summer in earnest

cool summer mornings. it's easy to live this way. 5:30, maquena thumps her tail lightly where she lies curled beside me on the bed. early, yet, for their breakfast but i comply; their owners will have to make adjustments when they return.

yesterday J brought over his new swimming pool and since the owners of this house ride bikes, there was a pump. still it took a long time. but finally, ta-da! and even the whale had air and we attached the hose and water sprinkled out of his nose. fun!

but first a tour of the house, and going down the stairs to check out the basement J says: careful! it's steep! once down, he spies all the lights and i lift him up to pull each one's string. satisfied, we go back upstairs so he can check out the fridge. "pickes," he says. "don't like them."

he plays in the pool, waters the flowers, picks carrots, washes them off, eats them. everything, everything, should be this easy.

but it's not. the oil well is capped, supposedly, after 80-some million gallons have gushed into the ocean. or is it billions. was it goldman sachs whose profit was 80 million and the oil billion? the numbers are all so large. it's why we've lost track.

follow the money it's said, but it's practically impossible. who knows how to? we'll have 35 million people unemployed here soon. is that including the 700,000 census workers soon to be laid off? ah, but what's 700,000? hundreds of thousands of anything barely register anymore.

but later this morning i'll pick J up and we'll spend a bit more time at my place in the pool and we'll do some of their laundry and have some lunch and i'll take him back home. then i suppose i'll need yet another nap and then later in the afternoon the dogs and i are going back across town for the weekend to supervise a large and productive and organized (by me ;) work party which will result in the landscaping being basically conquered. it's going to be so beautiful when it's done.

see you next time,
love.

some easy first fixes

in order to get the ball rolling there are a few things one can do right away; small things with big results.

the first thing i noticed was that as soon as i quit throwing my gum and cigarette butts out the window, my life was magically enhanced. Mother Earth is not a garbage dump and doesn't appreciate being treated like one. the instant reaction to this action of mine was that my 7th chakra began going through an extreme transformation which manifested itself physically: it felt like the top of my scalp was lifting off.

the next easy fix involved looking out for the little things in regards to my body. after pulverizing my index finger one night with a serrated knife blade and watching the blood gush and literally make a pool in the sink, i decided to reevaluate some things.

for instance, it's always best to use a pot holder when pulling baked potatoes out of the oven. i have the scars to prove it. it's best to use a pot holder for anything that's hot.

it's also best to use some sort of utensil when extracting pasta from a boiling hot pot of water. as opposed to fingers. unplugging toasters before digging out toast is another given.

these little things can go a long way. once your body stops bracing itself constantly for yet another injury, it can relax, and when it does you may find yourself skidding to a halt. worse and serious ailments may surface. take it in stride. relax, heal, get well. sleep, eat, read. add prayer and you can write yet another piece of sentimental shmuck and get it published and get rich. i'm really not jealous. i'm just dumbfounded.

easy peasy.

see you next time,
love.

red umbrella, blue sky

at the house where i'm staying i sit beneath a red umbrella that's under a blue sky. on the table is a red hair tie and a bowl of freshly picked green peas. color. it's how i live.

easier day, not so tired. only one nap. evening ahead - hanging with J while his parents go shoot the first footage for their first film on the old railroad tracks in sellwood. they're excited. making movies is fun.

here, where i'm staying, there are two black dogs and one black cat. i've stayed here many times over the past years. i measure my time here, in loss. perhaps that will change this time. i don't know yet - i've still got four weeks left.

big ones though, losses. first the baby, then sons, a brother. all blonde and blue eyed, and each with the same sort of feet.

odd, yes, this knowledge of feet. but each of them i put socks on which is a sure-fired way to observe feet. and three of them i put socks on their feet while they were in the hospital; i know the feet of the fourth. i raised him.

boys. one is gone forever.

but still, this summer day, i celebrate the living and those who are still around to play. this afternoon, because of rox's prompting, J and i discover "the river park" and he again proves his awesome throwing arm and his other obvious athletic abilities and his general and over-all sweetness and light. back home i cook him food and after we eat we read. i reluctantly tell him he must sleep; it's after ten and his parents will be home soon.

and here they are, with their first footage. coming through the door they smile. and i smile back.

some things hit harder than others. loss doesn't seem to spread itself thin, it seems to get dumped all at once. a tidal wave of grief. hard to catch a breath in all of that.

when i got to the hospital that morning, after he'd been admitted the night before and diagnosed with diabetes at the tender age of twelve, i acknowledged his mother warmly and conversed as long as was necessary for her to feel properly attended to - she was, after all, the mother of a now-diabetic child, and then i looked at him on his hospital bed with all his tubes and such and i said: where's your shoes kiddo. we're gonna take a walk.

boys' feet, their shoes. all those flat soles and tangled laces. i've never liked putting shoes on the feet of boys. it's something unnatural. they clench and resist. some shoving inevitably ensues.

