since

I don't know Andy. But once I knew a man who urged me to climb to the top of Pompey's Pillar with my sleeping bag. He'd come from where he was, I was to come from where I was and we'd meet at the top and you know. Cover ourselves with stars. Or some suchness.

I never did meet him there. But I've since slept at the base of that pillar. Somewhere in this blog is a photo of the prairie grass with the morning sunlight slicing through it.

My timing is often off.

Remember me? I was your wrong number the other day.

And once I knew someone else not called Andy. All over the Malibu we ate from a can-man's grocery cart. But never at McD's in Tijuana. He knew how to carve a crutch. He knew how to laugh when our Tijuana taxi driver got lost and asked us for directions. He always knew when to cross the border, how to get back home. But then some suchness happened. And guess what. Somehow now he's lost.

slope

I am not the mountain

          I need plank - this from the one who cannot take a hammer

                 to nails when depression closes in.

yet people come, people talk to me.

          This one gives back her hand and whispers:

                  I listen to no music when I sing.

I am high country, yes -- but without vistas --

          She nods her head. Today she wants to understand 

                  he doesn't believe in bridges anymore.

slopes of white bark, pine beetles setting in.

           I'd rather there be real bees the aspen tells

                   the river and the river tells

the mountain. And the mountain turns to me.

                 

the shutting of eyes

"Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The necessary condition for an image is sight,'Janouch told Kafka; and Kafka smiled and replied: 'We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds. My stories are a way of shutting my eyes."

- Roland Barthes - (Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography)


** ** ** ** ** **

Before I knew of the above quote, I wrote 101, which accompanies the header photo of this blog.



She lets him inside her life the first time
he hikes Two Moon with her. Ice-jammed

Yellowstone, gnarled beaver dams, blonde stalks
of endless prairie waving as they walked.

He sets the pace along the river bank,
anxious, he teases, to get to where it turns pretty.

Oh Jiminy, she prays to her Montana god,
forgive him-he knows not what he says.

He’s from Oregon and only knows
green colors. He laughs out loud with her.

She tells him about moccasins, the fleeing
Nez Pierce slipping through these trees.

He talks about Bear Creek Hikers, the odds
of John Wayne wearing them, if only he still lived.

When the trail runs higher and the water cuts
the bank, they single file quietly -- the sun leaning

on their backs as they round the river’s bend, a vista
point for them. Show him is the echo she sends out.

Her words strike against sandstone cliffs, skip across blue
water, settle into nested brush sleeping against washed rock.

A Chinook breath stirs when she explains to him
how beauty sneaks in when we close our eyes.

thin ice

May we skate on the thick ice as long as we stay away from the thin? And how do you stay away from the thin, a brother asked as we slid across the ice.

The world divides in two: Those who think the sign warns that all the ice is thin, and those who think the sign reminds us to stay off the thin ice, but allows for skating on the thick.

**

I was watching a video on David Foster Wallace last night. He spoke about what we lose when we allow ourselves to gratify any and all of our desires, often times instantaneously Where do the chunks of quiet go we once had in our days?

"We don't want things to be quiet anymore," he said. "The part of you that can think for thirty minutes of silence never gets fed." When did living start feeling so thin?

**

I asked Hewhoflies about silence and living thick or thin. He told me about a month spent in Ireland a few years ago. The only time he and his wife spoke on their drive along the Irish coastline was when they reached a small village overlooking the sea. To their right, a police station. In the window, a sign: For Rent.

They shared a hearty laugh.

They drove on. Now they are back in the States and he entertains the notion of renting that active police station. For what, for why? To see if he can.

quiet

We get quiet when others cry, Mary Little Cross whispered decades ago. It's like lighting candles on an altar; it's the way we send our prayers. The Bear Don't Walk  kids were boarding our school bus a few days after their mother had died while painting the ceiling in their kitchen.  

I feel quiet. In the wake of Japan's disasters, everything I have to say is small.

**

I wondered if Hewhofliesplanes would be flying rescue in Japan the way he did in Indonesia a few years ago. In the middle of wondering, my cell phone rang. He was calling to say he was involved in a different mission and so he'd not be in Japan.

