Los Alamos, NM

Important Notice

These items of laundry are to be eliminated:
lace scarves
fancy table clothes
curtains
valances
Also, we shall discontinue
touch up of flatwork
turning up of french cuffs
binding of blankets
loosening of pieces in damp wash
and other unessential services and trade practices
in the interest of maximum utilization of manpower
and the adoption of further economies in production
in view of the Critical labor shortage in the laundry industry
because so many of our young men
are shooting strangers across both oceans
and choking in pools of their own blood
and never coming home to the women they married
and the babies they sprouted
just before shipping out
to slaughter and be slaughtered
in the name of Democracy
Liberty
and Justice for all.
Also, we request that you discontinue sending socks.

Small red heart
you are bleached white and wept blue
Floating among these echoing walls
on the haunting melodies of forgotten songs
on eagle's cries and frog's moans.
You are lost on the softly sighing wind
And you evaporate into a throbbing echo.
You rise in this winding white cathedral
to expand like a luminous cloud.
You can never, ever touch the brilliant blue ceiling.
You can never taste the whiteness of the cathedral walls.
Certainly the sun is not yours.
Heart, you are certainly lost here
But billowing and rising in the midday heat,
you become expansive, and brilliant
beyond your small red start.
Now, wept white and bleached blue
You are gigantic as never before-
like the pebble underfoot, which, falling
is shattered into sand
and is embraced by a wild wind,
and swept away to a distant lake shore
Where it founds an ant colony
That multiplies into a mighty empire
A mountain of tiny white grains
motored by passionately racing ants.

Now there's no chatter.
Now there's the hush of falling water
and the whisper of the wind through the trees
orange rocks stacked up in a frozen display
at this brief instant
this single snapshot
out of Earth's lengthy book.
I'm sorry for my careless moments
but I've tried to learn care from them.
It's easier when I'm quiet,
drowsing to the sound of falling water.
I become aware of the stacked-up curves of my spine
and my soft arms
and the whispering dry air
that pulls in through the shadows of my nose and mouth
disappearing into the caves of my body
and refreshing my invisible blood
to a brilliant crimson
which streams to every toe, every
shadow, to my soft arms,
to the waterfall of my spine.
I try to take great care
with these soft thoughts of awareness,
and let them flow through my veins,
refreshing me invisibly,
reminding me constantly-
That even when there's chatter,
my breath is just the whisper of wind through the trees
and my pulse is just the hush of falling water
and my body is a tumble of rocks
stacked up
for a brief instant
a single snapshot
out of a book that seems to never end.

Ghost Ranch, NM

New Mexico! You remember me? Like an old hat? You never forgot the shape of my head. I wore you in enough weather. We endured rain and blazing sun together, burnt at bonfires, gleamed in the fullness of several moons. You remember me? I loved here, laughed with friends here, none alone as dear to me as you. I held them, and holding them I held you; I sweated on them, and sweating I dripped onto you; I sometimes cried when we said goodbye, sweet swift tears falling in fat drops and passing quickly like summer thunderstorms, and when such monsoons of joyful sorrow passed over my eyes, they wrinkled your dust for one instant before evaporating, before exploding, before passing triumphantly - like every trumpet-blaring sunset you conjured up for my nightly dessert. You can not help love the ground you have slept on.

What does my cool gray Seattle know of such wicked heat, this blaze which slackens your tendons and loosens your ego - this afternoon sun that drips sweat down the back of your neck - that clears you of winter's cuddly comforters and cobwebs, and strips you to your hot, muscled essence?

Are these things true of New Mexico, or only my idea of New Mexico?

Have I created my own mythology here, a labyrinth of rattlesnakes and pueblo latters? I have mostly been alone here, even surrounded by people; I have no one to back me up. I've come here so many times I'm not sure if I really see it!

But listen, this place is full of chirping crickets and singing birds, and out here alone is the least lonely I've ever been.

...

In New Mexico, I have a history with no history in it - I'm just a ruffling breeze through the summer leaves here. Dryness becomes me; constant consumption of water makes me even calmer and more fluidly moving; distance from my love and my friends makes me dark, remote, soft, and thoughtful. Once I wanted to be friends with the students, to be admired and to share my overwhelming wealth of stories - now I just want to facilitate their journey, make all their events and moments flow smoothly and easily, and then retreat into shade to listen to ruffling breeze in the summer leaves, and to diligently chirping birds. I'm so grateful to come back to this place that is home home without claiming me, without knowing anything about me (nothing but my existence), without causing me angst or longing. From 16 to 24 I've come here and known a different, quieter self, without anything to prove.






I've understood emptiness before. I wanted to know emptiness.








Sometimes I find myself trying to fill it again. Lately, since quitting my job and losing one of my classes, with such emptiness sweeping through my house again and blowing in such strangeness, I am forgetting to be grateful to it. I'm letting it frighten me. But having followed my intuition so far I have walked on a beautiful path. I shouldn't doubt where it has lead me. Even when it has led me to emptiness - of course, at this exact moment, when I come back here, to the hot harsh womb, to the brightness of clear, open desert.

Ghost Ranch, NM

Home is where hearts hang, where sunshine afternoons seem to go on forever on a calm blue-gray porch that slips and slides the hours, the direction of light slowly changes, the heat rises in my cheeks, going back inside for a drink, back out for a sigh, back in for a book, back out for a song, and the endless afternoon stretches on and on in my gentle mortal sense of what Heaven might be like: a sunny porch on an endless summer afternoon.

Somewhere in between the slight sweet sadness of coming and going, I wrote this:


It has something to do with leaving and something to do with coming back.

IDA Y VUELTA - GO and RETURN

What is the sense of opportunity missed, a self inserted into a person-shaped hole that does not fit anymore - or worse? - that does fit? Because all those potential lives start to stack up, including the ones you have already lived, for a short or interminably (it seemed then) long time. One can't help wonder, was there something else I could have, should have done here? Was there more to teach, more to learn, more to become?

The answer comes back: of course. Of course. You planted so many seeds here and then left them to grow wild. That tightrope walking solo I choreographed opened the door for Emma Grace's ecstatic dance. The bellydance collective I nurtured left Safi a dozen tambourines and a hollering shimmying inheritance. My teacher loves me like her own young self. There are trees I have and have not climbed.

But meanwhile, back in Seattle, the houses I've built are running wild in the sunshine, the peas are sprouting and surely tangling, shows are going on without me. More seeds lovingly and intentionally planted, and they also don't need me. They could and will grow on their own sunlight and gumption.

So to go home again begs the question: why did you leave? Why have you come back? Why did you leave your new home? What does it mean for something to be over?

What does it mean to kiss Adrien's softly sleeping lips?

