“We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing
(whatever it is) that glitters on the Earth — we call it life.
We know no other.”
— Anne Carson.
status update.
“it’s been a while.
nothing much to report.
the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west…”
frequencies.
“…In plays and poems someone understands
there’s something makes us more than blood and bone
and more than biological demands…”
— Neil Gaiman
seascapes from the past few weekends.
“the little things? the little moments?
they aren’t so little.”— John Zabat-Zinn
consistency
“there are some life-forces that remain constant:
…
4. the hush waves make on a blustery, cloud-filled morning. when the wind whips sand in my face, and in the crevices of my shorts, and in the stem-hole of an apple stored in my unzipped backpack, and in the cracks in my travel mug full of coffee, and in between where floss reaches my teeth.5. the way that no snowflake pattern is ever the exact same.
5a. in this same thinking, how cloud formations are not the same, but their molecules are specifically formed the same way.
6. my thoughts on you.
crepitus
Crepitus, (noun; plural) \ˈkrep-ət-əs/ :
a grating or crackling sound or sensation. occurs generally when bone rubs against cartilage —
sometimes will happen when pieces of bone are fractured | split.
also occurs mainly at inopportune times, such as when one is
exercising,
stretching, or
when their mouth/hands/brain is otherwise occupied.
— a brief visitation, to a past poem.
hello, 2021.
“On the beach, at dawn:
four small stones clearly
hugging each other.How many kinds of love
might there be in the world,
and how many formations might they makeand who am I ever
to imagine I could know
such a marvelous business?”— Mary Oliver, On the Beach
an unexpected journey.
“I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by… Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back… We have so little of each other, now. So far from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.”
— Danusha Laméris
Oceanfront, November 2020
“My time of the year, November. The month when I re-read books, leaf through papers, gather notes. It’s a kind of hunger for work, for activity, for taking up all the old tasks once again. And that damp organic smell in the morning when I go out — and the warm halos of lamplight in the evening when I return …”
—Mihail Sebastian
chapstick
“… i hesitated. hand over the trash can. because that chapstick had touched
my lips. and my lips had touched yours.
though, it was more than just touch. my lips had sought yours: desperate and ripe,
full of want. they had caressed the skin juncture between the valleys
of your clavicle and the tip of your shoulder. my lips had carved
through the shell of your ear. they had brined with the ocean…”
a pink october sunset.
“It is a kind of love, is it not?
I’ve been thinking about the patience of ordinary things.
And towels drink the wet
from the skin of the back.”
—Pat Schneider
a blue hour.
“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Oceanfront, September 2020
“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”
— James Baldwin
Oceanfront, July 2020
“I want real things. Live people to take hold of, to see and talk to. Music that makes holes in the sky. I want to love as hard as I can.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe
Perennial
My aunt is teaching me that when you’re planting a garden with perennials, the key is to know when to cut them back to encourage growth for the next year.
There are specific points where you cut them – with knockoff roses, for example, there are bulbs that you cut in front of, to entice the new cherry brown leaf growth to pull in the bright carnation-red flowers. Those roses came with the home. They sit in the backyard, watching the estuary and the cattails. The tide coming in and out, in and out. You and I both agreed on our first date that roses are incredibly overrated…
south carolina.
They have palmetto trees up north of the Florida state line:
their trunks are watchful. It always feels like taller
trees have more wisdom than others. Maybe it’s just because
they’re lonelier. Or maybe I am seeing a heated mirage.