Where would they, how would they find the courage they will need to recover? How would any of us? Whenever Plane-flyer and I visit the subject of courage comes up. Mostly we were quiet, but then he shared this quote with me:

"Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace. The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things; Knows not the livid loneliness of fear."  -Amelia Earhart

Photo courtesy of Nadine Hergenrider.

icicle

Of the two photos my father emailed to my Blackberry in the middle of the night, I open the one he's named Chop. The other one, Self Portrait with New Necktie, is one I can't bring myself to open. Not yet. Instead, I start my day earlier than usual. I take a photo of an icycle icicle hanging from the eaves of my house. The colors of a winter sunrise are distorted when looking through the ice. I'll send that photo to him before I go to sleep tonight now that I've looked up how to spell it.

icicle: noun: a pendent spear of ice formed by the freezing of dripping water.

On my early drive to work, Hewhowatchesmoviesfromthebackporch calls with today's weather forecast. He's surprised I am already out of bed and on my way to work. He just got off night shift so he knows how snowy our roads are and (surprise) he's watching I Love You, Man. Did I know, he asks, it was filmed at Venice Beach? Remember where we found that great parking place in the shade of a rundown garage's awning one alley from the beach? Everyone else was parking a mile away, but not us. We had found a secret parking spot.

Oy, I remember. So does he. He tells me that for years afterwards he would sometimes drive to Venice Beach to see if anyone else had discovered our spot.  

icicle: M.E. isykle, from is "ice" + ikel "icicle," from O.E. gicel (rel. to cylegicel "cold ice"), from P.Gmc. *jekilaz (cf. O.N. jaki "piece of ice," dim. jökull "icicle, ice, glacier"). Dialectal ickle "icicle" survived into 20c.

In how many ways can something keep hurting?  I am driving up the slick hill to my office, thinking about this but I don't say it out loud. Instead I tell him about my dad's latest emails and how I don't want to open the Necktie shot just yet. Moviewatcher-Parkingspotrememberer clears his throat.

I flip my left-turn signal on and ask if his movie has reached the sad section, but he says no-- he was just remembering my dad back when we were together. Remember how your dad took photos of his radiation mask when he had throat cancer? He measured it and emailed everyone a photo of the mask, the diagram, the radiation table, and the prognosis of oxygen tubes someday hanging around his chest.  

Traffic clears. I turn left and bounce across my office's icy parking lot. I turn the engine off and sit in the silent pickup cab, phone held against my ear and listen to him tell me: Taking photos and documenting pain are forms of detachment which help your dad find the courage to deal with what he must.

icicle: A pendent mass of ice tapering downward to a point, formed by the freezing of drops of water or other liquid flowing down from the place of attachment.

deleted scenes

Someone lent me a dvd to watch. I don't remember the title, but I do remember being warned only parts of it were good. My sister lends me books with sticky notes attached: "Let me know what you think of this when you are done reading it." What that means is she didn't like the book but wants me to read it anyways, just in case (JIC) she might have missed something. Do you know these same sorts of people?

The best part about the bad movie -- turns out I went ahead and watched it all -- was the section marked: Deleted Scenes. These were the scenes that told a different story (their own story). Sorta like the lines of poetry we strike from our poems, and put back into our cheater's notebook for use in a future poem. Scrapers. Bits of memory.

Watching this movie tonight reminded me of a man I used to watch movies with -- before we didn't anymore. I sorta wish I hadn't remembered. He would have to leave the room during the sad sections. And yet, he's a movie addict and watches these movies over and over. Even now, I know if I were to call him, likely he'd be watching a movie with sad spots in it. Oh, I would say, if you are watching a movie, I can call back later.

And he would say: No that's alright, I'm sitting on my back porch, the sad part isn't over yet. I still have five more minutes.

something else about red

When I was five I had my own Popeye coloring book. Growing up in a large family with a tight budget, not having to share a coloring book with siblings was a pretty big deal for me. For once I could color just the way I liked. And so I colored every page red. Wasn't red wonderful? I'd ask my brothers.

