July 3

Already!

Busy with a course in "ethics in the helping professions," I should be busier as my employer has given everyone the day off.

Sailing the archipelago in Sweden was pure magic. I'll have pics some time soon of a woodland different from anything you've likely seen. A splendor of wild blueberry shrubs, moss growing from rock in five colours, saplings facing seaward, crotchety trees bending that way too had been groomed by years of salt. The mirror of the sea and the mountainous span of clouds breathtaking from every view. Gulls bathing at 4 in the morning, swans preening solo, and grumpy grouse taking off in a V to a patch of water farther out. Swallows were friendly, pairing up to build a nest within the eaves. A pike weighing 3.25 kl surprised to be caught was thrown back in. What a time it was. Grateful, me.

where in the world will I be?

Although I thought I had been practicing speaking/writing/reading Svenska, good luck to me! I am off to there again, though not for long enough, to an air of celebration, out in the quiet still quiet, under a moon (I hope), floating on the water, dancing inland around a Maypole for good times sake. Yeah midsomar (officially starts the day I leave for home). oh well, I took you there for a second.

been ages and ages

It's been AGES since I cooked a kind of holiday dinner and actually I've never, not ever, prepared one leading up to the big ta-doo of this Sunday (which is why I invited my mother and her sister over for dinner Saturday). I'm nixing Sunday for me. Sunday = me time (damnit). I've had none since the move and don't expect to have any until the fat end of the month of poetry shines pink.

WHAT DO I PREPARE FOR THE SISTER LADIES?


ANOTHER REQUEST:

I was published (old news). You were the first to read The Boy on the Bicycle (back when the page suffered vague renderings). Not the same draft. But it happened. And I was asked today: do you have a collection of these? (not by BRAND Literary Magazine UK).

Myself, I'd get real tired of the constant reflections (I was asked so I did think about it). But you got to read these 200-word-thingys slowly. Sleepy slowly. But I do have a kind of theme for writings I have begun and they run various lengths (you've read some of Spectacle, I believe). There's "February 14th" needs a little help. I was prompted to consider another to do with openness. I'm smiling.

The REQUEST is there's an event and I wonder if someone there in London town might go and, gulp, read my 200 words for me (as I can't be there). I'd like'em heard is all if possible. I'd say doesn't matter a man or a woman reads it. Something odd about a lovely brit perhaps saying something about American streets quiet as neglect, but that's all. Nothing else. Boy on a bike.

I owe a kid my second copy of the publication.

ANY TAKERS?

come on, come on

it's been my pace, come on, come on

and in this way we realize how famous a certain band remains. I wasn't planning on posting a thing except I've been clipping along at a hectic pace and all the while thinking about you: Chris Capp, Anne Marie, Matty, Paul T, Lyricsgrl, Simon, Gary, Suejoy and Ing (I think you're out there! I just spoke to you on the phone!).

I listen to NPR and I hear about the goings on, the rotten news and the worse scenarios (people losing everything). You're each in my thoughts which I keep pretty tight even though I am one to speak my mind to the degree no one will date me for long. The Beat poets wondered if there was such a thing as freedom, too.

And I've been wondering what they'd think about the blog and the facebook spheres, the endless, endless wi-re. Would they make new beats?

Would their good wishes cast the bad karma away in flames?

Seriously, I hope you're each well. Everyone.

lost weekend

technically it's mine and Beab's LAST weekend to spend in our smelly damp (roof started leaking under the rain last night) apt. could we be more apt than to bale?

out of there on three!

the new place has taught me a fast lesson: you get what you pay for. I was so damn depressed when I moved in to the apt we're leaving; was a situation, whether ego permits the realization, it takes two to tango and I'm still correct about that given it took me alone to get out of the hole that by my chin on the ground I was dragged into. for shame came the stairs and the isolation...

until...

I

woke

up.

Bea Bea doesn't like seeing boxes packed. She's poor trash to the core. In our last move she escaped the yard to appeal her claim of adoption to the Clampets (or however them hillbilly's name is spelled) twice. When we'd moved into that past place, she clung bang into my legs, all ten sand bags full of her, for a whole week.

Now, she's leaking some fluid I suppose a lame duck would find appealing. She's neutered to the bone and so the fluid crests with no magic yowza potion naked dog type of effect. Not ever. On walks, knowing the border collie races his track to the fence and scream-barks his loopy head off at her, she releases this fluid on the tallest mound of snow, on the highest weed or grasses grown, on the fluke branch torpedoed into the snow. On walks, suspecting the dog we both hear barking from four blocks over wants her, she hikes her getting chubby thigh up again on whatever's tallest, on whatever peak is available at that angle, and releases this fluid. Lately, with the boxes showing and the few items coming off the walls and the surfaces I've near-arm-scraped into boxes looking all but dusted clean and sparse, she's releasing this fluid-blank on the sofa.

Why she hasn't a lick of faith in me I'm not surprised given the states she has indeed witnessed. She can't talk and more or less because she is a she, her account wouldn't stack up to the level she can even aim and release. But I'll vouch for her: she's scared I'll march us up another forty steps to live among the frail twigs, to live among twigs like those used to fall to the ground in the yard I used to grumble about picking up. Nowhere near, I can say, but I don't blame her for not feeling especially reassured.

I can hardly wait to see her swallow her whole face once she has a saunter through the new place. Faith short lived, but faith lived.

to Bea Bea.