new monkeys

There are two new monkeys in the monkey clan. Nicole took a photo and will hopefully upload it for me.

We are in the Indian part of the summertime. It is too warm for fall, mornings not yet crisp, still leaving the bedside window open at night -- which I would do if I lived in Antarctica -- but anyway, no need for the bed warmer just yet. I sleep with the window open and one foot out from under the covers as though trying to escape, and given my history, it wouldn't be entirely senseless.

My husband fears the dark days of our long northwestern winters, sees them coming mid-July and begins to fret. Not me. Bring it on. I do regret the absence of light, but not the heat (yes, even the wimpy heat of Portland as compared to Southern Oregon's blast furnace), and wish that the laws of physics did not apply to me and I could banish one without losing the other. I wish no laws applied to me, but as ever, another story for another time.

appointments

I've already missed one appointment. I have this burgundy leatherish appointment book at work. I keep most of my schedule in there. I forgot a hair appointment for today, but when I made the hair appointment, I'm certain I forgot that it was the day of the Memory Walk. Memory Walk indeed. I have no memory.


So, this morning I wandered down to Pioneer Square in the pouring rain -- actually, my husband dropped me off -- and stood around until our whole team of walkers arrived, then I begged off due to cortisone flushing like fire under my skin, and found a bus home, plunked two dollars and five cents in the slot, and hung on.

This gives me cause (and pause) to purchase an iphone. If I had an iphone, I could sync all of my appointments into one place. Into one thing.

But would I?

healing

I'm not good at this. Self-care. As I was lying on the narrow gurney, head turned right to expose my cervical spine to the needle, the surgeon says, "What do you do to relax?" I said, "Watch soap operas." He said, "Think of something else." I couldn't. So this tells me that I have to consider things like meditation that I have never really put any energy into learning about. Slowing my mind has always taken second (third, fourth) to trying to speed up my body -- not my forte either. I'm screwed. Or, at this point I feel screwed. First, I know, is to bring food into perspective and the rest will follow, dominoes one and all.

Tonight I am tired and sore, but willing. We'll deal with tomorrow, tomorrow. I have a week to pull my shit together. Yeah, that's a stress free plan. Yup.

professional bum

I think what I'm getting at, after all these years as a professional something, I should rather be paid to sit at home and think. I think pretty well, and know some stuff, and its just that now I've dyed my hands brown and have to go to a convention on Monday, and I just can't figure out what to wear.

I just wish I had to wear a uniform and that the condition of my fingernails didn't matter. I don't want to have manicures, like some women who seem to think it is part of getting dressed for work. My husband simply chooses from navy blue or orange T-shirt. It is what makes prison appealing. I have to get up and think. I have to try things on. I have to decide what looks passable for that day. I have to remember what I wore the days before. I should have gone into, oh I don't know, painting or construction or something. Anything but the industry that thinks sterile conditions are important. I think sterility leads to illness, personally. I think the reason we have these nasty flu bugs is because we can't fend off normally occurring bacteria. I think Clorox wipes should be outlawed.

As usual, I digress. The thing is, I got this new blouse at Target and I like it but I wanted it to be brown, so I bought some brown dye and now my hands are shot. I hate to go to professional events looking like a farmer. I'd rather be a farmer. I don't think they have conventions and if they do, they'd be outside and you could wear your overalls.

I'm just tired of working and there's eight (I'm counting) years to go until Social Security will allow me to be the bum I was destined to be. You know how I see it. I've said it a million times: Those guys with the shopping carts have very little overhead. And if I didn't know better, I'd think it was freedom.

billy goat story

I'm a storyteller: a liar by trade. I love stories, always have. Some, if not most of the stuff I take the time to type right here, is true -- at least true in my memory which is faulty by anyone's standards.

But today was staff appreciation day, and we boss-types made breakfast for the crew. Picture me, sitting with my coworkers around the breakfast table, talking about goat meat. I think the general topic was greek food. It seemed like the perfect time to tell the only story I have about goat meat. I mean, wouldn't you? If you had a story about goat meat you'd tell it, right? I don't think everyone has a story like that. So.