It has something to do with death. It has something to do with love. Aileen once told me that "life is both constant loss and constant gain." I know the loss and gain, and I begin to really see "constant" - because this present moment is -so- sharp, and -so- constant. This very one now - all previous ones last, immediately new ones gained.

But I protest that "loss". I protest that "gain". As if we could "have" a moment, then as if we could "not have" it now. And if now "is" and those other moments "are not" then what are they?

Of course they -exist- because my present existence is chockful of them, of their stories, colors, scars, emotional residue, love knowledge, total summation of comprehension of this present moment in comparison to all others. Standing beside all others.

Some (Be Here Now?) spiritual writer asks us to disregard all comparison, so as not to hold the present moment alongside the past or future, and so be less present - but I'm not sure that's accurate. Instead, maybe the regard of past or future as separation from the present is an arbitrary and very human short-sightedness. Certainly, contained in this look at Adrien is every time I've looked at Adrien, and every time I've looked at anything. They inform this look; they create this look. They are inside this look. Drawing lines in the sand between past, present, future - this is the point of view of someone on a train locked forward on a track, unaware of all things in front, bheind, or past the hills on both sides of the train - and beyond that, all the things in the sky, under the ground, inside the microscopic depths of each particle, on the enormous scale of planetary bodies. In face, his tiny awareness of "the present moment" is a blink at the enormous four-dimensionality of the universe.

To go, to return, reminds me of a million existences happening outside of my sweet cloudy little cocoon in Seattle. Lives I could live, lives I did live, that are still happening inside me, that are still happening without me - and there are infinite other ones that could be, that are unfolding all over the Earth and the universe, to different "me"s - a me that is larger than Victoria, a present moment infinitely longer than my tiny traincar window.

This human life is made up of constant reincarnation - into the present moment, informed by all the past 'lives' or past present moments'. This universe is filled with its own parallel universes, other ways for it to go, other ways you could live, given one or two turns. And they're all being played out simultaneously past and future on the tiny human scale of so many different human creatures.

You're a run-out battery race, my friend, and I have nothing to say to you of lilypads, and I have nothing to say to you of sunsets.

I tied up a few old projects today. Should I be satisfied? There is still a collage that has been marinating for a year. But framing those pictures - they needed a year and a half to arrive in the present moment, raring to go.

Now, at 24 - at 24 at 24 24 years old hahaha hahahaha everything continues to change.

Even the plants which look motionless in the windowsill have transformed since our early days together, nearly dying in my east-facing window to the shadowy woods, living somehow in my ex-lover's bright west-facing window to the sunset river and mountains - and my god, he managed to keep the thing alive, though jade plants are nearly impossible to kill, and goodness look at it now and its half dozen children loopdelooping, clmibing and spawning still more clones but never
ever
flowering.

Any of these topical rambles could be refined into much poignant and slightly hilarious melancholic retrospective, deeply detailed imagistic narrative (anti)love poems, but add it doesn't seem my passion.

Maybe I'll set a goal to dig for gold and turn out 10 fine poems, maybe we'll publish a book together, who knows. These goals don't mean what they used to.


Being present with the self that is larger than what you normally refer to as "I" -

which takes into account your community, your future, your wellbeing, the earth,

and your driving intentions for this existence. Do what is best your larger "self"

in this expanded notion of the "present" and you'll find yourself serving your smaller

and greater needs, and those of others, while being fully "present" in this moment

and your "self".


Self-interest, rightly understood.

He is tapping
he is loving
we are slowly building something

What word picture would you like to see today?

Is it a dragonfly drifting through a sunset seas, or mighty mysteries untapped with a tongue?

Is it my hot breath in this cool air, cool inhale, warm exhale, closed room, warm body. Closed room, warm body, warming tea, thrilling lover.

A snail with lovely eyelashes, an underwater musical where we beat on mushrooms and the poem writes itself, the paper takes the pen for a stroll around the dance floor.


When I was 17 they put me on a tray and wheeled me into a room. They put plastic tabs between my teeth and told me that if I moved they'd have to do it all over again. They slowly slid me into a big round tube of plastic. It was dark and close, and my body poked out into the light. Then they turned it on and overwhelming screeches droning deep and metallic invaded my skull. My teeth ground tight on plastic bits and my eyes clenched shut against the roaring howling screaming vibrations beating on the front back and side doors of my head, but if I moved they'd have to do it again. The clattering clanging loudest noise I have ever heard does not stop it just does not stop. My earplug had slipped out of place but if I moved they'd have to do it again so I bit down harder and tears squeezed out of my eyes.

Then I went to a rocky red wall where I was climbing and you were under my feet holding me up so I could reach higher. My feet were on your shoulders, and you got tired and complained, and you got tired, and you walked away. I clung onto the wall with my weak fingertips and then I fell, all the way to the ground. I broke and I lay crumpled there, a bruised and pathetic pile. People walked by and I just whimpered.

I lay still for a long time, and then I pulled myself up onto my knees, and I pulled myself onto my feet. Then I dug my fingers into the wall and I began to climb. My body hurt and I felt so weak and it was hard to hold on. I kept pulling and then I was climbing. My body got stronger and I pulled up and I looked down, and I saw that I was higher than where I was when you were holding me up before. Then I looked back up the height of the wall, and I kept climbing.

Then the noise finally stopped. They wheeled me back out of the thing, and I finally unclenched my fists. They sat me up and I opened my mouth and drooled the plastic tabs out onto their hands. I numbly wiped the tears out of my wrinkled eyes.

My mom sat in a chair next to the machine, her hands pressed wrapped tightly around her purse strap. "I didn't realize they were going to have you in there for so long."

They showed me the strange, multi-colored pictures of my head, and there was nothing wrong in there.

TO DO LIST, Victoria;

next summer

-take Sierra on a tour of the Southwest
-make friends with a statue-man in New Orleans
-flamenco dance on the shore of a lake
-paint a bad feeling on a rock and throw it at the window of a condemned house
-bury a toenail, to get your foot in the door of Earth's mysteries


(from Sierra, last summer. Thanks, you 14-year old Buddha).

Do you know that I know and can you see that this moment is happening?
I did not always know that this moment was always happening.
I always knew that this moment is always and always slips away.
When I was 12, I lay in the dark of the living room during a sleepover
staring at the blinking green lights on the beta tape player
1:02 1:02 1:02 1:03
and I told Elizabeth Snyder
that deep down
I had the sense that nothing mattered
at all
that nothing
nothing
mattered at all
and through our 7th grade dramas
in and out of love with Matt Timms
stressing over new clothes
and winter formal
a deep, quiet calm voice inside me
was telling me that none of this mattered
even the slightest bit
that I would abide
that we would abide
that all would abide
and that was all.