but when it's done and they're back on their feet, on their boards, in their cars, on the courts, ladders, boats... that is the joy and that is the wonder and that is the stuff that makes me love boys.

until i notice a shoelace undone.

but they're out of my hands by then. all i can do is watch. down the concrete corridors of the interstates, across the intersections of the boulevards, in formation, in free-fall, in tree forts... boys, as they say, will be boys.

just please don't trip and fall.

see you next time,
love.

tending to plants and animals

i'm back at that place, the place where i care for the two dogs and one cat, the house where so many things have happened. each time i've stayed here, over the past couple of years, significant events have occurred which have dramatically changed my view of the world, my view of reality.

it's safe here, that's why. the energy is clean and clear. it isn't muddled by much at all. the owners are kind, young and compassionate.

caleb died here, obama got inaugurated, ian got hit by a car.

last time, a few months ago, i ended the struggle with the pain. i relented. it disappeared.

this time, it's all about the physical, most specifically, my body which has, apparently, exhausted its adrenal glands. stress does this. living the way i have these years - all of them, ultimately - results in adrenalin being pumped nearly continually which takes its toll on the glands and they end up fatigued.

so i sleep. roughly fourteen hours a day. started on my birthday, when i got here. i crashed. nap after nap. well at least i don't have insomnia anymore.

the cure takes time. rest, good food, supplements... i went to trader joe's and for the first time ever, bought enough food for weeks. not just food for the day, or two, as has been my routine for many years now.

living in fight or flight wears one out. it's best to avoid that if possible, at least avoid decades of it. it'll make you sick all that adrenalin pumping so hard and fast...

life, here, is calm. i tend to plants and animals. i sleep, read, eat. i watch the sky. i listen. two days ago, while resting, i re-experienced a prior time of passing, watched myself being strangled to death by a man. i suppose i loved him - he wasn't a stranger. when the life left my body previously, i felt it in mine presently. it's a weird sorta thud... there aren't words.

it was quick, though, and i was immediately in a world of pure blue sky and white clouds. light. but i don't think i stayed there long. i believe i returned quite quickly.

adrenal glands are triangular shaped and are located above the kidneys. it's where i've felt pain on and off, for many years, my right lower back. thought it was kidneys and dreaded that thought but would have guessed adrenal glands had i known they existed.

the tendency, of course, is to tell everyone the perils of living precariously. but it wouldn't be good to do that. we're on our own journeys, each of us with our own destinies and contracts to fulfill.

my friend cindy says we "renegotiate" with our bodies at some point/s in our lives where we make new deals and plans for the future. i like that idea. it's interesting and seems tangible.

so i've renegotiated with this physical body of mine. and, like cindy also says, my body is trying to catch up with the rest of my growth which, spiritually and emotionally, has been rapid and intense these past months. so i'm gonna chill, enjoy these weeks, take it as it comes. if i felt i had a choice i might resist; it's hard to change behavior after engaging in it for this long. but i don't have a choice. i got sick.

summer 2010. starting over.

see you next time,
love.

livin the dream

living the dream with J is so much more delightful than without him. so many stories in the past four months i've already forgotten... but this morning, snagged him at 9 to go to breakfast and play around. when i got there they were all just getting up since it'd been a late one the night before with the fireworks and all that jazz. so he was sleepy! he sat on my lap awhile and then when and got dressed all by himself, said goodbye to mama bear and papa bear and we were off. well... almost ;) right before i pulled away he remembered he hadn't given mama a goodbye hug so we get unbuckled and back out and he hugged his mama and we left for real.

but breakfast? no. he changed his mind and wanted a cheeseburger and fries so it was over to burgerville to fulfill that desire since they have organic beef and sweet potato fries and organic strawberry milkshakes. mmm. i even ate the bun which is the first gluten i've had in months - ever since i found out how sick i was and did all the allergy tests. i'm sorta itchy as a result, and won't indulge again anytime soon, but the time had come to have a little reward.

we left burgerville with three balloons and headed to music millennium where i bought the new t.p. cd mojo (which is sorta disappointing but i knew that from the gate) and i gave young J a tour of my old stompin ground. he liked it because there were so many rooms and stairs to explore. after mm we went to the skateboard park at glenhaven park where J was enormously impressed by the skaters (even tho they weren't all that good compared to a certain longboarder who shall not be named). J, who's mister urban extrovert now, introduced himself to another youngster, probably age 7 or so, and asked him if he wanted to play some baseball with the gear he'd brought along. the youngster said sure! after one more loop and by golly after that loop he came over and said "okay let's play!" then he said to me: but it will only be for a little while, which it was.

J took it all in stride though when the fellow went back to skating and when it started to rain a bit and i said we'd have to go, J remembered the kid's name, and hollered out a goodbye.

good days, summertime in the city.

see you next time,
love.