How are you? Tell me, I want to know.

The ghost of my walking self

Every day I say I'm going to go outside and go for a walk. But I don't. I have a package I want to take to the post office. It's a handmade journal I made for an artist's residency friend who sent me a handwoven cashmere scarf.

Me not going out, but wearing the beautiful scarf. I haven't worn shoes in forever.

A few weeks ago I was walking over three miles (unless the windchill was below 10 degrees) to my papermaking internship. When I was taking care of my mom a few years ago I walked on the beach every morning for at least 90 minutes. In my college years I walked in the woods almost every day. When I lived in New York, I thought nothing of walking 50 or 60 blocks. In my married years I walked the street to street staircases all over the hillsides of Silver Lake. I walked almost every street of Sierra Madre and South Pasadena. Walking is thinking. Walking is figuring things out. Walking is thanking the birds and the trees.

Maybe I'm someone else now. Someone who doesn't like to walk.

When I was 19, I had a very serious back surgery to correct a curvature in my spine. I spent a month in the hospital, 300 miles from home. My mother was with me, but I couldn't see my dad or my siblings or my friends. I couldn't walk the halls of the hospital. I couldn't even lift my head to look out the window. When I got out, I was encased in a plaster cast from my chin to my hips for ten months--its own form of social distancing. That was hard at the time. It was so long ago I don't know how to compare it to now. But there's a connection. I'm not in a body cast. I'm encased in a condo.

I complained a lot to my daughter M while talking on the phone today. What a terrible time to move to a condo in the city, my investments oh dear oh dear, traveling damn it--when can I travel?/can I afford to travel? Blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile there are so many people with much bigger problems. 

So here I am inside, dreaming of flowers that I will plant on my balcony when my new plant stand comes. I'm listening to every song John Prine ever recorded--a few each morning. I'm making hand bound journals with my handmade and hand marbled paper--some tiny and some large.

I bought a paper guillotine. It doesn't fit in any cabinet or drawer, so it lives under the armoire in my bedroom. Today I ordered a screw punch. No, that's not a cocktail.

 I think I'll survive. But today I thought I might be getting sick. I was terrified. How are you? Tell me, please. I want to know. 

The white squirrel and the moon

The moon nearly knocked me over on the way home last night. I looked up and there it was, its light transforming my condo building into a temple. I stopped and texted a friend, "Moon!"
"Sky!" he texted back.
"Yes!" I texted.
Moon, you were worthy of  all those exclamation points.

Yesterday morning's walk revealed its own amazing sight--a pure white squirrel (SO sorry about this photo--you'll have to trust that it's the snowy blur streaking between the trees) frolicking in Gold Medal Park. One of my daughters had told me recently about the white squirrel in her neighborhood. It's not that I didn't believe her, but I figured I'd have a better chance of running across a great white shark in the Mississippi.

When I got home, I asked scientist Google and found THIS. Read it. Watch the video. Go ahead, go down the white squirrel rabbit hole. And if you have a real camera and take real photos, I hope you'll post to the website. 

This is Not a Food Blog

But this was my lunch today.

There's a lot of beauty in Oaxaca.

The sink  in my hotel room looks like a shrine.

While out and about in Oaxaca today, I think I found the stairway to heaven.

I think that's where these folks are headed.

East Meets West...and they pretty much agree

The treatment room's only decor

I went to see an old-school acupuncturist today. Next to a barbershop, the dark doorway opened into a waiting room full of ornate Chinese furniture, some of it covered in plastic the way your most fastidious aunt might have kept her living room in the 50s or early 60s. Not a gurgling water feature, a buddha, or an orchid in sight.

I diligently filled out the form, detailing my acid reflux diagnosis of a year ago, including the details of my reaction to the medication which nearly ended in a trip to the ER at 3 a.m. the night that my kidneys felt like they were on fire and my stomach bloated like one of those full moons that appear to be sitting on the freeway, occupying all six lanes. The scene in the acupuncturist's office then went a little Mel Brooks on me when the older Chinese lady at the desk got up to lead me to a treatment room, and I saw that she could not straighten up. Whether permanently bent at 90 degrees or not, I had a moment of Oh, nooooooo. Ruuuunnnnn. But I didn't.