When I was a hippie, living way up Yale Creek in a somewhat communal setting, there was this guy we called Hippie Dennis who was passing through the Applegate Valley. He lived in his big navy blue delivery van and had a billy goat. I don't know about you, but I can't stand billy goats. They jump on your car hood and suck their own genitals. Right? So this goat was all over the place, getting into our gardens, over any fence, unmannered as his owner who he co-habitated with in the big delivery van. He couldn't keep track of that goat anymore than he could perform his own personal hygiene.

It was high summer-- the perfect time for many outdoor festivities, a big BBQ would be one example. We invited everybody from Sterling Creek on up to Dog Fork and McKee Bridge. We even invited Dennis. It was a beautiful day and we had a really nice time. The meat was a little tough and Dennis kept asking if we'd seen his goat, but we'd just offer him another plate of food.

So this story may have worked better among less civilized sorts. The problem is that most of the people I hang out with these days are pretty civilized or at least politically conscious, and it left me feeling, well, criminally insane.

Personally, I think the story is kind of funny. I found myself defending the community act to kill the goat. But in retrospect, I suppose it was wrong. Okay, it was wrong. Sue me. Situationally and culturally, it didn't seem like it at the time. But once again, after I told my little story, my coworkers had that look about them -- that look that I've learned is a subtle form of fear -- or at the very least, psychological discomfort, the kind of look that made me want to say, "Jesus, its not like I shot the fucking goat myself, painted my naked body with its blood, danced around the fire and still carry the gun in my purse or anything..." but that would be little comfort to my nervous workmates. Geeez. You can't kill anything these days without somebody jumping up in righteous protest.

They should hear the stories I don't tell.

jacksonville

The trip South felt nostalgic this time. I don't regret moving north -- I never will. I've hated that Rogue Valley hot weather my entire adult life. Walking the streets of Jacksonville is always memory lane for me -- for us. My husband reminiscing about the time he bashed his head through the plate glass window of the JVille Tavern on purpose. Ah... those were the days. But walking the barely paved streets where houses used to be, my house, where split-rail fences have been and gone, where I lived and others lived, and lived and lived.... where our black lab Jodean pulled Marky out of the middle of the street when he was not even two years old. I remember these things.

And in this, age is a blessing. I've seen so much. Driving past barns, once standing and red, now decrepit with age, leaning into the decades with the same dependency I feel sometimes, that will fall. Are falling. We don't make wood barns anymore. Not really. There are a few, but more often I see these ungodly compounds, industrial in their scope, lacking the Amish bones, the neighborly customs of having been raised rather than built, of pie and lemonade in the hot august sun. I know these days are gone -- and truth be told, I missed them, mostly, although there was some civility even then, even in the mimicry of the sixties and seventies when we ached to get back to the land, whatever that meant. I did. I got back to it. I carried water, dammit. I cut my own wood. And when I walk the familiar streets, I wonder that I got to be a part of old Jacksonville. That I am a part of its history, just as it is part of mine.

facing fear

I know you're probably thinking that this is it: the big face off, face down, face it head on kind of thing, but really, its just that I went out in the boat on the Columbia. Now seriously, that river is huge, with swells as high as the boat, the possibility of getting swamped very real. But it turns out that the Alumacraft people thought this through and filled the seats with foam, so the boat won't sink. Well, still, its scary. Still, I got in the boat. I remember my fisherman brother Doug saying, when I asked him if he was scared when he was out to sea in a storm, he said, "When you put out to sea, that's when you make the decision. Live or die. Once you're underway, there's too much to do to worry about that shit."

So, it was an okay day in the boat, but I didn't pay to park, didn't see the sign, and parked in a double space that was only for trucks and trailers. So, rather than pay an eighty dollar fine, I made a short day of it.

Well, its labor day, the last day of summer, the last day to wear white.

do si do

Today I leaned down and whispered in Stella's ear: Go on, now. Your husband is waiting. Your children are fine. Go on now and squaredance in heaven. I'll bet it will be really fun.

So she did.

Stella loved to squaredance. She loved the company of men, and touted the benefits of vitamin D long after she'd lost track of time and family. Every day she would ask me if I'd seen her people. I'd lie, like I do, and tell her they were coming, just before dinner or lunch or whatever came next. She had pink gingham squaredance dresses with layers of tulle under-slips that spun when she did, and a husband who wore one of those string ties, texan ties, with a fishing fly embedded in resin for a clasp. Stella had perfect white hair and piles of costume jewelery. She always matched. Knee deep in Alzheimer's and still had her manners.

