The Ephemerals

Plants known as ephemerals respond readily to spring's early warmth and fade back into the earth during the heat of summer. So I've read anyway. I bought my house in December. The yard, as far as I could tell, was grass bordered by curving beds of gravel. How Zen, I thought. Maybe I'll make hypertufa garden orbs, grow some herbs and vegetables in some big pots and call it a day. It's been a cold spring in here Minnesota, but in the last couple of weeks green things are rocketing out of the ground. There will be no room for garden orbs. I'm trying to make sense of it all, using an app on my phone to ID things and marveling at the fortitude of the plants pushing their way through a thick layer of black garden cloth and gravel. I'm also trying to make sense of the death of my friend Shanna, who left this Earth by her own hand not quite two weeks ago. As another friend put it, depression is a murderer and a liar. Shanna pushed her way through a layer of darkness, and I was in a writing group with her as she blossomed. I never shared a meal with her--or even a drink or a cup of coffee--our common ground was writing and struggle. Her own rough life gave her a nose for the sadness and pain of others.Shanna emailed me more than once when I was at the bottom to tell me to see her therapist. As I remember it she followed up with a phonecall. I went to the therapist. I made it out of the bottomless hole I was in. Shanna made it out too. She wrote a novel,Oh!You Pretty Things a few years ago that got all around fine reviews. She moved. I moved. We weren't ever see each other/talk regularly friends--and time and distance, well,you know how that goes. Things happened that I don't know about. Then Shanna got Covid in November and shared her struggle on Facebook. She was super sick. I posted on her wall like a zillion other friends. I PM-ed her now and then to not clutter up her wall of well-wishes, so numererous were the messages from friends and fellow writers. But she didn't get well and became a long-hauler. And overwhelmed by Covid and god knows what all, she took her life. Muffin and cupcake, she'd call me and the other writers in our group. Sweet cakes and sparkle pie. Shanna was a secret sauce of heart-aching empathy cut with wicked wit and profanity. Honestly, there was no one fucking like her. Not even close. I haven't felt like doing much this past ten days. I pull weeds and put comments from my fellow writers into the appropriate folders for the essays I'm trying to finish. I cut out images for collages, but don't make anything. I look at the Virgina bluebells in my gardern and think the word ephemeral. They'll be gone soon, I guess. But you wouldn't know it to look at them right now. Ephemeral.

Squirrels of the Future

 I've never really liked squirrels. When I was a kid we had a next-door neighbor who fed the squirrels in her yard. She fed them Dubuque, Iowa's very fine Betty Jane candies. I can see her out there in her flowered housecoat with a box of chocolates, a squirrel eating out her hand. It seemed like things could take a turn at any moment, and I didn't want to witness it. 

My very first house in L.A. had a pecan tree. We never harvested a single pecan. My daughters, however did enjoy watching the squirrels strip it bare. They'd sit at our kitchen table and laugh out loud at the squirrels' ridiculous gymnastics. I was less than thrilled. I wanted to make something with those homegrown pecans.

Post divorce, the very first place I ever owned by myself, I had an apricot tree. That first apricot I harvested was the best apricot I've ever eaten. It was the last apricot I enjoyed from that tree. The squirrels also ate my lovely ruffled pink hibiscus. 

I tried everything. Bird netting. Cayenne. Nothing worked.

When it came time to move my mother in with me, I sold that place and bought a house that fit her needs. There were no squirrels there by the ocean. Until after DJT was elected. Then things changed. I gave those interlopers names--Evil Bannon and Kelly Ann. They pigged out on the bird seed and destroyed my geraniums.

Minneapolis is overrun with squirrels. Last year I saw a pure white one. On my walk the other day I watched the fat one at the top of this post for quite awhile. Do you know why he/she is fat? Because they're planning for the future. That's right. The future. That squirrel knows it's going to get cold. There'll be less to eat in our snowy landscape. Calories will harder to find. So the squirrels are chowing down. So they'll survive. Because they think there will be a future to survive for. I love that squirrel and all of their fat friends. I love the idea of planning for the future.