I are i, here we go once more into the breach my bumbershooting baby, typing without stopping on a sunday night but the psychics say it's wednesday, but no body really knows anything about seattle and her dance projects. Will you edit this? Will you fall in love? Shall we sneak out the window? A puddle always forms there where you stand and tap on my window, where I wait too long for you to scratch, where you sometimes pulled me otu into the night, where I sometimes pulled you in.
The scratch of glass, the slight shifting of bells, brings us back to the present in its bangling, shining glory, hung upon succulent plants, catching the glint of streetlight coming through the window. We haven't seen the sun in a long time and it's making us a ll a bit mad, for better or for worse,for lover, for sleeper, it's hard to get up in the morning and bomb down the hill, but when we bomb down the hill on a sweet miami vice bicycle, raw red fingertips going rawed in the freezing air sometimes we are afforded by a glimpse of the giant mountainess just over the hell, inhaling, eternally. he asked me to sub in other letters and so I created a tennistop table ice-skated over when I did N+7, could you fall in love? Could you just stay? Let me check on my kale


There's nothing to be said of falling. There is no mistake that can be made, even uncertain if you are in the right bus, you are sitting next to the right person, and then run into a cello bop player, and then see her lovely mascaraed eyes, and on to the library for the photography book on 21st century cowboys, that you didn't know you needed to say. We're being more careful now, more gentle than we have ever been before Then we ran ramshackle through the world, all a hurdy gurdy,all a bumble with misbeliefs, with selfishness, with a tiny personal sphere that didn't see the larger meaning of tart apples and sunshine lakes, that wanted only want, that said yes defiantly, though more of itself than was enormous, was a clifftop without a parachute was a baby jumper without any stitching. These miracles and more, we needed to believe, and also there were mysterious cases of rashes in the shape of dreams on the carpet where did you touch me? Or was I in sleeping paralysis? Or was it a caramel latter, misspelled in the early morning light, playing quidditich and bombing down the hill in the early morning light all at once, every moment happening simultaneously and incomprehensibly, ach me, ach du, ess muuss sein, sus seines, what a mysterious piece of chocolate that nearly broke my jaw when I bit down on it.

Let's visit the dumpster and pull out the tasty unmelted truffles, but beware, they throw broken glass in there too. It's not chocolate compost, it's just a chocolate scented traschcan, and they throw broken glass in there too. It's much to my shame that I never managed to type with home keys, I'll never be a librarian, they need degrees for that nowadays.

What do you want to be when you grow up? Do you want to play with me?
I can't see anymore. I hope all is well with you. I love you madly.









foto by adrien miller

Hot Chocolate

On the 2nd night, we made hot chocolate.
We took turns using a mortar and pestle to pound the cacao beans that you brought back from Guatemala
and we whipped the sweet heavy cream into thick airy fluff.
In a round silver pot, we boiled the sweet milk with the bitter dark brown nibs
and stirred in spoonfuls of chile powder.
"You've never tried spicy hot chocolate before?
"It's how the Aztec kings drank it."
We ladled out two clay mugs full.
We dolloped cream on top
and took our prizes out to steam in the full April moon.
We sat a foot apart
at the top of the stairs that led down to the beach.
The moon frothed on the crashing waves
drowning out our gentle slurps.
I took a sip, then another, not daring to believe it.
Something was wrong.
Horribly wrong.
The hot chocolate tasted terrible
like a cooked fish
or a simmering curry.
I tried to ignore it, but my full cup soon grew cold in my hands.
I realized later that chile powder is 1 part chile pepper
1 part cumin
and 1 part garlic
transforming this much slaved over Guatemalan hot chocolate, pounded and simmered with fresh milk,
into an uncomfortable chimaera
of creamy sweet
and savory stew,
topped with a dollop
of freshly whipped cream.
It tasted terrible.
I couldn't bear to tell you
But you were drinking it too.
We could have laughed about it
but instead we cupped our cold hands around the mugs for warmth
and stared at the moon.






Thank you to Nibbson E. Nebbulous for no more moon on the water.

I got out while the getting was good, and the blue moods of Spain drift through the picture windows today. I sit at the white grand piano, strolling through Chopin with torn lace gloves on. There's a vase of wilting yellow tulips on the piano's head. The piano is talking to me, creeping under my skirt to speak directly to my mute mouth. The piano's black keys are pushing at my buttons. Its pedals are pulling down my panties. Gray sunlight streams in through the skylight and everything glows from the inside. I throw back my mane of dreadlocks and spread my fingers on the keyboard.

I lose my train of thought and it moves on to the next station, leaving me on the platform with my yellow hair ribbons floating in the wind. My square beige suitcase hangs dumbly from my curling fingers. My button down cream colored coat is buttoned up. I glance down the tracks in the dusty heat. I drop my eyes. I'm all fragile petals, with iridescent powder that comes off on your fingertips.

An old luggage handler limps up to me side and squints up at me, then down the length of me, from under his peaked brown hat. "Need a hand, missy?" "I"ll give her a hand!" hollers some fat chuckling voice.

I smooth back my hair, which is making for the door. "No thanks." I pick up my suitcase and head for the entrance with my yellow shoes going Tip Tap on the tile.

"Howee, missy! Need someone to give you a ride?" "I'll give her a ride!" I catch a blur of their sneering faces.

I walk straight to the curb and a light brown car pulls up in a dust cloud. A young man in a white shirt and a brown vest leaps out and reaches for my suitcase. My fingers are still dumbly tangled around the handle, and as he gently takes it from me, a spark leaps from my fingers to his, and our hands spark and ignite. I yank my burning fingers away and my suitcase falls to the ground. It splits open on impact and all my pale soft things come tumbling out onto the dirt packed road. I set my jaw and try o beat out my flaming glove against my coat. Instead, it catches and the fire leaps licking up my hips, up my button-down, to my yellow ribbons. I beat frantically with my flaming hands, but the jumping dancing flame has caught on my lace, has trailed down to my cuffs, is ferociously and coolly haloing my head. I yelp and yawp and moan and tear my coat off and throw it to the floor. I am dimly aware of people shouting and staring and moving all around me. My cotton dress has caught and I am twisting and burning and my hot cold hands are twinkling with the fuel of a star, and the center of my chest is a blazing diamond, and between my thighs is a fireball. I am enormous and hot and anyone who comes near me will be scalded. They look away.

The young man in brown and white is sitting on the sidewalks staring at the sparks shooting out from his fingertips, staring back at my flame-wrapped flesh, and that is when I jump. I leap out of my body and into the air. My bones and muscles crumple to the ground. I am pure sparkling heat, streaming glory expanding over and over again. I soar up and outwards in every direction. My eyes are the deep black cold of space and the blazing white heat of all most brilliant stars. My heart is all swirling commotion of the limits of space, dust rings and pigeon stomps. My vagina is explosion and death, the imploding birth of a new planet, a holler of eternal love that spins atoms and stills breeze over the lake. I go on forever. I am wordless and infinite.