Before really studying the form, the doctor asked me to stick out my tongue and said, "Big digestive problem! Big nervous system problem!" After he read what I'd written down and asked me some questions, he explained acid reflux to me pretty much the same way the ENT doctor did last year when he looked at the lesions on my vocal chords that he said were caused by acid reflux.

So my sexy voice might go away. I'm supposed to eat 20% less at my daytime meals, and 40% less at my nighttime meal (which I'm supposed eat early.) So maybe I'll run into you at some restaurant that has an Early Bird special. I'm also supposed eat very, very slowly.

Eating slowly is difficult. Like almost impossible. I get excited about eating, and I just eat it up. Boom. Done. I think I've always been kind of a fast eater, but I think things got out of hand post divorce when I ate pretty much all of my meals on the couch, flanked by two large dogs. Later when I began to care for my mom, I ate slowly because she ate VERY slowly, and I didn't want to seem rude or in a hurry. And we ate early. So that was actually good for me.

The acupuncturist was a old Chinese man with decades of experience (and with his round face and sweet eyes, reminded me a bit of the man who loved me.) He says that after a while, the antacids stop working and you just need more. He says I can get better without antacids, but it's a 50/50 deal between me and him. I have to do my part. So, wish me luck, and I hope that sometime soonish, my normally irritating nasally voice will return, and that my stomach will be more like a crescent moon. And who knows, maybe the treatments will be good for my anxiety. Pretty nifty coincidence that I blogged about that EXACTLY ONE YEAR AGO. And yesterday I was a nutcase and had to walk for hours.

And tell me, how are you?

Minnesota: Land of 10,000 Tears

This post comes to you from my condo in St. Paul, Mn.--a condo I bought back in 2008 pre-economic downturn against the advice of my trusty financial advisor. He was right.

But post-divorce, I was making all kinds of crazy plans. I would have taken out a jumbo loan and financed the Taj Mahal at an interest rate high enough to reach the moon if I'd thought it was the solution to how shitty I felt back then. Daughter M was not doing the best in those days either, and I think living here was some sort of balm--as much balm as a physical thing can be for a hurt that's not at all physical. She lived here for three years, and now the other daughter, C, is living here with her husband. With my mom in a nursing home in northeast Iowa, the Twin Cities are now a good gateway to visiting her.

The frozen rural place/a.k.a. Iowa--taken on the road trip with C and her husband to see my mom

Photo of my mom and me taken yesterday. 

It was -28 degrees today in St. Paul. I went out for a walk. The sidewalks were dry and clean. With my eyes watering from the cold and my frozen tears sticking my eyelashes together, I thought about  my complicated history with Minnesota. I came here for college in 1970 just weeks after signing the final paperwork relinquishing my son for adoption. The next year I had major surgery on my spine and a month later my father died suddenly of a heart attack. The following year there was another back surgery. Thirty years later I came here again and again post divorce. I've walked in every type of weather. I've walked in deep into the woods and on country roads in the pitch black winter night while the sky was ripped apart by shooting stars. I've walked ankle deep in the mud on a lakeshore, along the Mississippi River in driving rain, in downtown St. Paul bathed in Christmas lights. I've walked drunk. I've walked sober. I've walked wailing out loud, talking to myself, while plotting mayhem, and while plotting my own destruction. Today I just walked, glad to be out under the sky.

Today, walking in St. Paul

Walking is what I do. Sad, happy, mad, glad, tired, wired, here, there. 

And while I've shed plenty of tears in California, somehow I always feel happier there.

Last month walking on the beach in Cambria, CA

And tomorrow, I'll be back in Margaritaville (a.k.a. Ventura County)

Though I have to disclose that this photo was actually taken in a Mexican Restaurant in Dubuque, IA

Another road trip photo--just because.

