babysitter.)

Dan and I were able to talk about what's working and what's not working in our lives, and we had a good sushi dinner to boot. The girls came home exhausted.

August 6, 2004

Here's how you'll know I'm cheating: the time of this post is 11:59pm 8/6/04, which means I really am posting early morning 8/7/04.

What would I do without the Writer's Group? So nice to have accountability and an ear and two other sets of eyes, and so nice to hear other writers' work develop.

J. - good luck with the book treatment!
S. - good luck with contacting the PD!
(Go ladies, go!)

I, in the meantime (who am strung out on decaf mochas and on too much talking about myself) will research the market, work on short stories, work on poems - chapbook competition, deadline the end of this month - and in general try to stay focused (focus, Julia) on my work.

I have a drawer of rejection letters, but they're old. At the very least, I should update my collection of no-thank-you's from editors. Things don't get published if they sit in a drawer, and certainly they don't get published if they are never brought to fruition by busily typing fingers.

August 5, 2004

Can't post. Busy writing. Falling asleep too, but still trying at any rate to work. Perhaps I could wake myself up by writing about whale cheese, but it's hard to say, so for now, I'm sticking to the story I'm working on.

But I'm asleep. The nonsense words are starting to come. For example, if you skip past continents to Icleland-ica, the grease on the tire iron will shadow the pyramid under your breeze. See? I'm friggin' asleep, I tell you. The above was not some witty example of how I might sound while asleep. It's the real scary thing.

Maybe I can get up at 4 and write.....?

And the cry went up: "Whale Cheese!"

August 4, 2004

It's late again. The night sneaks up on me, daily catches me out.

I honestly think I need two days. One for work and family, and one for me. For writing and walking or running or just cleaning out my wallet. I mean, how many receipts can one keep?

Here's another neurosis I'll expose: I used to keep my Safeway grocery receipts so I could make a log of money spent on groceries per month. I long ago stopped that practice, but now I keep the receipts in my purse so I can take them home and recycle them. Because they're paper. And because I don't want to believe Penn & Teller's Bullsh**t episode about how recycling really does the planet no good. However, since the Safeway receipts also have my name on them, before I put them in my recycle pile, I rip out the part of the receipt that has my name. And that part goes into our little garbage bin of paper to be shredded.

I think of the "to be shredded" bin (really a nice wooden box D. made years ago) as a temporary pile, but in reality, I rarely take care of it, so it's the place any savvy identity thief should go directly to for easy criminal convenience since it contains a ton of personal information like account numbers on receipts and our signatures.

So another thing I could do in my second daily day would be shred that stuff.

HOWEVER

Since I do not have the luxury of two days per day, and since (as I've already pointed out), I don't like to spend too much time window shopping when I can't buy the item in question, less whining is called for.

And, as I'm just starting to see (thanks to Clare for the book that points this out), less thinking is what's really required.

I have a very very noisy brain. And an interesting personal relationship with the snooze alarm, too. I am the only one this happens to? Because the snooze alarm goes off (more than once) while I'm in a some almost waking state, my brain creates all sorts of wildly interesting explanations for what the alarm really represents. For example, I distinctly recall once understanding with brilliantly clear insight that if I hit the alarm button just right, I could get a few more ounces of sleep per minute, and as long as I didn't abuse the privilege, the time would not be too great for me to sleep another pound or so.

This morning I reminded myself that the snooze button's name was really Lolly, and that we'd been friends for a long time, so I could hit her once every seven minutes and she wouldn't mind. After the 3rd time, I remembered that her last name was Gagging.

This makes sense because every time I hit her, she shut up.

Please don't bother to post to say that I'm sleep deprived, because I know all of you who post are probably getting less sleep than I am.

August 3, 2004

Amazing. Somehow, I'm posting again. That three weeks to form a habit concept seems right on. Today makes three weeks since Julia challenged me to blog daily, and even though five minutes ago, I was sure I couldn't do it, I'm now writing. Again.

Kate has also presented something of a challenge by suggesting I submit something to Strange Horizons or Ideomancer.