La Plaza Blanca, Abiquiu, New Mexico





Endless white! Don't tease me like this! I know you remember my voice! You know I'm sagging and lazy; and you stand tall and hard, curving white layers that I want to taste on my tongue. Every time I come back here you see me getting older and it's only a blink of an eye for you. I'm dying and you never will. You tell me you're crumbling.

WP:I'm crumbling.

V: and I'm scared.

WP: Why?

V: because I'm crumbling too
day by day

WP: What is frightening about that?

V: I don't want to disappear!

WP: Then you don't understand.

V: What do you mean?

WP: There is no I. As I crumble, my rocks fall to the ground and grind into sand. They become part of something else. Throw a rock. [I throw a rock.] See? I am not less I. I was never I to begin with. Only you think you have a beginning and an end. I'm made up of bits that have been around for eternity and will be around for eternity. So are you for that matter.

V: Then why am I so scared?

WP: Because you are squeezing, and squeezing always hurts. And the closer you come to seeing the truth, the harder you squeeze. Which can't be comfortable, is it?

V: No, it's not.

WP: I can't make you let go. You can't either. You'll just have to let go. Let it out into the world. Don't put it under a basket.

V: I feel it so physically. It aches.

WP: Maybe there's a problem with your heart. Maybe you should look upwards instead of putting such a heavy load on such a little muscle.

V: It's only the size of my fist.

WP: But it should not be squeezed like one.

Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, New Mexico


Home is where hats go, where valuable possessions and hearts wait. Home is a place you choose and it creates you back, changes your eyes so that streets become ordinary and sunsets can be missed for another day. Home is a little breakfast and an afternoon on the lake. Nothing special: eat, sleep, cry.





I believe we are here.
I believe we see from our eyes. I believe there is a reason to be deliberate. I do not know what that reason is. I will say the word grace. That will not be a reason. I will also say love. Grace and love are words. Reason is a word. Believe and I are words. When I write I beliee, words I love fall apart. Grace spelled out is black and white. Love fits into a half inch space. Without words, space is infinite. I believe everything.







What scares me? That ominous screetchy-scratch. My chest exploding with golden light, the edges curling away. When I get scared of getting hurt, the clouds move in over my enormous harvest moon heart. When the clouds move in, my heart begins to ache. I'll just let go of the strings and let the winds blow the clouds apart. Easy to say. Easy to do nothing. Hard, very hard, to do nothing.

Congratulations!

For Michelle and Tyler Bogardus,
May 29, 2008
Pine Island, Outer Banks, North Carolina
Wedding Reading


My friends, today you stand before us to say 'YES.' 'YES, I choose you.' It is a beautiful choice to make. YES may be the loveliest word we know.

We, your chosen friends and family, have traveled from all over to stand beside you and witness your choice. We are here to whisper 'YES' with you, and to feel that 'YES' vibrate to our bones.

It's a glorious YES, worthy of celebration. A million tiny choices collided to bring you together, and it is the strength and honesty and deliberateness of your love that has brought you to choose each other once more at this present moment. You have chosen us as friends, and you have invited us here to witness, and we have answered you with YES.

May every day be a choice made as joyfully and with as much care as this one. When you open your eyes in the morning, may your vows tumble from your lips. May your breakfast be as your wedding feast. May your steps be as dancing. And may the crashing waves be as music as you return home in the evening with gratitude, and sleep with a song of praise on your lips.

And may it suit you both to choose each other every day for the rest of your lives. Never taking one another for granted, but with the knowledge that this is a choice you have made, and which you freely choose again with each kiss, with each glance, with each time you pass the salt.

And to all of us who have chosen to come here to witness, may this YES resonate in our hearts. May we support this choice with our own, and in our own lives, may we make all our own choices with so much celebration and joy. May we remember never to take anything for granted, but rather as choices we have made, and which we freely choose again with each season, with each morning, with each breath.

May we always joyfully choose each other as friends, and may all our lives be blessed with such sweet YESes as we hear today.








Sunset on the Outer Banks:



photo courtesy of Elliott Hauser

Mysterious bubble top.
You unravel my finest hour, you are golden and unspoiled, you are a funny little bear.
Bouncing bird, you ask me questions and you don't get bread and honey for breakfast. "Do what you want," "An effective method," says the father.
While Jolie sings about birds and blues, I've got a promise to finish this story for everyone's sake. We're getting older
We're getting older
We're getting older
I didn't know that would happen to us too.

So this pot of tea has its own stories to tell, and that sleeping bag has seen a lot of different dusty floors. Hurricane watch has its issues to reveal, we are welcoming the sunshine

Welcome sunshine!

In April everyone is shocked and pleased to see naked knees winking in the afternoon sun.




The bus comes, the bus goes, and the space between is joyful.
Go deeper.
We have an assignment from the choreographer to do things that scare us. The moral could be that we learn a lot and it's all positive, even though we were so scared to do it, and wasn't that silly to be scared of what it was that we really wanted to do? But in truth, it means we do things that are dangerous, that make us weaker, that are a step off the careful quiet paths we have chosen to deliberate our feet down. Marissa uses her left foot on the brake pedal, even though after 10 years of reckless punkrock living she is finally on the straight and narrow. Allison talks to someone who really hurt her, whom she shut out of her life, and she decides that she still has no desire to talk to her. I fight and shout with my guitarist, and I feel terrible about it because I have never doubted that I hate fighting.

But there is still a valuable lesson in that, because it is good to know why you don't like to lose your temper, and why it feels so good to be calm and even. For me, it hurts to get mad, it hurts to get hot and red and furious. My head hurts and my chest hurts and then I come crashing down with deep tiredness behind my eyes like I'm coming down off heavy stimulants, and I feel physically awful. So I know that I want to stay equanimous not just because it's good spiritual theory, but because it really messes me up physically when I get upset.



These bars of iron I leave behind
I'll write you letters on the moonbeams
from my warden in the skies



















It's such a big world

Reasons for Fasting

One of the more amazing moments in my technological life was my discovery of the "summarize" button on iWord or whatever they call it. So, my trial version expired long ago, but nonetheless, I got the priceless summaries of my novel first, in 100, 200, 1000 words.




Summary

Sun

Otherwise he'll eat Za's.” I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. Eat eggs, feed chickens. -little salt

Old standby.




Summary

gray hairs? “Thanks.”
There were 2 old woman chatting. Lisbon Tree

Sun

The sun falls away
a nickel of time

I stopped playing. The hand stopped. Oh, if only. Just then, a white haired man walked past. I never lose shoes.