I'm just sitting here watching the houseplants grow

the dining room group

Many loved ones stand on the front lines of Covid-19 and racial justice.
I sit at my desk next to these plants and make things-- Monetary contributions to organizations that I believe will change this f-ed up world; making zines, origami boxes, small handwritten books, hand bound journals, protest posters that will probably not go out into the street.

masu boxes with lids made of hand-marbled paper

While I completely understand that I don't know how to draw, I still like doing it. Go figure.  This is a slipcase for a collection of zines.

coptic binding in progress

I'm growing things on the balcony that I rarely used last year. This year it's an oasis (relative term) despite the noise from the a.c. units next door.

First tomato (and maybe jalapeños too) are on the way

So, the houseplants are doing fine. And for those of you who might wonder, I'm not actually drinking myself to death during quarantine. I know. I'm surprised too.

How are your houseplants (dogs, cats, kids, parents, hamsters, chickens) doing? How are you?

Song for a Ruined City

Mill City Ruins

In its earliest incarnation of white settlement, Minneapolis was a logging boomtown. One of the first saw mills in the area was constructed just across the river from the ruined flour mill in this photo. White pine was king, and the hardwood forests in southern Minnesota and neighboring area was once a vast wilderness of over 5,000 square miles. Prior to the 1800s the population (probably this count is white people?) was a mere 5000 souls.

Then came opportunity. Money to be made. People flocking to jobs. The largest raft of timber ever floated down the Mississippi was 5,500,000 feet of timber in 1902. Imagine it. What once stood tall, leveled. Gone. The supply of timber was thought to be inexhaustible then.

I read somewhere (back when I took long walks, lingering to read things) on an informational placard in my river neighborhood about how dangerous logging was. Legs were crushed or torn off. There was a booming business, not just in logging, but in artificial legs too. Probably loggers and their legs were thought to be inexhaustible. Not long after the peak, the much prized old growth pine forests were gone. When I imagine it, I see one-legged men hobbling into taverns.

Then came flour. Minneapolis transformed itself into the flour milling capital of the world. Enough flour each day for 12 million loaves of bread. Milling flour was dangerous too. In 1878, one of the big mills exploded and killed 18 workers. But the work went on. By World War I, commercial bakeries were making 30 per cent of the nation's bread. General Mills was king. Betty Crocker was queen. In 1903 there was a labor dispute and a broken strike. Workers building a city, stone by stone. Workers risking their lives. It's an old story. A recurring theme.

Meat processing. Covid-19. Healthcare. Write this paragraph. You know how it goes.

Last night when I thought perhaps I might be losing my mind after not being able to concentrate on a single thing all day, I went for a walk despite all the runners and bicyclists who zoom by not wearing masks. And there was this red-winged blackbird, singing his heart out.

I wanted to sing too--a song for a ruined city. No theater. No music. No bars or restaurants. No museums.  People I love being exposed to the virus every day.

I love cities. I didn't see a big city until I was 17. Chicago! I thought of it as my salvation. But that's another story.

I'll eat a lot of peaches. But I  don't want to blow up my TV and move to the country. (R.I.P., John Prine.)

R.I.P. to all Covid-19 victims.

R.I.P to all of those who have left us.

R.I.P. Minneapolis.

last night's sunset

Inside and Out

Last night's sunset looked like a scene from a disaster movie. Empty streets. Blood red sky.

But inside on the kitchen island there are tulips because I pre-ordered and pre-paid for them at the neighborhood farmers' market and simply had to sweep by and scoop up the wrapper with my name on it.

This is the not close-up version with the kitchen island devoted to making hand-marbled paper book covers. I think I will post a picture soon of all the journals I've made. I think of them as Corona diaries. If you want one, you can private message me, saying which one. Some are very tiny, and I imagine them as "It's the little things" records of what has gotten you through this so far....or what is destroying you. Of course as much as I would like to send these things I've made to you, it means I have to go to the post office. Sigh. (see previous post) I hope to have the full array displayed in the next blog post.

My anxiety is better today. (How's yours?) Probably because I have not put on a mask in an attempt to go out. I had a lovely chat with a friend today wherein I explained that having been nearly strangled to death by an acquaintance decades ago, I don't do well with my mouth and nose covered, or the feeling that my air supply is restricted.

A couple of days ago as I was talking on the phone with my younger daughter M., I was describing to her the shape of the plant stand I wanted for my balcony (plants are super important to me right now) and she emailed me a photo of one from Target which turned out to be perfect. I ordered it online and it arrived in our building's package room a day later. I was going to live the big city life--one token plant on the balcony. Now I want more, more, more.