The girls say they go in threes. They say it happens on the full of the moon. I don't know if any of this is true. They all die, and the moon is full sometimes. Stella makes two. Or two hundred. They, the girls, the women who work in the trenches, have to make sense of it all. To me, it is both random and predictable. An even hand doling out pain and justice in equal parts. Life is fair, misery optional. It seems about time for death to take a holiday.

death in the time of hypochondria

Aubrey's heart is dying and she knows it. Today I sat down next to her and she said,

When is this service going to be over?

Me: Are we at a service?

(Nodding) The funeral.

Me: Oh. Who are they burying?

Anyone who stops by.

Me: Ah. Well, I can't hear them. I didn't know.

Well, they don't talk in words you can hear.

Me: Oh. I see.


It is hard to know when a hypochondriac is sick. Even harder to convince a family who has grown tired of the chronic complaints, suspicious of symptoms, reluctant to even answer the phone.

But she was sick, and with bluing fingers and a rapid heart, she slipped away. The cry of wolf echoing in the hallways.

poem

My cousin Darla sent me the poem below. I love it.

Last night she and her guy and me and mine had dinner at our house: a seafood boil. It was an experiment in trust. Us to make it, them to eat it. We layered red potatoes, broken corn on the cob, fish fish fish, 5 lbs. of steamers, 2 lbs. of shrimp, 2 dungeoness crab --

(Crab is plural for crab. Like sheep and sheep. You wouldn't say "crabs." Crabs is only proper usage such as in the following sentence, "He has the crabs." Its something you might hear around Charleston in the winter. But how would I know?)

--and andoullie sausage. So anyway, you cook it all in this broth of seasonings: 1/2 bag of louisiana crab and shrimp boil, 2 lemons, one beer, an onion and a head of garlic. Boil the heck out of it and let it set. The longer it sets, the spicier it gets. Yum. The corn was outstanding.

It was good to get together for something other than a funeral.



I Confess

I stalked her in the grocery store:
her crown of snowy braids held in place by a great silver clip,
her erect bearing, radiating tenderness,
the way she placed yogurt and avocadoes in her basket,
beaming peach like the North Star.
I wanted to ask
“What aisle did you find your serenity in,
do you know how to be married for fifty years,
or how to live alone,
excuse me for interrupting,
but you seem to possess some knowledge
that makes the earth burn and turn on its axis—”
but we don’t request such things from strangers nowadays.
So I said, “I love your hair.”

Alison Luterman

elemental

I was driving home today, trying to figure out what to make for dinner and Bad Moon Rising started playing on the radio. I have had the best last few radio days, B-52's Love Shack, Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds), but Bad Moon Rising, that was pure Joyce. I knew immediately that she was controlling the music and playing it for me.

I don't really believe that, but I could.

So I thought of her, fondly, remembering the time we crashed head-on into an Ashland cop while listening to Credence Clearwater and anyway, she went to jail and I didn't. And she died and I didn't and my brother died and I didn't and my sister is strung out on methadone and I'm not and I know I've made some unpopular decisions and walked away from my family to survive, and there is guilt in that. Survivor guilt.

and an element of grace.

fake berry picking

When my honey hooked the truck up to his new boat and trailer and said, "I'm going to take you blackberry picking," I knew we were really just going on the maiden voyage. A boat ride. Nevertheless, I wore my overalls, the painting ones, the ones that are more patch than pant, and a red cami underneath. It is so hot. Too hot for me. But I won't pick berries in my good clothes. I know better.

So there I was, looking like a poor farmer's wife, waiting to climb in the new boat. Now during fishing season, this wouldn't be such a big deal, but this is high summer and Willamette Park was packed with every million dollar race boat, every hot babe, male and female, in the metro area.

Its bad enough to be old and overweight in public, add to that bra-less and in paint-spattered, quilt patched overalls, with a brim-only straw sun hat. If my sun hat had a price tag hanging off it, I could have been mistaken for Minnie Pearl. Only she wasn't fat.

It was not a good self-esteem moment. Note to self: always dress for success. Get new berry-picking clothes.

Naw.