Remember the long night watch on Chieftain, spent reclaiming delicious memories? Yellow stones set in white plaster. A blue blue swimming pool. Where last night's lights still burn
Listening. Otherwise he'll eat Za's.” heading 55°, 8.13 kt

Strange times, three straight days on a boat...
I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. the sun burns low
Everytime I love I die a little
Every damn time I love someone I die a little
If you knew me,
Forward. Oh hungry body, oh wandering eyes. Is love enough?

I remembered, bottled water. “Just water.” old man, me, weak, blood thin, sugar, but water, my mouth.
An old man in brown shoes. I wondered if all this stuff worked, and if it formed dependencies. Eat eggs, feed chickens. -little salt

Captain Mark asked. I dropped my eyes. Joel stopped playing. Joel asked, his eyes lighting up. “Still room?” of old letters
Old standby.



Summary

Gozo, Malta
gray hairs? honeybush tea?
I drank wonderful wines and ate codfish and lots of tasties, walked and walked and wandered and visited a lot of churches and got my hair cut again even shorter this time. I had a hard time of it in Lisbon. I called her madre and kissed her hands. The sun was gold and pink on us and the castle´s stone walls.

Joan-Marco asked for the 27th time, wobbling a little. “I'm just fine,” I said, for the 27th time. “Thanks.” I've got a good heart.” It's a real nice place. They've got dancing until 7 in the morning.”
The night receptionist at Pensao Cristal had red hair and was heavy, a big bristling bear of a man. “I hear you play guitar.” I realized the old ladies heard me strumming in my room in the afternoons. I took it back, mouth open, face red. I stripped off the night’s smoke and neon and crowding feet, and sighed into dark quiet.
Then there was this marvelous evergreen tree, with a wide trunk maybe 6 feet in diameter and 6 feet high. I realized that if you walk and walk and wander long enough, you will find exactly what you needed. I longed to climb this tree. I eyed the other people sitting around it. There were 2 old woman chatting. Lisbon Tree

I've been growing here
Spread out for the sun
Sun

The sun falls away
Never heard from again
to sleep in my arms
You're just a blink of an eye
a nickel of time

I saw a slender middle-aged man in a white shirt, spectacled and sparkling-eyed, sitting alone at the table opposite me and enjoying his meal with a quiet smile in his cheeks. I watched the man sit back down, smiling. I smiled back. I leaned forward. We talked and rambled. Gold band on his left hand. There’s dancing til 6 in the morning, Joan-Marco’s voice replayed in my skull. We hustled through the crowded streets, grinning, warm-wine-bellied through the neon and talking ocean. I shrugged, grinned. Me, in his eyes, young, sparkling, and what? I stopped playing. The hand stopped. I was out all night last night with this guy who wouldn’t let me go home.” “Alright, I’ll walk you home.”
We walked back. I felt clear and empty in the night. Goodnight, Miles.” “Have a good night?” he asked. “It’s very small guitar.” I chose my words carefully, I smoke slowly in the smoky air, and I kept rubbing my face against the long night behind me. An older man in a plaid shirt walked by, and I sat up expectantly, smiling.
Oh, if only. I smiled. I hoped Allan would understand.
Just then, a white haired man walked past. I never lose shoes.

Other people's things are always coming into my backpack - a bracelet from a 9 year old Mallorcan girl, my friend's old beach shorts, a white lace thrift store skirt. I wonder if those people wonder where there stuff is now. They would never guess the tiny Maltese island Gozo, in a farmhouse named Ta-l'ghani. - thank – you! - thank – you! I dreamed I fell in love with a girl named Morgan, but we both realized it was a dream. I am surrounded by life. Being old will be like this. Remember the long night watch on Chieftain, spent reclaiming delicious memories? A white nightgown pulled off overhead. An empty belly. A red candle. A yellow cliff. Yellow stones set in white plaster. A blue blue swimming pool. Vomiting, pleasantly, words. Stained pink fingers. No thanks. I don't drink. The ranting of a 22 year old girl. Reasons for Fasting

to silence my body
to lose weight
to give my body a break
to go a little crazy
I made love to the ocean, who pulled and compressed and licked at my body. I left my clothes, red skirt, brown chocolate shirt, on the jetty. Here, water, I share my body with you! Joel couldn't get his mitts inside, because his hands are too big. Joel came back and laughed.

Joel asked if I wanted him to get the last 4 in.
We were not map-types, so we just marked the sun and headed vaguely northwest.


We're drunk like fools on this wine of existence
We're drunk like fools on this Love of existence

Until the night steals my cup
And I insist that the night give it up
I could explode with all this love
I could explode with all this love. Where last night's lights still burn
and last night's mosquitoes are this morning's
guard the sweet butter-tree
while palms await the sun
You wander with muddy feet
Admiring the world still warm and
One arm flung over her face
As if frightened to waken anyone else
Though they are only squeezing their eyes
feigning sleep
How many times do you have to shoot the gentle morning? I love this journey. I am right where I am, under an old tree. Time I have in boatloads. Back to Victoria Square, to the recording eyes of old men who gather in every public square to make sure all is right, and then to write right there.
The golden glow on the stone chruch, the ubiquitous council of old men holding court at any true little town's center. The island is only 4 miles long. Listening. Silence. Call mom at 8. I smiled, dressed all in white, and looked in his light brown eyes, and told him my name, and said, “It's very true.”
Now it's late and the gold light fades on the church, some of the behatted old men holding court by the red phonebox have gone home for supper. I wonder if they'll come back to check out the sunday night action later. It would be useless if it overpowered. Otherwise he'll eat Za's.” Za was a delicate, skinny white-yellow thing. Listen, doesn't a 22-year-old girl with such a nice belly and haunches and feet, and curving hips and long heavy breasts and a strong back and sweet lively legs deserve a good lover? Friends are interested.
Listen, prickly pears are a bitch to eat, even if they're free and abundant on the side of the road. September 9, 2006
We spend long lazy days spend working on the sun in the morning, weeding, planting, scrubbing the tipi, and sometimes literally chipping rock from the dry river beds to make tile paths. I love it here. September 10, 2006
Tipi Valley, Aljezur, Portugal

September 11, 2006
Tipi Valley, Aljezur, Portugal

September 13, 2006
Lagos, Portugal

You love life as I do. You love each other. We were approached in the South Bar tonight by an Irish boat captain named Mark and his first mate Ben because they need a crew to deliver their world-class racing sailboat Chieftain to the Rolex Middle Sea Race on Malta. My eyelids are heavy with pink light, mojitos, long hours in the sun spent worrying about the rain, and I'll sleep like a daisy tonight. September 16, 2006
Deck of Chieftain

The sun gets higher, the air gets hotter, our heading is 111°, true wind speed 6.2' kt/hr
I've never seen myself so quiet. Chieftain
heading 55°, 8.13 kt

6-9 am watch brilliant sunset. Every shade – mountains descend to white at water's edge – waves dapple orange red green blue in psychedelic spots. A Beautiful land.