Exclamation Point in the Sky and other things worth exclaiming about!

New Year's Day sunset. Hello 2016!

Once upon a time I greeted the New Year stoked with resolutions. 

Then there was the era of the ironic resolution. (Drink more! Stay up later! Party harder!) I was a mom with young children and those resolutions always fell flat.

I took things seriously again for a while and one year I even signed up for one of those online services that nag you by email about meeting your goals. 

I resolved to never do that again.

Then I think there was a year where I resolved not to have any resolutions at all. 

This year I was into it. Then decided I wasn't. 

This morning I read THIS. I'm sure it's a gross oversimplification to resolve to have great compassion. Maybe one can resolve to study great compassion. Or to look at the world and notice where great compassion exists. Yes, I'll resolve to do that (!)

I also read THIS.  Here's a quote: "We do not see that our life right here, right now, is nirvana. Maybe we think that nirvana is a place where there are no problems, no more delusions. Maybe we think nirvana is something very beautiful, something unattainable. We always think nirvana is something very different from our own life. But we must really understand that it is right here, right now." Yes, I'll resolve to do that (!)

I'm also resolving to go back to being gluten free because right now by body is the shape of a bowling pin!!!

Did you see the exclamation point in the sky last night, dear readers?

Do you have any resolutions you want to share?

Pelicans and Thinking Out Loud

This could be a picture of my heart. I'm soaring so much of the time these days.

But.

This morning as my friend Ellen and I were walking we talked about the death of our parents. How her mother died suddenly, still fully herself. How my father did the same. And I told her how when I dream of him or think of him, I see him just as he was in this life. And that's the most terrible thing about my mom, I said. After she dies and I see her in my dreams, I'll see her like this--the way these past few years have, day by day, reduced her and how that's what is burned into my brain. This is not the version of her I want to remember.

ALASKA: Spirit Houses and How the Spirit Soars

The air here is so pure it's like the exhalation of the gods. The water right out of the tap is worthy of fancy crystal decanters.

After a morning walk along Ship Creek in Anchorage, we drove off. Our first stop was the Eklutna Historical Park where we walked through the cemetery and looked at the spirit house grave markers of the Athabascan Indians. Alongside the road behind a white picket fence sat houses atop the graves like something out of a fairy tale. Who wouldn't want their spirit to reside in a place like this?

Driving toward Denali, we made it to the Talkeetna Lodge and took a long walk into the town of Talkeetna for dinner. I had reindeer meatloaf with secret sauce. It was delicious. Also on the menu was something called Rudy in a Parka---"cheese stuffed reindeer link baked in dough." That sounded a bit heavy for my soaring spirit.

Another Sunrise

Walking through my neighborhood before my mom awoke, my brain momentarily flashed to sneaking out of the house as a teenager. Waiting for the moment around 1:00 a.m. when the rattle of a train masked my footsteps and the click of the closing door. The memory sparked a millisecond of adrenaline. The worries then of being caught, of whether I would actually make it to college, did my boyfriend really love me, would my back ever stop hurting, how soon could I possibly get out of my small town, and how would I explain all those mosquito bites? Now the worries circle around my mother. Will she spill hot coffee on herself if she wakes up before I get back? Did I remember to lock up the booze? What the hell, why is my neck hurting? Did I sleep crooked or are my vertebrae dissolving because I'm going to have arthritis just like my mother? Where are all the herons?

The Hit Man Report

Where the Christmas tree used to be.