So, I'm coming down off the family death thing. Joyce's funeral was nice. My sister didn't make it because she was in the hospital, and the wierd thing is, when Marc died (Joyce's husband-my brother) my other brother went into the hospital the day after the funeral and was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure. Turns out this is the same thing my sister has. I'm not surprised. I rarely am.

stolen poetry

Thanks to K&F Coffee Shop for this one, torn thoughtlessly out of the June 7 New Yorker.

A Maxim

To live each day as if it might be the last
Is an injunction that Marcus Aurelius
Inscribes in his journal to remind himself
That he, too, however privileged, is mortal,
That whatever bounty is destined to reach him
Has reached him already, many times.
But if you take his maxim too literally
And devote your mornings to tinkering with your will,
Your afternoons and evenings to saying farewell
To friends and family, you'll come to regret it.
Soon your lawyer won't fit you into his schedule.
Soon your dear ones will hide in a closet
When they hear your heavy step on the porch.
And then your house will slide into disrepair.
If this is my last day, you'll say to yourself,
Why waste time sealing drafts in the window frames
Or cleaning gutters or patching the driveway?
If you don't want your heirs to curse the day
You first opened Marcus's journals,
Take him simply to mean you should find an hour
Each day to pay a debt or forgive one,
Or write a letter of thanks or apology.
No shame in leaving behind some evidence
You were hoping to live beyond the moment.
No shame in a ticket to a concert seven months off,
Or, better yet, two tickets, as if you were hoping
To meet by then someone who'd love to join you,
Two seats near the front so you can catch each note.

~ Carl Dennis

sister joyce

In my family we die too young. We barely make sixty, if that. It is usually because we drink.

There are certain people who have geographic weight. I can't explain this. Joyce lived in Central Point and now she is gone. It is hard to know why I would go back there now. She tethered our family for over forty years, a family that was fractured by her presence. She came to stay when I was thirteen and we were never the same. She is not to blame for our undoing, that would not be fair or true, but sins and decisions being what they are, we were changed by those things.

I drove around Central Point and Medford today as if in a dream, lost in time, memories so dense I had to brush them from my vision, thick as cobwebs, driving to and from the hospital as she died. I had to come back to say goodbye, to thank her for taking care of me in the years before I decided to save my life -- to let my life be saved by the outstretched hands of others, hands she would not hold onto. Could not.

I just wanted to keep standing in her house among her children and her belongings, little things we had gathered at yard sales, had packed and repacked, moving to house after house: gnomes with green hats, red spatterware spoons, fiestaware, small oval rag rugs, a glass scottie dog, a sock monkey, a framed picture of Christ in Gethsemane, endless earrings and candles and fifteen tiny bags of weed here and there, forgotten in the clutter of life's ending. As long as I stayed in the house, it wasn't real.

But I am home now, and she is gone, my sister -in law and out,-my friend of so many many years. I miss her already. Rest in Peace.

yard sales

Saturday was the Division/Clinton Street Fair(e). We walked up Division looking at all of the booths and I am always intrigued, and frankly, bored, by the similarity of all the crafty offerings. We drove from Ashland to Nevada City to Yosemite, to San Fran, to Tomales, to Fort Bragg and to Port Orford, and everything is pretty much the same. Not the view. Not like that. But things that are for sale. Used to be you went to the coast and found coastie things, went to San Francisco and got, well, you know. Sourdough. But now, the homogeneous nature of saleable items is tiresome. I was looking for candlesticks. For those of you who know me, you'll recall my former habit of going to yardsales to find the best candlestick I could for five bucks or less. Now, willing to spend almost any amount of money, I can't find anything unusual. I found some at Pottery Barn that I liked, but I wanted something unique, not some yuppy factory that pumps out the good life in cookie cutter perfection. So I looked and looked. 2000 miles later, I came home bought the Pottery Barn candlesticks.



I am so predictable.



But what, you'll ask, of all my old five-dollar candlesticks? Well, I have some of them here and there, but I needed black ones for this one special place. So now I have them. I hope I'm happy.