God is existence. The meaning of life is life. I've never seen anything like that. Life amazes me.

6-9 am watch beautiful sunrise in exact reverse, opposite side, same colors, sun drawn back up and slowly heating, and peeling layers off to match the rising day.


Hot hot little beach day, you liked my arms on your back, my hands grabbing your ribs when the scooter sped out of control. This night, though, all her reassuring lights went out, and the boat started drifting. Mark, our captain, put me on the big steering wheel.

The only light was from the very old crescent moon, only a thumbnail of a thing that rose red during our watch. I´ve sailed by Orion´s belt
I´ve zoomed through Ibiza´s hills
With an Irish boat captain



This madness brings me clarity.
Mallorca, Mediterranean, Spain

I have mad dreams of dances, things I borrow from kids on beaches, from people in public squares. There were awfully long nights of 3 hour on-off shifts, scanning the horizon for rocks and buoys, watching the sun go down - then the moon come on - and the sun come back up again - broken up by strange fits of deep ocean-rocked sleep. Strange times, three straight days on a boat...
Goodbye my old love, you glorious asshole, you fool. Real Yacht Club Nautico, Mallorca, Belearic Islands, Mediterranean, Spain

It tasted a little like honeysuckle. I hung around the tree for a while, drinking little drops. It wasn't respect for life. I suddenly remember that I dreamed of him last night. The last time I went that long I was seventeen.
Oh funny little one, swelling thighs and confident grin, not many people listen, but that blue-eyed 18 year old does, and that's charming. Sex. Chocolate. Quiet. A home (eventually). My rock music. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I want to dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream. I will dream.

I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. I will eat less. the sunset's my man
Every night he comes back again
the sun burns low
The train rolls by – don't cry
Everytime I love I die a little
Every damn time I love someone I die a little
The train rolls by - don't cry
I am a heart on four feet
The train rolls by – don't cry
The train rolls by – don't cry
The train rolls by – don't cry
Charlie's heart is hurting. I am great Charlie=great
If you knew me,
Forward. Oh hungry body, oh wandering eyes. Oh rock and roll.
Oh Charlie, poor girl. Never going back, never going back. “Let's take it one turn at a time.” Asher gunned the engine on his speedy little “Thanks dad” silver Acura. “Oh god.” Charlie smiled to herself. dancing on sand, switching horse gallop 2-step (Cesca, Mallorca)


Porreres, Mallorca

Other people's animals get all my love these days. While dancing. Sex? Hand hurts, lightly nauseated, this forward thinking helps the ache a little.


Questioning with each, creating, learning, building, changing. Can you help with just love? Is love enough?

I needed more bottles of water. I kept walking. I passed a red truck talking to a red motorcycle, and a little house where a council of old men were holding forth on a shady bench, and a sewage treatment facility with a really lovely garden. The ocean so big and little Gozo so tiny, and me on its edge, looking down, wondering if I could jump and what was the possibility of broken leg/neck/death? After some more blue, yellow, blue, breath, sun, dark – I got up and started walking back. I took a few more steps forward thigh deep in water then plunged in. On either side, the canyon rose about 3 feet up scary lava sharp rock edges, then leveled out ina nice smooth yellow stone ledge before continuing up the vertical canyon wall. This time, coming from the other way, I saw by the ledge what looked like natural flat stone steps, not so big as my foot, but big enough for stepping. No fate but stepping. The sun fell over the cliff and landed here, on my body. I smiled irresistibly. I did a stunted sun salutation on the yellow rock, and I did a stunted moon salutation on the yellow rock. 2… no wait.
I grinned and stepped back, took another breath of sun – okay…. NOW! – no wait.
I stepped back and grinned at myself like an old friend who always does this.
Dance to the
Sliding sea
Foam on my feet?
…
I long to
Touch the
Lost soul’s bliss.
I collected some rocks, deep red, smooth Gozo yellow, red and gray so underwater the mottle might have read Victoria, and a little brown+yellow pebble that looked, in my 4 days’ hunger, like a chocolate-glazed doughnut.
As I finished pulling my pants on, I looked up to see an old man in a white shirt painfully making his way one step at a time down the stairs, not a moment too soon. I ran my hand through my dripping hair. I remembered, bottled water. “Just water.” He waved at the steps. I pulled away. old man, me, weak, blood thin, sugar, but water, my mouth.
My feet kept moving. I take two dozen steps to the right, question if I really want to go to town, run into a bush. I put my hand on my heart. What if I had gone that way? What if he had been young, and dark, and stronger than me? I turned back to the right and back down the little foot path to Ta-l’ghani. Damned flies! We moved silently in the morning sun. I watched, sipped tea. “I love you,” I said. “I love you too,” he said, and his eyes said, “isn't it amazing?” Drab olive ancient backpack fit to burst, guitar, brown poncho. I go walking
I go out walking
I walk for miles
of saying 'I love you'
I go out walking
The night winds whisper to me
I go out walking
somewhere out walking
An old man in brown shoes. The mother had bouffant hair, the father's shirt was too long for him. With my dark eyes and tanned skin and dark hair falling into my face, they have no reason to know I'm Jewish by blood and nothing by religion. Right arm, right leg, left leg, left arm, head, torso, genitals. That thought makes me laugh. All night, we have bumbled about in 4 layers, topped by waterproof oils. We were clipped on the blue ribbons running down the length of the 50 foot boat by elastic yellow umbilical cords coming from our life jackets. Then I turned back to watch the water.

I've got a fresh haircut. The sun feels brilliant. “I've lived here for two years. Chieftain, Mediterranean
BAM!... of the boat on the water.
The sun comes gold, splattering my face, steeping into the steam off my tea. Last night I checked into Balco Harmony Hostel for 14 Maltese Lira (5 bucks) a night for 5 nights, and asked to see the room. The room was surprisingly big for 5 bucks a night, and the two twin beds were pushed together in the center of the room. The babe eyed me somewhat angrily, I imagined.
I have this prejudice against beautiful women, I realized. I have never been sure if I was beautiful. “Victoria.” Peoples come from all over the world. The room, she thought, was not very nice. I smiled. “If you like – if you like... tomorrow we could go do something together?” I smiled. Bust firming gel, stretch mark fading gel, belly firming gel, a dozen kinds of moisturizer for different times of day and different body parts, conditioner, eye cream, hand cream. I wondered if all this stuff worked, and if it formed dependencies. The old field was now well-manured, and the chickens had a clean house. My eyes blurred with brown feathers. Eat eggs, feed chickens. We hopped back on the boat and our bare feet were filthy for the first time after 5 days of pristine padding on the glittering white carbon-fiber hull. It doesn't make sense, man.” Mark didn't respond. “I never use half this stuff at home, but I just thought, what if I have to buy it, and I already have it?” Heather painted her eyes and cheeks and lips into that supremely gorgeous face she usually maintained, except for recently on the boat. “Come on, you maniacs,” a man's voice called at the door. Wide chest, big shoulders, beauty beauty beauty. Ibiza City is a future city, done in neon lights. A little woods ran alongside us, with a winding path wombling through it. Captain Mark, things done.
“Good girl.”
Heather giggled. Breaking Fast