Let's see what I have to offer in the way of old stuff [putting on my marketing hat, now]:

Hearth - the story of a childless couple who inherit an off-the-grid house that has a life of its own. Speculative fiction, maybe.

Rista's story - about a young women sentenced to exile after avenging a relative's death. She comes from a bi-racial, bi-cultural planet and is dropped, along with other criminals, on an "unpopulated" planet in the middle of nowhere. I don't even have a title for this one yet and I wrote it years and years ago. Science fiction/alien story - light on the science. Too long to publish as a short story, though. More like a novela unless I can tighten it even more.

What's Carried on the Wind (needs new title) - the story of a woman who can literally smell death, but only at specific times in her life, and how she learns to cope with that particular "talent." Speculative fiction.

Something from Quest (aka the Rowan story, aka Senior Thesis)? Apart from the fact that the main character must (thank you Anne McCaffery) be renamed - I think she is Mara now - is there anything I can pull from this? In this world, there are empaths and technocrats, badger-like emotional bloodhounds, wise women and refugees in hiding in the heart of the city. (Do you remember it, Clare?) This would be sort of like fantasy, but not in any high fantasy tradition. I'll leave the real stuff for Julia.

Maggie's story - near-future tale about a girl who works as a sorter at a thrift store and who finds an experimental gadget that acts to motivate its wearer to do whatever they might not otherwise be motivated to do. For better or worse. Seems like a good idea that is too "nice" and watered down, in retrospect. Could be so much darker & edgier. Could be really disturbing fiction if I let it.

Newer stuff:

Rock Garden - a woman going through a divorce takes her son to a mobile home park in the California desert. The son becomes convinced that the entire park is populated by aliens and the mother must try to strengthen his grasp of reality even while her own is faltering.

Trained as I was - could-be creepy Halloween story about a father who, on the way home from trick-or-treating, leaves his two young daughters standing on the side of the road so he can go investigate a mysterious circle of chanting people in a nearby field. (Thanks Dad.) I've been reworking this and other "family" stories.

Not yet written:

Whale cheese for Julia.

The story of the couple who bring their baby home from the hospital only to find that he has no belly button.

On that note, I think I'm going to go to sleep now.

August 2, 2004

It's Monday night. Every Monday night, D. goes to his friend's house & games until around 2am. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, it's his chance to get out and blow off steam and he's a happier person for it, and it's certainly better than having him go watch a football game and drink great quantities of beer like some men do. Also it means that I can (and do) get a night of my choice out whenever I might need one.

On the other hand, it means that he's trashed every Tuesday and (I think) gets sick more often because he gets so little sleep once a week. I also feel that it makes him an enabler to his best friend's pathological reality-evasion. And I'm bitter that his friend never comes here. And I'm often suspicious about that, too. Why don't they game here? In our garage? Even once in a while? Blech. Blech. Blech. Excuse the ugly emotions boiling beneath the surface, please.

More of a problem than the others, his Monday night gaming session means that I single parent every Monday night & if anything comes up I might want or need to do, I pay a babysitter so I can go out. Tonight, for example, I went to an ADHD Overview at Kaiser so I could learn more about R.'s attention challenges and what they might be and what we can do about them. D. also cares about what might be going on with R., but it's Monday, so tonight I represented both of us.
It was a very interesting overview, taught by an obviously highly experienced, compassionate, bright doctor. It's pretty clear that R fits most of the categories and behavior patterns associated with attention issues. But there are other things going on, too, and D. and I are so intent on addressing everything WITHOUT medication, well..I know there's lots more to learn about how we'll do that.

On a completely different note, I think I'm going to get a new car. Soon. I just can't wait to own a hybrid any longer, and I've found I do not need the mini-SUV like I thought I did. I had started to make this decision anyway, and then I got a call out of the blue from my sister-in-law saying she had a friend who is looking to buy a slightly-used mini-SUV.

I think only an idiot ignores synchronicity.

August 1, 2004

I'm cheating. I'm posting early morning 08/02 but am backdating to call this 8/1/04's post, because I'll post again tonight.

The party went well. I know this because when I asked D., "How do you think they party went?" He said, "It was great!" And then he gave R. his fake psychopath google-eyed glare and said, "How do you think it went?" until she stammered, "Fantastic!"