There's so much to do in any given day. How was your day? xo

R.I.P., John Prine

John Prine's songs told the story of my life (really all of our lives, I bet) armed with a crystal ball and a magical rearview mirror with perfect vision. He was the troubadour through every romance I've had--the soundtrack to so many moments-- the sad and the jubilant, the sorry and the unforgiven, the transcendent and the earthly.

"How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, and come home in the evening and have nothing to say?" The Someone and I shook our heads over that line a million times, stunned by it, thanking our lucky stars we weren't like that. Until we were. The last few years of the marriage there could not have been a more perfect  description of our lives.

I saw John Prine for the first time in Knoxville in 1974. Life was messy that year. Back from a year backpacking through Europe, too broke to go back to college, feeling unwelcome in my mom's house since she'd remarried, I went down to Knoxville to stay with a friend and got a job as an art model at the university there. For the Freshman drawing classes, it was required that I wear a leotard and chalk a mark to show where my navel was. For the older students, I modeled nude, as is the normal procedure for figure drawing classes. I sold my blood plasma for extra cash in Knoxville. It was a great scheme. Until it wasn't. With two sources of income, I could afford to buy a ticket to John Prine. I didn't even know who he was. My friend said he was good. He sat alone on stage on a wooden stool with a six pack of beer at his feet, every now and then prying the top off a fresh one. As I recall it in my mind's eye, he was in the center of a pool of light. The theater was silent, transfixed, that golden light spreading, enveloping every heart in the room.

I last saw John Prine in June of 2011 at the Orpheum Theater in downtown L.A. for Dan's birthday. The night was a marvel. How the hell could a person write so damn many great songs? Two days later I got on a plane to Minneapolis to do stuff at my condo in St. Paul. Closets, shelves for the pantry. I imagined living in Minnesota someday. The next week I went out to Baltimore to see my mom who was living with my brother and his girlfriend. My mother was still recovering after almost dying after her lung cancer surgery. My brother was having a hip replacement. Every night I listened to music before I went to sleep. I know Prine was on that soundtrack.

For the past few years a friend and I have regularly checked John Prine's schedule, hoping to catch him somewhere. It never worked out. Somehow he released an album in 2018 that I missed. I bought it today. I'm gonna take it one song at a time. I've started with the last song. It's called "When I Get to Heaven."

Leaving Coronaville/Day 1

I haven't been blogging here much, choosing to write on Medium.com if I write on the internet at all. I don't know why. 

But here I am on what I consider Day One of the Flatten the Curve Lockdown. Everything I've been looking forward to has been cancelled. I'm okay with it. I think it's wise, given the level of illness elsewhere around the globe. Minneapolis is closed. My book arts classes postponed. Theatre tickets refunded. I plan to go to my paper making internship because I spend the day in a big studio alone or with the artist who runs the place (if she's not in her other studio.) Just me and paper, paper, paper. 

I've recently gotten interested in making zines and very small artist's books. I have plenty of supplies at home and a couple of days ago I discovered that I had distilled my 90,000 word memoir into ten lines that fit in a 10-page book the size of a saltine. There's a zine version too that fits on one side of a single piece of paper. I can write a fuck ton of 10-page books while I'm hanging out  here in my beautiful place.

I'm 67 years old. I'm healthy. On no medications. But January of 2019 I got community acquired pneumonia. It was a bitch. I felt like my ribs were broken for a couple of months. I don't want Covid-19, and I don't want anyone I love to get it either. 

I eat fresh food and had almost nothing in my pantry, but a couple of weeks ago, I began getting a few of cans of this and that. And I bought 6 bottles of red wine last week. Last night I moseyed over to the neighborhood Trader Joe’s for another round of casual pantry stocking. 

But. Wait. There were no canned goods. Except green jackfruit—whatever that is. No eggs, no bread. A meager supply of nuts. Even the produce bins were empty, except for sweet potatoes and a few bags of blood oranges. Shoppers shuffled through the aisles like Stepford wives, staring into the distance or into their phones, texting, Uh…Should I get some cans of green jackfruit?

So tell me, how are you?