Day 1
-no coffee, black tea, alcohol
-little salt

before breakfast (15 minutes before)-lemon juice and hot water

½ lb. fresh fruit

-2 cups carrot leaves
-2 cups beet tops
-3 cups celery
there's no room for you
“Come on Ben, it's time to go to bed.” Captain Mark asked. Our boat was docked alongside a wind-ravaged Arabic fortress, in a long line with a dozen other worldclass racing boats preparing for the Rolex Middlesea Challenge next week. I was on my hands and knees with a bucket at my side and a big yellow sponge in hand. I felt their eyes on me. I worked my way down from the sharp nose of the boat, down her long, curving side decks, over the top. I dropped my eyes. oh white pillow – oh big thighs – oh empty tummy – a high protein diet? patron saint of club footed pigeons fat thighs fat thighs how to love love love these fat thighs these heavy womanly loins, let's want it that way, let's be unspeakably beautiful, let's refuse every man, the cheeky bastards, leave me alone


Stay, please, stay, stay, he said.
I bought some new red shoes. The leaves are changing, we’re getting older, as my terribly funny friends used to say, but I’ve never felt so gorgeous and alive.
Now awake with the dawn the weather has changed, it’s fall and I can’t wear summer white, fasting white, anymore. I threw out my white v-neck t-shirt. There there’s silence, and today there’s fruit.I grinned. Joel was a beautiful mess. I squinted and rubbed my eyes, which felt like lead balls.
I eyed his feet, which were so dirty they were white.
My bag seemed heavier with every step.
“98.” We unlocked the door and fell into the small, dusty, sun-drenched room. “Let's see that guitar.”
My eye settled back into the present on the little yellow guitar singing woodily under Joel's fingers.
Joel stopped playing. “Just an old sundwich-” I stopped. “Ohhhh, meat,” and the sandwich vanished as if he hasn't eaten for days. Joel asked, his eyes lighting up. At the top of the steps, which were draped with people, (“When do they work?”) there was a beautiful old stone fountain of lion’s heads on the wall. They spat cool water into a wide half-moon pool. Little kids were getting cool and squealy in the water, including the beautiful girl we saw earlier. We wondered if he was dead, and if so, what we do? One bald black man was standing up, talking on his earpiece cellphone and walking along the edges of benches, balancing, sort of dancing in little steps, sometimes laughing big. No, this was no stepping stone. There was talk of someone else’s farmhouse, a friend of a friend of a friend. “More tea?”



cafe mocha with a little panna
a dance of falling and catching When you think of sailing, you image wind puffed fat curving sails like puffed balloons, you picture cutting slices through the clear blue water, you think happily smiling young good-looking white people in polo shirts. The first time I stepped onto Chieftain, I was taken by the hand by a larger-than-life tanned Brit named Ben with a gappy grin and a big blue eyes. It was just a little hope skip and jump from the astro-turf green dock in Lagos, Portugal onto the stately white world-traveling deck. “Still room?” The next time I stepped daintily onto the boat I kicked my sandals off first. As we lined up to make the 3 foot leap, one-by-one, to dry land for the first time in 3 days, I asked if anyone ever fell between the boat and the dock. We were docked just by El Divino, Ibiza's playboy night club, so at the end of the night, we stumbled home and fell three feet onto the boat.
We sort of fell of the boat onto the stone-tiled smooth dock. Unsaid; I'm so sorry, man. Unsaid: How old are you? GOZO? ?




of old letters
places full of holes My Malta time has been one long night, inhabited with strange dreams and characters all full of longing, and now I’m awake and refreshed and sated after a long period of hunger – what’s in those sandwiches? Old standby.

A tidbit and a tadpole



I'm working on a really big project. Here's a smidge. Thanks for coming here sometimes and looking at my scribbles. It means a lot to me.







September 25, 2006
Finca Son Capella
Porreres, Mallorca, Beleares, Mediterranean, Spain

I don't miss you.
Get thee behind me, past.
was all I could manage this morning. I didn't want to write any more blues songs about ****, nor another song about being alone, so I just played some walks up and down Sol's neck singing
I don't miss you
Get thee behind me, past
in my cracked first-thing AM voice. I dig up last night's discussions around the great big wooden dining room table with Ruth and her mother.
“The one thing my father told me before he died, and I will never forget it, he said, 'Ruth, you can mix color, age, sex, money, education, but you cannot mix class.' And he's absolutely right. You just can't.”
I leaned my hand on my chin. “What do you mean by class? Do you mean respect for life?”
“No, no. There are these two people, Mother, you've met Joan and Cesca down the road. They are the simplest people, you go to their house and they serve you in the same dishes they've been using 20 years, and everything is very clean and neat, and they're very good, honest people, and they have tremendous respect for life, tremendous.” Ruth wears sweater sets and pearls and spoke in a broad vaguely European accent, though she calls herself an Irish 'girl'.
“Do you mean money, then?”
“It's not a question of money. Some of the finest people I know have lost all their money. No, dear, it's where people come from. You can always tell by the mother, I say. Like you, I can see your parents brought you up very well.”
“It's true,” Granny Mia chimed in. Her Irish accent was delicate and healthy. “You can't mix class.”
I said hm. I realized I didn't understand what they were talking about, what 'class' was, for all I had heard of class struggles. It wasn't respect for life. It wasn't money. It was your mother? Granny Mia and Ruth were talking and nodding at me.
“I know, isn't she great? You can just talk and talk and she just listens. I think she's bound on the mystic path, this one,” Ruth said. That made me smile.
I got on better smoking joints and talking philosophy with her 18 year old son Sebastian. He has brilliant blue eyes and is just beginning to slim through his cheeks. Very smart but still very young. I suddenly remember that I dreamed of him last night. I dreamed he was trying to get underneath my yellow polka-dotted skirt and I was telling him that was just not going to happen.
I shake my head over the guitar and put her down to listen to the rain dripping sporadically outside my caravan windows. It's been almost 6 months since I've had sex. Christ almighty. The last time I went that long I was seventeen.
They have this exquisitely designed and decorated house in the Mallorquin countryside, with shuttered windows and white walls and exposed beams, and a welcoming sense of light and space, and a candle burning at the altar and a dove painted on the wall. Ruth is exquisitely designed and decorated herself, in shades of taupe and pink freshwater pearls. You would think that if every place I go is 180° from where I was before, eventually I would end up where I started. I must be traveling in three dimensional space, diving underwater to where the light gets lost and reds disappear, then sailing to a mountaintop on a volcanic island, then appearing in thin air at the same height but where there is no ground to support my feet. I am a two legged compass waddling through space and time – planting one sharp resilient foot and then swinging the other around in an arc to rest at the next entirely different location.