Between the trip and camping, we had a yard sale. It was huge and I sold things I swore I'd never part with. I hold out and hold out and think I know what will sell and what won't and I'm always wrong. I keep stuff until the yard sale people don't even want it. I wonder what it is about stuff, about shopping for stuff, about the way stuff catches my eye and I must have it. Must have it. Like the bird at Twist that costs 264 dollars. It is not a live bird, let me clear that up right quick. It is this kitschy plaster thing that I could probably make, and may try, but it is so cool and as my darling husband says as he drags me whining and drooling from the store on his birthday, it'll end up in a yard sale two years from now.

I hate it when he's right.

So... yard sale over, we were able to locate the camping gear. We packed up and camped up the Clackamas at Indian Henry for a couple of days, only a couple, because my neck broke again. We canoe-d on Lake Harriet which was really fun and beautiful. Carrying the canoe may have been the straw that doomed the trip. I don't know. I was picking moss out of Duffy's coat for days.

So, yard sales and vacations over with, I'm back at work and beginning physical therapy tomorrow.

more and more

Now I prepare to camp. I am always pretty much ready, but lacking a memory, I must forage through pre-packed boxes and make sure I don't get far from home without a coffee pot. And coffee. Let's not forget the coffee. And matches, all safe in baggies, and dish soap. I own everything one can own for camping with the exception of a camper, which, the older I get, the more appealing they are. Was a time I thought it was a sin to use anything but a tent -- akin to the lead pencil society and those good women who still use cloth diapers and serve nothing but turkey on Thanksgiving, but I digress.

We will rent a trailer -- an open one this time -- and head up the Clackamas for a couple of days. It ain't Yosemite, but it is nice and green and cool, and I will finish typing my book if it kills me.

It won't kill me, right?

parks

There is alot to be said about National Parks, and OPB did a fine job of it last year. Their piece on Yosemite inspired this vacation. This part of this vacation anyway. At this time I am back in my (90 degree) house, dogs as happy as we are to be out of the truck. We've travelled some 2000 miles since last Friday, and I only drove for 45 minutes. Men.

So, Yosemite... As a writer, I should be able to come up with something at least descriptive, but adjectives fail me. So far it is probably the most remarkable geological sight I've seen. I'm so glad we went, so glad we could go... that is, had the resources to play, spend, etc. Our fabulous vacation has been dimmed by the knowlege that two family members are losing their homes to foreclosure, both trying to save them, but probably not going to swing it. I am acutely aware that this could be me, could be us, and we discussed considering a plan B should we find ourselves out of work or otherwise unable to earn. We do earn our pay, my honey and I. We both do stuff we'd probably rather not, every day. I don't feel guilty, but I am grateful.



So, back to the parks. I loved Glacier. It was so surprising. And Ansel Adams had already sort of pulled the cover on Yosemite, but still, being there doesn't compare. We drove to the top of Glacier Point and looked down over Yosemite Valley, cars like ants, and looked through a scope of some kind at Half Dome where there were a bunch of people standing who had climbed up there. Climbed. My visit to Yosemite was pretty much a drive-by. We did walk up to one waterfall, but we all know how atheletic I am. (See post on Devil's Churn.) Still and all, I prefer the Redwoods to anything. Anything I've ever seen. It is heaven to me, tall lacey trees, dense fern undergrowth, fog hanging in the treetops. Dappled sunlight blinking through the curves. Yep. That's the one for me. Fortunately, we also went through the redwoods.

So we exited Yosemite and spent that night in Mariposa, an armpit of a town, and left the next moring for San Francisco. It was another drive-by because the point was not the city, but the drive up Highway One. The Whole Thing. Again, searching for adjectives and modifiers: very curvy. We spent the next night in Fort Bragg after stopping for oyster shooters at Tomales and enjoying the cool of the coast as we learned that inland it was 100. We debated going back into the valley (Rogue) to visit family on the way home, but phoned in our apologies: we are hugging the coast as long as we can.

Tonight I will sleep in my living room with a fan blowing on Duffy and me, and await the coming of fall. Pictures to come

from the road

Sutter's Mill

4th of July Parade, Nevada City

Sutter's Mill Three tin buildings in Nevada City

Stone house in Nevada City, Downtown NC

Castle Crags where Kurt didn't want to go but I insisted because I was absolutely certain the view would be better but it wasn't.