In the dark, leave a note. Leave your ancient mother behind, asleep in her bed. Go buy milk so you can make a latté. Creep out of your sleeping house. Skulk through the dawn. This is what you must do to survive. She could die in your absence. She could die any time. So could you. Whatever. Make the coffee. Leave another note. Put her cup by the coffee pot. Open the brand new carton of half and half so she doesn't have to struggle. Sneak away again. Go to yoga. When you come home, she's in her room with her coffee. The arthritis is killing her knee. Her hip. Heat the hot pack. Re-heat the coffee. Make her breakfast. Make yours. Drag the dead Christmas tree out the patio door. Spend the day cleaning away the Christmas spirit which barely materialized anyway. Relish the vacuuming. Relish the mopping. The polishing. The dusting. Breath in the Windex. Heat the hot pack, this time for you. Read between loads of laundry. Relish the story in the New Yorker that you know would have been murdered in your MFA workshop had it been written by a student. Where is the forward motion of the story. This  is all just interior monologue. Where is the fucking scene? How about some dialogue? Realize the day is nearly over without much forward motion at all. Dialogue only if you shout.  Make dinner. Hold firmly to the new regime of salad for you. Grilled cheese for the ancient mother who needs calories. Ice cream for her dessert. Then when she's asleep, attack  the cheese and crackers. Hypocrite. Make a gin and tonic in your closet and carry it downstairs in a water glass. Just in case she wakes up. Watch a movie that makes you cry. Walk through the neighborhood, mumbling to your dead lover. Why are there so many stars? Why can't you be nicer?

I took the colored Christmas lights down from the top of the armoire and put up white ones. 

Labyrinth

There's only one way in and out of a labyrinth. Like life, I guess you could say. Unlike a maze, you can't get lost going this way and that, looking for a way out. There isn't any ambiguity. But as you follow the path around and around, there's a lot of switching directions, and just when you think you're close to the exit, you end of somewhere else entirely, and there's still quite a bit of walking to do.

I've been at a T'ai Chi Chih retreat in New Mexico, and it felt completely luxurious to give myself over to the practice for a few days. I ignored my email and forgot about Facebook. And I walked the labyrinth shown above every day.

I also walked to the Rio Grande with my friend L, and that made me remember the trip cross country the summer of 2012 when my daughter M and I drove my mom out here to live with me. We wrote down all the names of the rivers we crossed. We crossed the Platte River over and over again which made it seem a bit like a labyrinth.

And in walking the labyrinth at the retreat center, I thought of the labyrinth in the meditation garden at one of the hospitals where Dan stayed before he died. I walked through it over and over one evening. I think I had an inkling then of where things were leading for Dan. I just thought it would take a lot longer to get there.

It's brutally hot here in southern California. The drought is intensifying, and very little lush green was visible from the sky. Flying into Burbank the mountains looked brown and sharp like the spines of desiccated pre-historic animals.

My next destination as I wander around taking a break from caring for my mom will not be at all brown and spiny. Stay tuned. I will ramble on again from there.

How Poetry Saves My Life ( again) or Seratonin and Not-Seratonin

Somewhere just inside my forehead a neon sign has been blinking all week. I am lost I am lost I am lost, it says. It's hard to get much done. Hard to sleep when you have neon in your brain. It's The Grief. Hello, Grief. You have to go with it, I say. Go ahead, just Google "How to get a person to come back from the dead." It's all right. After a little reading, you settle down. You drink a little wine. Or a little tea. You splash back into reality. You watch another episode of Orange is the New Black, and you totally dig how Piper doesn't smile the way she used to. How there's someone new behind her eyes.

I listen to podcasts now instead of talking to Dan on the phone when I walk in the evening. I'm not sure how I ever survived without Curtis Fox and Poetry Off the Shelf from the Poetry Foundation. These podcasts got me through the Divorce Anxiety too. Poem by poem. No long stories. I love you, David Sedaris, and I love you Moth, and I love you Radio Lab, but sometimes I just don't have what it takes to hang on to the ledge that long. Just give me a poem. Talk to me about it. Then read it again.