September 2-?, 2006
Finca Son Capella
Porreres, Mallorca, Beleares, Mediterranean, Spain

So when Ruth said, "We're pretty domestic around here; do you mind?", what she meant was, "You'll be dusting, sweeping, and mopping my entire house twice a week." She said it much more nicely than that, of course. Let me begin again.
"So I usually give the house a good cleaning at least once a week. Nothing much, just a good sweep, run the dustrag over everything, you know. Keeps things nice and fresh. You wouldn't mind helping me out with that, would you?"
"Oh. Oh, sure, that would be fine."
"Great." She put the broom in my hand. "You'll find the mop in the front hall closet." Mop? Well, allright. As chores go, it's actually my favorite.
I found the broom and began sweeping from room to room. The house is beautifully arranged, with each room flowing into the next. The bottom floor is divided into three by three rooms, with doorways opening all into the center chamber. I had almost finished the first floor when Ruth came in and found me in the bedroom.
"Oh, dear, you've simply got to do the dusting before you do the sweeping. That way all the dust falls on the floor, and you sweep it up." Dusting? I stared at her with my mouth open. "Don't tell me you've never dusted before!"
"I've never dusted before." My parents are simple, honest people. We've used the same dishes for 20 years. They have tremendous respect for life. Tremendous.
"Well, I'll show you how then." She picked up a lacquered box and a tortoiseshell comb, swipes underneath them with a rag, and then places them back precisely where they came from, lining them up just so.
Dusting. Alright. I take what you give me, world. Wherever you take me, I will go. I dusted around Ruth's powder boxes in the kitchen, under her sewing box, beneath the glass objet d'art in the tv room and the antique silver vases in the kitchen. I swept the stone floor as it flowed from room to room and mopped the floor in endless figure 8s, which someone once promised would make me have a slender waist.
Ruth popped her head in soon after I started mopping. "Don't forget to change the dirty mop water every so often, or else you're just spreading the dirt around." I sighed and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my arm. "Okay," I said.
Okay.
When she suggested that I dip a rag in rose oil and just sprinkle it around the house, you know "Just to freshen things up a bit, it won't take a minute," I balked. By balked, I mean, made a face and didn't do it. After she left.
Okay.

"Flamenco Heat in Seattle: Sara de Luis, Maestra de Flamenco"
in the March Seattle Woman
by Victoria Jacobs

Barrio Flamenco!

Take care, little bear.

Stories by Adrien and Me

The Crocodile and the Quarks

"Inconsequential talkings!" hollered the gray squirrel from his piney perch above our heads. We ducked as he tossed an acorn down at us. "What gives, little friend?"
I've just about had it with your flop-flooping and sumtiddy mumblings!" he chittered at us. "It's time you go talking about the real stuff."
We looked at each other with the knowing smiles of Mona Lisa when a crocodile laughed and asked from the depths of a bellowing breath, "What kind of stuff is real?" Billy from down the path came with a dandelion in his hand and said nothing.
The squirrel leapt down from his branch onto the dandelion, waggling his gray tail as if to say, 'That's the ticket.' Billy smiled in that dusty, quiet way of his, with buzzing from his dimples, and we thought again of the quarks and what, if anything, they had to do with this. I extended my hand to Billy and invited him to join us on our silent march in search of the quarks.
Nobody Really Knew What the quarks Were, but it gave them Something to Search for. We walked together through the Mountains Until God Showed up.
"Well sir!" our friend the monkey called out. "Howdy!" I tried. Billy smiled. The gray squirrel shivered and puffed up his tail. The glow suffused us all and words disintegrated. Time stopped ticking, our eyes unfocused, we no longer sensed the difference between Us and that. We I squirrel dance kiss time step quiet golden burst sight jump monkey mountain yes.
Oh dying nebulae! No Satellites Cares, No, Only Service Waves Credit card blood diamonds & resurrected Dinosaurs to eat the restless ricochettes of overfed emotions and call the comets home!
Just then the earth rumbled, split along the equator, and a rumpled old skin of tired mountaintops and faded ice caps wrinkled up, bunched, and was shrugged off towards galaxies unspeakable. Fresh and shining earth emerged, cheeks were clean, the sun came home to roost, and we shook that tired feeling from old days, because this is the day now.



Day Trip to the Center of the Universe

The waterfall misted rainbow halos over 2 flying squirrels perched on a branch. One Squirrel had a nut to share, and they made high pitched, happy noises until a group of humans appeared quietly and bewildered, not noticing them.
They formed a circle and took their flutes from their pockets, and when everything was silent, the humans began to play. The tree dwellers were agog at the light bright heartbreak symphony that streamed from the flute choir. Berzog felt his ribknuckles trembling, and Jammy couldn't help himself; he jumped down from his nest into the center of the sweet, silvery water music. The humans looked up.
The clouds rolled in as the squirrels climbed quickly down the tree trunk. One of the humans appeared to be removing its fur. It jumped into the water while another followed the squirrels.
There was an excellent splishy-splash afoot! The nyads surfaced with their bubble balls, and a school of rainbow fish swam in geometric shapes, squirting drops in the key of C high into the air. Jammy hooped and splashed, sparkled and sang, and realized he was all water separated by thin membranes. Meanwhile, the squirrels stumbled into the secret places under the stairs.
The human followed and when it looked under the stairs, it was not what he expected. The squirrels were facing him in the darkness; all he could see was a light reflecting out of their four eyes. He calmly took a deep breath and smiled at them lovingly. They decided to reveal their mystery.
"We come from the planet Zorkon," the ancient hairy beast solemnly intoned. "Really? That's the secret?" "Nah, I'm just playing," he said, laughing deep. The other beast elbowed him. "No, no, seriously the secret is this: shhhhhhhh..."
Their eyes expanded out into their breath and merged into the cosmic dance, burning & extinguishing impersonally for what seemed like eternity. When he realized they were the same, he and they, and there were no tangible boundaries, only space, in perfect unity with itself. The song of its harmony faded when a voice spoke, the squirrels turned back into squirrels, smiled and hid.
"Dude, what are you looking for under those stairs?"