Spent our first night at Shona and Bobby's house in Ashland, breakfast with Cooky and Tracy at the Talent Cafe where I used to breakfast on weekends and on the road to Nevada City a day early. Stayed 2 days at the Northern Queen, a great spot for the dogs and for us. Sid and Duffy get to poop in special places and sleep on motel beds. The 4th of July was a small town parade in Nevada City with an enormous Tea Party contigent, no doubt sponsored by the Republican Party. We returned to our room and the pool. Put on a movie for the dogs and swam for the first time in a long time. I bought an awful boob-fest of a bathing suit at Walmart, but now that we are in Sonora California, I'm damn glad to have it, splashy hibiscus flowers and all. When we checked the weather before we left, I packed for the low eighties, but being a Portland resident, with access to sunlight only via the consumption of liquid vitamin D, I am in Southeast California and it is hot.

Damn hot.

So like the natives, we hide in the daytime, beautiful room in Sonora with a nice pool and AC. It is dangerous for the doggies, and at this point, I could be resentful that they are with us, but I don't even want to be out in it. Tomorrow we will see Yosemite and stay at the lower end of the park and head for San Francisco Wed. morning.

Nevada City is beautiful, and like all beautiful places, I think I could live there, given a huge advance on that novel I never seem to write. Sonora is too hot for me.

manzanita

I am in Manzanita again, Summer in Words, a three-day workshop with various writing instructors, writers, poets, wannabees. Few of the latter this time around. Very good information about structure that pulls little threads loose from the fabric of all I think about writing and unravels certainty.

This is not a bad thing. But it does inspire me to create a folder called "writing practice" and put the last 15 years of writing in it. One of the instructors was that convincing. Those of you who know me, and who write because you have to, will not be surprised. I've been looking for the grail for awhile and may have found it. Or that's how it seems today. The whole notion of get an idea and just see where it goes has cost me alot of time and money.

But Duffy and me are here, staring out at a bright ocean, kite-surfers flinging along the waves, and I am heading over to have jambalaya with Jessica. Duffy is being so good.

return day

This is not the photo I intended to post. I was going for a shot of my coffee table, but here is it anyway, my old house in Talent.


From time to time I dedicate a day to saving myself a little, or a lot, of money. It usually evens out in favor of money, but I do what I can.



I am a catalog shopper. Truthfully, I'm just an all around shopper, but for today, let's just focus on the catalog expenditures. They add up. They never seem like much, late in the evening, feet up on the coffee table, the click of numbers don't seem related to cash. But they are. Then the clothes arrive -- always clothes -- and sometimes they fit, sometimes I hate them. So back they go... but that's the thing... often not for months and months. I gotta hand it to those catalog companies.... too many to mention, j.jill my favorite, they'll wait a very long time, take my returns, and give me my money back. They are patient though. With each new return comes another catalog, another opportunity for disappointment or delight. Neither lasts very long.


But today is return day. I gathered up that pair of maroon velvet shoes that were too narrow; a great big vest I must have bought on a very fat day; an even bigger black silk blouse I could get lost in; one black turtle neck sweater -- I have too many already -- and a number of other items I once couldn't live without. I marched down to Fred Meyer, purchased a roll of strapping tape, some brown wrapping paper and went for it. I sat in the parking lot and wrapped my packages like Christmas in June on asphalt. Only one person commented on the amount of tape I was using. You could hear it stripping off the reel across the parking lot. I always consider nuclear explosions a possibility and take appropriate precautions. I forgot to bring scissors, so my pocket knife had to do. Since I was in the wrap and send mode, I also send some beautiful wool fabric to my friend. Then, I stacked my packages in front of Duffy's little car seat, drove to UPS and off they went. Ahhhh. A cleansing breath.

Thanks for not asking why I thought I needed maroon velvet shoes.

At any rate, there's nothing like new carpet and linoleum to inspire a good house cleaning. Our carpet goes in tomorrow, linoleum next day, yard sale the following weekend. It's gonna be big. I'm in the mood to get rid of everything. I won't, of course, but once the house gets put back together, there is likely to be some excess. Tiny bit.

One thing for sure, I'm finally getting rid of my coffee table, the one I bought for ten bucks from Tracy. She'd had it stored beneath some rabbit cages for years. Cooky had it before she did. looking around, it is one of the only remaining vestiges of my yard sale life. I love that table.