Tonight there was this: (apologies re the weird formatting)

The Drama of the Gifted Hansel
				Shit are we lost? Should I tell her we’re lost? If we had some pot, we could sleep— and worry in the morning...I’m sure tomorrow my friends will find us. If I tell her, she’ll cry; women are so weak. I thought we had a plan when I lay down that bread. Fucking birds. Should’ve used stones. Wish we were stoned, because she’ll panic if we’re lost. She’ll say, “I told you so” about the crumbs. Then she’ll scream or faint or start in about witches. Shit. I mean, no one needs to live inside that kind of anxiety. It’s obsolete. Take me. Things hurt, but not really once you understand everything is chemical if you let it be what it is— a matter of seratonin and not-seratonin, control and not-in-control. At least she knows what it’s like. Man, I’m such an asshole. I’m such an asshole. I’m such an asshole. Or am I? Anxiety is just a matter of thinking for too long about yourself. I wonder if we’re lost. —Debora Lidov Also saved by this:  The Ultimate Freedom Yoga. And this: http://www.taichichih.org.

Herons on the Housetops

Funny how these graceful beautiful birds look so forbidding with their long necks and wings tucked in.

Final Photo of the DIY Beach Glass Fireplace

Here it is with the grout haze all buffed off.

In case you're wondering, the only way to do the buffing was just a few stones at a time. It really didn't take that long though. I worked on it in little sections and maybe I spent about an hour on it.

And also in case you're wondering, I think the whole project cost maybe 50 bucks. And I have lots of grout and thinset leftover. The sponges can be used again, too. 

And here's some outdoor beauty for you from tonight's walk.

And yeah, I'm still collecting beach glass--just in case you're wondering. What am I going to do with all of it? I have plans.

Pillville--Where the days are getting longer.

More daylight at dinner time enhances the conversation between my mother and me. "I think I see a light on in the 3rd floor condo across the way," becomes 'Look at that dog!" or "Don't you think that girl should be wearing a jacket?" Soon there will be hummingbirds and more boats going out, more joggers, more babies in strollers. It's probably just enough to keep both of us from going insane.

Simple observations in the moment are much easier than discussing what's gone on in a day. My mom asks a lot of questions about current goings on that she doesn't remember getting answers to. And I  either don't correct her at all, or I simply answer the question as if she's asking it for the first time--M is taking the plane, not the train to New York. Our houseguests left yesterday, not today--I do get to feeling a bit looney myself. Wait? Did they leave today? Or sad. As the tide lapped into the marina last night, my tears began rising too.

I walked after dinner for the first time in a a couple of months. It seems a workable compromise if I walk around and around the block. When I get to the marina side where the sidewalk passes by the patios of all the houses, I can look in and see my mother tidying the kitchen or standing at the end of the kitchen island reading the newspaper on the iPad. If she disappears, I stop walking and go inside. Last evening, the fresh air and the water was enough to settle me and bring me back to realizing things are really working out pretty well here in Pillville.

Still, Friday evenings are the hardest. I think we all have these rhythms. Tide in. Tide out.  If I am going to wake worrying, it's always between 3:00 and 3:30. I am almost never grumpy or pessimistic in the morning. At 4:p.m. I would like all the cake in the world. To myself. Go away. Or bring me coffee--then go away. I am incredibly thankful, however, that Friday nights are not as hard as they used to be.  I'm pretty sure I would not have survived without my dogs.

But, as always, Friday nights turn into Saturday mornings. And they pretty much always look like this here in Margaritaville.

My mother has had four or five good days in a row--outside of some tiredness, she hasn't had any severe pain or nausea. For the last couple of nights, she's stayed awake and engaged all through dinner without the narcoleptic moments that can come on so quickly it's as if someone has exchanged the salt for slumber dust.

And it's almost springtime. I have the urge to clean things. I took up the very dirty carpet squares in front of the couch. I bought some new pillows and a pouf at the Cost Plus sale. Orange! Orange! More daylight! Orange! I am drunk with light and color. Drunk on the beauty of Margaritaville, sans the Margarita. Which is kind of a miracle.

Little Victories

I had it all figured out at the beginning of the week. After the four ER visits in one month with my mom, it was clear that I needed to change everything.

