Category Archives: Life

Three Goldfinch (48)

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One little bird flies into our courtyard garden, alights on the tip of the palo verde, then perches on the wooden fence. He is making a sweet sound, but I am not sure I can place him. He hops from the fence to the tube feeder. I think he might be a verdin, but I don’t even know if they can cling like this, don’t know if they can reach the thistle seeds through the wire mesh. In case it is a goldfinch, I tell him I hope they will be coming back. “I miss you,” I say, and he flies away. Later I see a flicker of movement, and there are two goldfinch at the feeder. I think, how cool is that? I am sure this time they are goldfinch, and females. I picture them living down the street somewhere, just popping in for a bite to eat in the middle of the afternoon. Hope rears its head. I imagine this idea might spread. The two of them are eating now with gusto. “You go, girls,” I say. Maybe word will get around.

A Jolt from the Universe (47)

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When I am posting the little flyers I’d made for the drop-in writing circle, I send off little hopes and prayers with them. May it be sweet and safe, I ask. When Laurie tells me she felt safe in our first circle, I hear that echo, send my thanks. And before we begin yesterday, the universe gives me a bit of a jolt I am pretty sure is tied to that same prayer, that same hope: sweet and safe. We’d opened the back doors of the hall, moved the big round table in front of them, sun and air beside us. It is just before eleven. I light a candle in the center of the circle. Laurie and Sharon are sitting at the table, and I’m standing beside it. A woman marches across the long hall, plants herself near Laurie’s elbow.

“Are you coming to join us?” I ask her.

“No,” she says. She stands where she is, a soldier at attention.

“Well, did you think you wanted to watch us?” I ask.

“Maybe,” she says.

“Well,” I say, “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.” I’d thought about this earlier. We were not looking for an audience.

I haven’t finished my sentence when she does an abrupt about-face and marches back across the hall. She has her arms at her sides, and she is flapping her hands back toward me as she walks, as though she can swat away my words, keep them from following her.

“Um, what is the flapping of the hands?” I ask. And, “Are you really not going to talk to me?” She keeps walking away, keeps flapping her hands in my direction. “I’d be happy to have a conversation with you about this,” I say.

She reaches the door at the other end. “Maybe,” I think I hear her say as she walks out again.

We are all a little stunned. I have to check. “Was I inappropriate in my response?” I ask. They say I wasn’t. I have to shake it out of me then, a kind of invasion I feel in my body. I wave my arms around in the air above the table. “Whoosh whoosh whoosh,” I say. A different flapping of hands, I think now. As best I can figure, this odd jolt is a message. I take it as encouragement and a reason to trust. Maybe it says we can keep our space safe no matter who comes along. And maybe it says, “Certain beings will be led away.”

Our First Circle (46)

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Our first writing circle was sweet sweet sweet. There were four of us, and we did two eleven-minute writing sessions. I loved what everyone wrote. They were vivid and filled with marvelous details. My critic was up, though, and grumbled in my ear when I was writing. It was hard to keep the pen moving, to resist crossing out words as I wrote. I think I never really “dropped down,” wasn’t able to let it come through me with any sense of ease. Was that because even though I said I didn’t want to be a leader here, even though I want to be only a participant, by virtue of instigating it, of bringing the prompts, of explaining the mechanics, I felt like I needed to “perform” at some acceptable level? Or was it the cup of green tea I couldn’t resist drinking before I arrived? Or could it have been only because I haven’t done this in a long time, because I had hopes, had expectations? I wanted to feel the magic that can happen on the page. It makes me sad I wasn’t able to surrender to it. I used to find my way there more often. It used to be easy, like walking through an open doorway, like being invited in to sip tea by the big window overlooking the lake. I told Laurie later how critical I felt about my own writing, how strong and beautiful I found the pieces they each read. “Beginners luck,” she said. She wrote a prose poem I hope she’ll work with more. She told me she’d felt safe there, and that was a boon for me, balm to disconcerted ears. It made me glad and grateful. I helped make that happen.

Sit—Write with Us (45)

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Thursday we’re going to meet at the community center to write. I’m thinking short, timed freewriting, what Natalie Goldberg calls “writing practice.” She’s known for saying, “Shut up and write,” though maybe more to herself than to others. I don’t like the shut up part, but I like the process. I’ll bring my collection of popsicle sticks, mostly Goldberg writing prompts and a smattering of others. I’ll bring my timer. We’ll write for ten minutes, or maybe eleven. Then we’ll read what we’ve written and go for eleven minutes more. I need to make a flyer, but I don’t worry about it. Laurie and I will begin on Thursday with whoever else hears about it and shows up. A drop-in group, I’ll call it when I write something up. I need this. I’m pretty sure I need this almost as much as I need sleep. So I’m glad we’re just going to begin, the hell with planning. I get to sit in a room with other people writing, our pens making scratching sounds as we scribble across the pages before us. I get to read my unedited words out loud, listen to what others have written, performing together the alchemy I may not have words for but believe in with all of me. Change both visceral and ethereal, the magic of spontaneous writing. I thank you in advance.