D. knows that even if the guests arrive before I unload the groceries and while there is still a stack of dirty dishes on the counter and we have not disinfected the stinky dog pen (all of which was true in this case), of even if children melt down left and right and parents fight and things get broken (none of which happened, fortunately) - he knows that no matter how dismal a failure a party we host is, if he says the party went well, I'll believe him.

There were 8 children between 4 and 10 (including our two), and 11 adults (including us). Seven of the guests were neighbors, two were S's preschool teachers (current & past). D's father was the only relative who made it - and since he (and my oldest brother) have the same birthday as S., we were celebrating his day too.

There were no party games. I'd bought some "fun foam" for the kids to make things with, and that kept them very entertained. They just played, apart from that. And we had cake. Giant Care Bears on a Sugar Rainbow cake. Let me know if you'd like some - we have extra left over and it's going to take all my will power - plus this statement in writing in my blog - for me not to have any more of it.

July 31, 2004

It shouldn't take 4 hours of shopping to put on a small casual birthday party. Should it?

I hate shopping, and I always have. In particular, I don't like to window shop. I figure, if I can't have it, I don't want to waste my time or pine away and think about whether I'd like to have it. Half of the time, when I'm buying myself a "treat," I walk around the store with it for a while, doing other shopping, and then I put it back before I buy it. I ask myself, "Do I need this, or do I just want it?" Until the last few years, if I didn't really need it, I didn't get it. And I also never bought anything that wasn't on sale. Now I am less of a bargain hunter, but I still don't like to shop.

Part of my dislike for shopping may be a mild agoraphobia - agora being the Greek for a gathering place (like the marketplace), appropriately enough. I'm not so good surrounded by crowds of consumers. I have the same problem at amusement parks -a different type of consumer, but the same idea. Crowds of travelers I seem to be just fine with, so the subway in Japan should be okay. I think what makes a difference is whether the people are moving with a purpose or wandering aimlessly with a shopping basket and/or a glazed look on their faces like body snatcher victims.

And who likes Costco's stacks of heavy goods towering over their heads? We just live too close to the San Andreas fault for me to think warehouse shopping is a good idea. I for one do not want to die under a stack of Kirkwood branded canned goods after a strong rattle.

Another reason I hate shopping is the sense of waste. I distinctly remember many times when I would walk into a department store and see stacks and racks of new things - thousands and thousands of items- bright, and cheerful, and ready to buy. So much stuff. Who needs that much? How many of those things will the stores really sell? What happens to the things they don't sell? It has made me almost physically sick in the past. Now, if I think about it, it makes me want to never shop again.

Are these the suppressed emotions from a past life in a third world country, or what? I don't know. I just know that I'm no fun to shop with. R. deserves a medal after spending those 4 hours with me today. Poor kid. Good thing she likes to shop.

July 30, 2004

Sophie's having a birthday party Sunday, which means I expect to spend tomorrow cleaning up the back yard and otherwise trying to make things presentable - mostly for the sake of her few little friends who might be coming here who haven't been here before. I almost don't care what they think, but it is gratifying to tidy and bring order to things, especially when they're in a state that's so far gone that the change will be especially noticeable.

D's mother will probably come and his father certainly will. His sister might. The family dynamics are not fun, especially since his parents do not speak to one another at all, and his sister only exchanges the briefest of greetings with their mother - and that's only a development that's fairly recent.

But we'll all survive it. I think I will try for the second night in a row to go to bed before 10pm. I was trying to read earlier this evening and fell asleep doing that. Which is nothing new, but still, maybe I'll actually listen to my body for a change tonight and say I've done enough for today.

Yesterday morning my mother called, obviously upset, to tell me that one of my sister's two dogs had died. My sister is single, and her dogs have been so central a part of her life, and were so inseparable from one another, that this is a real blow. Her other dog isn't eating, but J. is keeping a close eye on her, taking her to work with her today, etc. It's hard.

I have no skill with words at all tonight; I'm only blogging out of habit.
God willing, tomorrow will be a better day...