I ordered the fall detector button. My mother and I went adult day care shopping. "The second one is the best one," she said enthusiastically, her smile for the camera smile frozen onto her face. I told various people, including the social worker at the day care place that I needed someone to come into my house a few mornings a week as well. Following what seemed to be other prudent advice, I bought keyed doorknobs for my bedroom and the daughters bedrooms--what with "strangers" coming and going--and made arrangements to have them installed. The schedule for the day care place was worked out including the pick-up and drop-off. My world cracked opened so wide I almost felt agoraphobic. What would I do until 2:30 on Tuesdays and Fridays? Would the placid silence inspire me to write? Would I be able to read without getting up to see if the moaning or swearing or banging around was something more than crying wolf? Would I go out to lunch with a friend? Take off early for a weekend away if M could come by on Friday afternoon? I could do anything I wanted for six straight hours, knowing that someone else was responsible for my mom.

Friday evening she told me she wasn't going to get on a bus so early (9:00 a.m.) in the morning. She simply was not going to do it. The therapy chairs, the hot packs, the massage for arthritis pain, live entertainment, other ladies to crochet with, physical therapy, dancing--none of it could change her mind. "Well, great," I said, Now, I'm a prisoner."
"Then have someone come in to babysit me," she said, obviously not happy about that either.

Meanwhile the man who loves me and I were squabbling. "But you said..."
"That's not what I meant...."
"You absolutely said that."

In a completely black mood all day yesterday after the glow of yoga quickly dissipated, I raged and mulled unable to do much of anything except walk around and around my neighborhood. I woke every hour last night asking myself what sort of a person picked fights with old ladies and guys with lung cancer doped up on pain killers.

Today I decided I would read in my room with the door closed and some non-distracting background music to muffle whatever was going on downstairs. An easy book. Something engaging. So I picked up an Elmore Leonard novel and napped every ten pages or so feeling like perhaps I should be the one going to adult day care, and asking someone to accompany me on my doctor's appointments. At 4 p.m. I woke in time for a sunset walk.

I didn't jump in the marina or stop a boat and ask to get on. I didn't go to a bar and drink ten margaritas.

Secret Tuesday Afternoon Margarita or How Not to Be Afraid

Set out to mail a letter and when your feet want to take you to a Mexican restaurant, let them.

When the hostess tries to take you to a table, tell her you want to eat in the bar.

In the bar, order a a Margarita and a bowl of albondigas--never mind that you are a vegetarian and drink wine only on the weekends.

Admire the orbs of grease shining in your soup bowl. Look for constellations as you cut into the meatballs while praying that the animals providing this feast lived and died at the hand of kindness.

Notice the men at the table against the wall. The 80-something father, white eyebrows like awnings, his hands gripping the edges of the table as if the earth's turning on its axis might be power enough to spin him into the next world--while the son (your age) silently sips his coffee.

Listen to the conversation at the bar behind you. Young Guy With a Beer speaks to Older Woman:
"That's one big ass tortilla chip you've got there."
"Tostata or something like that," she says. He goes on to tell her without a trace of an accent that he's from Spain, and in Spain they eat soup out of bread bowls.
"You eat the soup and the bowl," he says as if it's the most exotic thing ever. She offers him a bite of the big ass chip and some guacamole,  and he takes it while you nearly go insane with anticipation.
"Can I buy you a drink?" he asks.
"No, no, no," she says, but somehow its seems as though the door is still open. "I only ever have one."
"Are you sure?"
"What are you doing in the U.S.? she asks. "Are you working here?"
"I have a plumbing company" he says. "But my manager is handling things today."

Meanwhile, when the waiter comes to your table and offers you a second Margarita, order a Mexican coffee instead.

When he brings the coffee that smells more like tequila than coffee, ask what they have for dessert. Then ask him if he'd mind going through the list again. Give up pondering the three kinds of flan. Order the cheesecake.

When Older Woman gives Young Guy With a Beer the rest of her guacamole, and he takes it, imagine for minute telling her how kind she is when you run into her in the women's restroom later--which won't really happen.