Too Tired (44)

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I have a second cup of green tea and toasted rice steeping beside the open kitchen window. After I drank the first cup I found myself nodding off reading. I’m so exhausted I almost can’t function, can’t feel quite like myself, a dull blankness lying over me in layers. How can I let myself become so depleted for work? Can’t I learn to keep better boundaries, check in less often, know when to go to sleep? But when I’m caught up in it, the train holds me rushing down the tracks, the whoosh of air loud in my ears. It doesn’t feel like I have a choice. It feels like all I can do is keep moving through it, swaying car to swaying car. Answer the next question, grade the next submission, remember to cook dinner, feed the cats, field the next three questions waiting after I eat. I call it a night, too tired to wash the dishes waiting in the kitchen sink. While I am in it, the pace sustains me. I wake up early after little sleep, answer more questions from bed. But once the pressure slackens, the train slowing on the tracks, the exhaustion weighs me down, presses me against the earth. Silly mortal. Older mortal now, too. Yesterday afternoon I almost couldn’t stand. Today I think I could fall asleep while I write, but I keep the pen moving across the page. I am in the shade under the umbrella. A house finch calls from the neighbor’s tree. I’d been so eager for this lightening of my load. But I’m too tired to feel it, pressed down as I am by exhaustion, this body heavy like stone. Instead I look forward to being replenished, to feeling lighter, my body not dead weight I wrestle to keep upright, but easy companion, heart lifting again as hearts are meant to do.

The Goldfinch Are Gone (43)

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My goldfinch have all but vanished. I realized it yesterday. I felt bad, being me, wondering if it was somehow my fault they were gone. And had I been too lost in my work these past two weeks to even notice? I knew the nyger seed was not disappearing like it used to, and then it stopped disappearing all together. This morning I saw one goldfinch on the tube feeder. I haven’t seen or heard another all day. Now the tube feeder hangs there empty in the late afternoon sun, swaying the tiniest bit in the breeze. What happened? The worst part is not hearing their song in the early hours of the day. It makes me sad I didn’t recognize the first morning it was gone. How could that silence not have cried out to me lying there in bed? I have let my work sweep me away again. I was so awed by the goldfinch, by their numbers, their good cheer, their lively chatter and singing making our home abundant in bird company so much sooner than I’d dreamed it might happen. Did they go somewhere else because there are new leaves now on the neighbor’s tree? Is the tube feeder too hot now in the sun where it has lived since we moved in? I can’t remember when the goldfinch arrived here. I know at our old place on Avenida Ortega they visited all year round, but never in the numbers we were gifted with here. I feel helpless. I hope they’ll come back again. Maybe in the fall? I still can’t help feeling like I wasn’t paying attention. I never knew, never wished them bon voyage. So I will say it now. “Vayan con diosa,” my little feathered ones. “Que les vayan bien.” May all be well with you. Come home soon.

More Musings from the Kitchen Sink (42)

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Sunday night I made a bold move. I retired my old scrubbie and Trader Joe’s kitchen cloth to a home beneath the sink, relegated now to dirtier tasks. Monday I am washing dishes with the new pristine scrubbie. I feel exuberant with morning energy, new day joy. The perfect aqua kitchen cloth sitting wet at the edge of the sink makes me happy, too. Should I take a picture of this one, like the yellow one? I imagine a series of photographs of kitchen cloths lined up at eye level across a white gallery wall. I don’t know how many have come between this delicious aqua and the famed yellow one. I know the last one was orange, probably the last two since I cut them in half. When I decided to splurge and spring the new ones from the drawer, I actually had to think about it first. The old ones weren’t terrible yet. As I run the new soapy scrubbie inside one of the cats’ dinner bowls I think about how this level of frugality came from having an immigrant mother. I am so white, so middle class, I forget I am the daughter of an immigrant. It shapes you, makes you different. Today my mother probably wouldn’t think twice about switching out her kitchen cloths, but it came to me when she was young, when she was new to this country. I think about how frugality is good, how not being wasteful is important for the environment, too, the right thing. I even picture my old scrubbie and cloth in the landfill. Then I tell myself these are small things. I try to be careful. I’m not dumping a television set. I finish washing the dishes, run a dry cloth along the edge of the counter. I think about how the sight of the aqua cloth beside the sink makes me happy. People will think I’m crazy. There she goes again, that odd, twisty woman and her kitchen cloths. But I’m glad I liberated the new ones. It seems like a small indulgence for all that goofy pleasure. I decide to be reckless and retire this new pair at an even earlier age.