Category Archives: Reflections

Walking in the Dark (38)

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I keep running out of daylight, so I’ve taken to walking around our trailer park at night. I study each home. I like to see what people have done, the choices they’ve made depending on the configuration of the structure, the orientation of the lot, the emphasis on indoor versus outdoor space. I have years of wandering my neighborhoods at night. I love seeing windows lit up. They used to make me feel lonely but not anymore. The other night when I was walking, an odd awareness came over me, almost more physical sensation than actual thought. It lasted several paces, maybe half of the short block I was walking, heading west in the dark. I was struck by how rich in life these homes felt. The rows of colorful handblown glass, bottle after bottle stretching across all the windowsills I could see from the road. A covered patio, pristine, with artwork on the walls, bright abstract designs, the bicycles stowed just so. The sounds of music playing, TV, the opening and closing of cupboards, the clank of metal on metal, pot to the stove, someone preparing dinner. All these homes seemed so much more alive than my own. I felt a little awed, a little sad. Later, I wondered if what I sensed was an accumulation of life over time, that row of bottles spanning the years. I bet it began with one bottle on that first windowsill. A fresh coat of paint on the patio wall, the impulse to hang the abstract. I can almost see them now years ago in my mind, before life was laid down, these small acts of love, layer after layer.

Will You Be Your Valentine? (33)

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4 tissue paper layer hearts, red/orange and blue/purple

All my cells are dancing today, thrilled to be on holiday after this last big push ended at one o’clock this morning. They are tired, too–my cells, my muscles, my bones–but the joy is oozing through them, inspiring their salsa steps. It’s smoggy and too hot, but it doesn’t matter because every other thought today is alive with relief and pleasure. I grin again and again. Lying in bed this morning, I remembered I’ve always wanted to make valentine cards for people, maybe even move my annual “address” from Christmas to this day of love. I can see the cards in my head, potato prints, artsy water colors of hearts, wild colors. I’ll get paint on my fingers, and they will cover every horizontal surface of the trailer while they dry. I’ve dreamed of them for years. Late last night I sent out animated valentines, my best for 2014. And now, for you, my readers, I send these scanned tissue paper layers of hearts to wish you happy Valentine’s Day. And this morning while I watched the mountains change color with the growing day, I decided this year I will be my valentine. I will tend to me all day with kindness and delight. Will you be your valentine, too?

Morning (32)

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I am still wearing a long-sleeved shirt because I got caught up in working online and forgot to pay attention. Now I know I am too warm, even in shorts, even sitting in the shade. I can hear a goldfinch in the palo verde, his high-pitched trills exotic somehow–bird aria. “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” is playing on the construction site. Sable meows a couple of times before setting back on his pillow behind me. Sofia walks into the shed. I hear her clamber back up to her latest perch, having climbed down to pee and have a bite to eat. Now she can return to the important job of napping. My eyes are heavy, and I’d love to curl up, too, let sleep take me. Last night I was working in bed and began nodding off at the computer. This is new to me. Does it mean I’m getting old? This morning instead of working first thing I lay on my back and let myself daydream. I could hear a house finch singing in the neighbor’s tree. Such a pretty song, drifting in the open louvers. I studied the ceiling, the way the elegant boards cross it, mid-century craft, old-school care. Boo was still curled up beside me. “I love our home,” I said and stroked him. And then I didn’t let the wake of those words drown me in that long list of things that need doing. I managed to let it all wash out to sea instead and just be happy lying there beside my soft black cat in the early morning. Lucky. Grateful. Sleepy. Glad.

Who Are Your Angels? (31)

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Without thinking, take a leap. Who are your angels? Name them all. Go.

My angels? Without thinking??!!? Oma, maybe. Lassie. Sanji. Bonnie. Daddy. Even Jarv? But oh goodness–how do I do it without thinking? Angels are not supposed to be spirits of loved ones who’ve died but their own “species,” so to speak. I have a hunch it is because of angels I no longer feel alone the way I used to, though maybe growing up has a part in that, too. I imagine angels disguised as birds in my life–the beat of the raven’s wings near my head, the kestrel’s call, that silvered moment when I watched the barn owl’s silent glide in the night, lit by the lights shooting up from the ground at the house on the corner. I imagine a fat angel in a white dress perched on the wooden fence between my home and my landlord’s. She has yellow hair, like the felt angel Mami gave me years ago with the wild yellow curls who hangs on my front gate at Christmas.

[Editor’s note: This is another writing prompt from before I moved into my trailer. Things, as you can see, will be a bit of a hodgepodge while I work toward still meeting my original commitment of 55 posts while I’m 55 in spite of my huge lapse this year. ;-)

I am thinking of working with prompts for going forward, too. I think this is the last of the older ones. I thought some of you might enjoy having the prompts themselves, though I’m afraid I don’t have attributions for these last few.]

Bittersweet (30)

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Melancholy
bends and twists
and bows
lilac after an early summer rain.
Touch it
smooth and hard
like sea glass.
Melancholy
a deep blue green
water
in Greece.
Melancholy
tastes like tree bark
like tea brewed from bitter roots
without enough honey
like artichokes.
It rings like chimes
in a light breeze
at dusk.

I Want To Write About . . . (28)

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Begin with the phrase, “I want to write about. . . .” Go.

I want to write about frogs and waffles, the way frogs come overnight in the ditches beside country highways after a summer rain, and you can hear them, thousands of frog voices all at once, when you drive along with the windows rolled down, and waffles crisp on the outside, pockets filled with melted butter, and you pour real maple syrup over it all and eat fast so they don’t get soggy. I want to write about trampolines. I remember how Del’s family had one flush with the ground in their front yard in La Crescenta. I loved that, not having that extra height of it being off the ground. I want to try one again after I’ve done more yoga and become less and less tight, less constricted in my movements. And oh! The trapeze! I’d forgotten about the low-flying trapeze and how somehow I was light enough and strong enough to move from one to the other in a large circle around Terri’s Berkeley studio all those years ago, like flying, like music, like being in synch, “aligned with something larger” as my blog reader wrote. I want to be that person again who can move around the room on the trapeze. I want to write about fossils. Fossils?!!? I would still like to go on a dig someday. And there is something to be said for holding a piece of life in your hands, rubbing your fingers against its roughness, along its ridges. I want to write about rain spouts in Ajijic.

Time’s up.

Write About Home? (27)

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Write about home. That was the writing prompt on April 17th, 2012. Ten minutes. Go.

I think home for me may be anywhere I feel safe and centered and at rest. If I can feel all of these things, I can feel at home in a motel beside of a busy highway. If I’m on edge, off kilter, then I can’t rest in myself, am itchy in my skin, can’t settle. I seem to go for long stretches now where I’m at rest with myself, and then the patio cement wobbles, the windowpanes rattle, and I am on my knees, angry at myself for falling down, for trying to stand up and not being able to. I eat too much, resist the work waiting for me. Essays go ungraded, dishes make a small city in the kitchen sink. When I was much younger, I had a rule about eating for comfort. I would assemble the food beside the television. And then I’d lie on the couch and had to feel whatever it was I was needing to feel. After a good cry, the Cheetos became my reward. I miss Cheetos. Last night I ate savory rice crackers out of the bag and then a small bowl of peanut butter and brown rice syrup and lost myself in a book about Mexico. This morning I lingered in bed and the tears came. They brought me home again.