Do your best not to turn around and stare when Young Guy tells Older Woman he's having lunch out as a tribute to his niece's birthday. "She has Trisomy 18," he says.
"Oh no," Older Woman says. "I'm sorry. How old is she?"
"Two," Young Guy says. "But she looks like she's a month old. My sister is beside herself."

Meanwhile a man sits down at the bar. He calls the bartender jefe. The bartender calls him jefe back and gives him a big glass of something.

Turn around just a little when Young Guy orders a shot of tequila. "The cheapest you have," he tells the bartender. Young Guy is clean cut and very tan. His ball cap sits next to him on the bar. He  offers Older Woman a drink again. She's pretty. Red hair out of a bottle. Fifty or fifty-five.
"No, no, no," she says. "I only drink Chardonnay."

Tell yourself that you only drink on the weekends. That you're a vegetarian. That you're not afraid.  That you're the jefe--at least of you. You are. You are. You are.

Pay your check and get the hell out of there. Walk home the long way, alternating looking up at the sky and walking with your eyes closed, counting the steps--working your way up to thirty. Thirty steps blind, always cheating with eyelids fluttering open when you try for thirty-one.

Let Our Spirits Walk on Water

The only church in the U.S executed in the "Mayan Style"--a worthy destination for a Sunday Walk.

The Ventura Pier--another place where the man who loves me and I walked yesterday.

And now one of my favorite poems by Ellen Bass from her collection titled "The Human Line."

Pray for Peace

Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah. Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekhina, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
Drop some silver and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latte and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

To Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray.
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile cases we are poured into.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheelchair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas–

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Scoop your holy water
from the gutter. Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Saturday Morning Beach Report/Saturday Night Street Report

On the horizon, a broad chalkmark of lavendar clouds hiding the islands.

The ocean dotted with surfers.Galloping sailboats.

Dolphins.

And me, walking.

Boats full of costumed pirates.

A couple walking a dog named Bo or, perhaps, Beau.

Two middled-aged women doing that excersize walk thing with swingy arms.

A teen-aged couple tucked into one of the nooks on the big bridge. She says to him, "Don't you know anything about your body? Your bladder is here. Your stomach is there."

And me, walking.

Photographer Tom Hussey's series "Reflections"... and some of my own

I walk after dinner. My mom sips what's left of her martini and cleans up the dinner dishes. She insists on doing her part. She loves helping out, she says. Earning her keep. It can get noisy this dinner clean-up. One of the aspects of being hard of hearing that I didn't think much about prior to my mom moving in with me is that the almost-deaf person cannot hear the racket they are making. I walk to escape the bedlam of china and pots and pans, the din of silverware and glass.

There's a house on my street with a better-than-average display of flowers in its front yard. Well tended and colorful, it's sometimes presided over by its owner who sits alone at a tall table for two in the alcove outside his front door. Last night his glass of white wine looked like liquid gold in the evening light. Cool jazz wafted out from the house."Good-evening, "I said (as I always do whenever I see him.) Mr. Tall Dark and Handsome returned my greeting (as he always does.)

"You know, you're one of the coolest people I've ever seen," he said then. I laughed. I admit I was taken aback. "You are," he said. "I can tell." I laughed again. Smiled and gave a goofy wave. Despite the fact that I found this a tad bit creepy (not to mention objectifying,) for a minute, in my mind's eye, I looked like this.

Or maybe like this.

Two vastly different versions of cool. Neither of them me. In those earlier angsty phases of my life, I longed to be cool in a way I couldn't be. I think getting older creates a longing for something equally unattainable. My almost 89-year-old mom comments frequently on her wrinkles. She says her hair is thinning. She abhors the fact that she's shrunk in stature. My mother-in-law, who's now in her 90s, once told me her reflection in the mirror always surprised her. She expected to see a younger self, she said. Not that old face looking back

These photographs by TomHussey have been making their way around the web. If you haven't already seen them, take a look. I found myself studying each one.