Deep-Sea Divers

 
sometimes
we are deep-sea divers
and blind things leached of color
slide past our reach

we wear gloves and gear,
carry air as carapaces
on our backs, and know
ourselves beyond
our element

the pressure
of canyons
below us
is great,
but
the weight
of what lies
above
would
suffocate.

7/29/04 rbp

 

 

No Warning

The next door neighbors are moving. This should not bother me, because ever since they moved in almost two years ago, they have kept very much to themselves. I know they have a baby, because when Susan goes quickly in and out of her garage in her van, I can see a baby's car seat in her car, and once I saw the actual little guy himself.  Susan moved back to town from Tahoe to be pregnant and give birth and (ostensibly) to raise her child in a good family-oriented neighborhood. Her new husband (who has already raised at least one child) has been amiable, but in that "he always seemed like such a nice guy before we found out he was a wife-beater" way, and D. and I were saying to one another a few days ago that we disliked and distrusted him.

(And now I'm also paranoid that he has bugged our house and just because of that less-than-charitable eavesdropped conversation, they're moving. But that's just how my mind works.)

But here's what really bothers me to no end about them leaving - besides the fact that I'm concerned it has something to do with us bringing down the value of the neighborhood with our "do-it-yourself" demolition/reconstruction aspirations - as we've been working on our front yard, Mike has been talking to us about the project, and hanging out with D. to gaze thoughtfully at the enormous piles of dirt the way men sometimes do toward the end of the afternoon.  Just two days ago, I said, "Yeah, it's a mess now, but it'll be a pretty nice courtyard when we're done. You guys'll have to come on over and have lemonade or margaritas or something when it's finished."  And he said in his amiable-but-not-entirely-so voice, "Yeah, that sounds really good." Then we all had a nice chuckle and everything was friendly and right with the world in our tiny corner of suburbia.

And then today, I pull into our driveway and see a realtors sign in their front yard.  What's up with that? How long had he known they were going to leave? Why didn't he mention it? I mean, really - what's up with that?!!

Here's the thing, though.

How different is what I feel about what he's done from what people in my church might feel about what I've done? What kind of warning did I give them? A little, maybe, to some people. But I also had conversations with people after I was thinking about leaving, and I didn't mention anything to them. And these were people who probably felt they knew me a lot better than I ever thought I knew Mike. 

Hmmm. Gives me something to think about.

But first, sleep.

July 27, 2004

Another poem below- this one not mine. And yes, it's a bit of a cop-out because I really am dead beat and don't want to go to bed only to get up in 2 hours to meet this (now) self-imposed daily writing deadline.

This is where my blog's name originates, and it's high time I credited Mr. Eliot, who is one of my favorite poets in spite of any reason he shouldn't be.

Tonight I went to a lounge downtown and heard 4 local poets read as part of the Marin County traveling Poetry series. I knew two of the poets, and they were in fine form. The other two were new to me, one of them quite good. Many of the poems were about simply daily things seen through the eyes of the artist. I like to read those things, and I like to write them. But I also like work that is imbued with a depth and some allusion (even an ironic one) to the heart of the human condition. Eliot was good at that.

 

 
The Journey of the Magi

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For the journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death,
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

    -- T. S. Eliot

July 26, 2004

D. did a tremendous amount of work this morning on the house. We now have a dumpster where there was a mountain of dirt, and two piles of gravel in the scooped out area for the courtyard. He also washed off the driveway and the mess of mud in the street. What a guy.

Something I wrote for him a few years ago, at a time when I was writing exuberant love poems in honor of characters from role playing games...


How you don’t inspire me

You should have been a fire sign,
poor man, though you can’t help it
if I’m not swung in dance, held fast by passion,
dizzy, blind, flung like comet’s hair.
(I know it’s not that you don’t care.)
We sit like muck at the bottom of the pond,
settled stuff to make gardens green and plenty.
Stuck in domestic clockwork, patient sprockets leaning
into one another and away
to circle back, click together,
grind and grove and push hard at going nowhere far,
but going firmly, going well.
You should have been a fire sign, or maybe water, even air.
Yes, even air, even anything but earth. You and your dirt,
flakey with minerals, thick and dark and patient like loam.