Our little sister at the time was still a toddler who slept in a crib in our parents' bedroom. She bit the heads off the plastic stable ponies in our farm set and so we didn't trust her around our coffee can of crayons. Only decades later did I discover what color meant to her. We were spending a cold April day in our nearby ski town when she coaxed me inside a quilter's fabric store -- one of the few places that close in on me and make me nervous. I am not domestic when it comes to fabric, but she was and still is. She ran her hands along every bolt of fabric, naming colors in such wondrous ways:  Azure Dairy Cream, Rock Hen Red, Foam Curler Pink.

Shewhobittheheadoffponies wouldn't leave the store. I was bordering on hyperventilation when she turned and asked what it was that centered me the way color made her glow. Color? Somewhere between my Popeye Phase and my Black Sweater Todays, I had misplaced my feel for color; I had misplaced my feel for . . . red!

How had I let that happen? The notions and bobbins and fabric bolts -- even the pinking shears -- closed in  on me, waiting for my reply. I took one deep breath and answered: Wide open spaces. And then I did what I always do -- slipped out the store's back door.

styled!

Well wow, what do you know but Kathleen and Kass have included this blog in the Stylish Blogger Award List! 

I started this blog almost a year ago to this day and have so enjoyed meeting so many creative, bright, intelligent, generous and kind people. The rules to accepting this blog award ask that I name five more stylish bloggers and then tell you seven things about myself you might not have known before.

I would have included Kathleen and Kass in my list, but since they have already named me, I add these bloggers to the Stylish Blogger List:

* Kerry at farmlass: This is where I go every time I lose my center. Kerry's sense of art can be found in every word she types, every photo she takes. Her sense of Earth is everywhere on her blog. AND her Irishness is everywhere, too.

* Marylinn Kelly : This is where I go, and this is who I hear from whenever I doubt myself. And whenever I want to find tough answers to easy questions, Marylinn has them. Her blog will really take you places.

* Sarah Jane Sloat at the rain in my purse: Everything slant can be found and felt when you read Sarah's words. 

* Amanda at Travels with Persephone: I get the greatest sense of Life Wide Open when I visit her blog. Her Greek soul and sense of adventure revives me every time I stop by.

* Magpie at A New York Magpie's Eye: Love the way she shares the way she sees the world. Her artwork and photography opens up another world to me every time she posts.

****

And so now, a list of seven things you didn't know about me until now:

1) I was late in learning when you cast with a right-handed reel using your left hand, not to take the resulting mess personally. There are two types of people in this world, as they say: the ones who have fun untangling the line with you, and the ones who storm away.

2) Speaking of storms, I was a stormy morning once in downtown Chicago. The storm went away once the shoeshine man let me shine his shoes.

3) I was caught without an umbrella in DC not too long ago. In Montana, it rains so seldom very few of us living here own an umbrella. As I made my way from the Holocaust Museum to the Smithsonian Castle, a man approached me from the curb. “You aren’t from around here,” he said. He gave me his umbrella.

4) I grew up within the spray of the Crooked Falls on the Missouri River. Friends would come spend the night and not be able to sleep. “What’s that sound?” they would ask. I wouldn’t realize for a little bit that the sound they were hearing and feeling was the sound of water falling. This is part of what I try to keep with me wherever I am.

5) Outside my bedroom window is a tiny rose bush. The miniature yellow roses bloom in November and in June. When I leave my house in the morning I check for new yellow buds even when it isn’t November. Or June.

6) Aligning magnets on the front of my refrigerator is a restorative exercise for every member of my family. The door is 72% filled; there is room for more. My daughter is the first to notice when something on the door has changed – the twinkle in her eye gives her away.

7) My favorite all-time video is my collection of Planet Earth documentaries. My son loves them, too. We both love the episode about snow in the Gobi Desert. Snow doesn’t melt there, it evaporates. Imagine that, we say to each other. Imagine that, I say to you.

8) I look for exceptions to the rule. When I play games, I make up new rules. Maybe break a few. Games that require cheating are the most fun. I don't count to seven.