Movin'

Upkeep of two blogs has not been the most time-sensitive task for the mother of a toddler. For now I'm combining these two blogs into one by posting my thoughts at Bean's Talk along with updates for the family on what my daughter, Lucine, is doing.

Though it never really got off the ground, I do hope to be able to find a place to collect and share my writings and thoughts in the future. It will just have to be in the venue I share with my daughter for the moment.

Blessings

Friday Bliss

Things that make me smile this Friday:

Plump little yellow buds on bitterbrush, just about to bloom

My little blonde girl running toward me with her arms outstretched yelling "dee deet"

Warm spring breezes on my face

The desert peach is blooming

Spring Memories

written Spring 1998
for M.A.

Unsigned letter found under a pillow

This letter is pointless,
we speak everyday

but
I wanted to tell you,
without having to tell you,

I'm afriad you'll be
in my dreams tonight.

It always happens,
recurring nightmare,
I dream of someone and
POOF!

they disappear,
just like flowers

at a cheap magician's
last performance.

Imagining you have disappeared
from my sight,

like a hummingbird
after the first frost,
makes me shiver.

I think I would miss
that freckle on your lip

and the way you smell
the crook of my neck
when I'm cooking.

This letter can't say
anything you haven't
already heard my hands

say when they
run across your eyebrow
and laugh.

I keep wondering if
you are an illusion,

a fun house reflection
that will befuddle the fingertips
when they reach out
to touch you.

You always
surprise me --

calling when I
least expect;

standing in the doorway
in the exact moment
I'm thinking of you;

by not being
the immature
football player

I was afraid you might be.

I don't like sleeping
alone anymore.

It's comforting to know
the face I wake up to
mid-sleep

is flesh,
and not the reflected
remnants of a dream.

Explain

Cognitive understanding is big for me. I need to understand. I need to have things explained. I used to be happy when someone gave me the answer to a question, or the results of an event or process. I wanted to take the pieces and see what the picture looked like once they were all put together. But I didn't always care to do the assembly; I was only interested in the end result.

What kind of bird is it? (but I'm not all that interested in subtlety of the markings)
What does Yeats mean when he uses the image of the gyre? (not how did he come up with this concept and where else does it manifest itself in his writings, his philosophy?)

But I'm not so easily pleased anymore.

I hate to admit it but I'm finally reaching the cognitive maturity I wish I would have had while I was still in school.

I feel like an idiot for admiting that I was never that smart, never asked the better questions. But I'm trying to get more comfortable being stupid. When I was teaching I fell into that nasty habit of being smarter than my students (damn those freshman). And it made me what I can't stand: A stubborn idiot who thinks they're always right, and so doesn't go look it up and confirm what they think they know.

Quando estaba en Mexico

I found this one hiding in a file of musings and freewrites that I call "Random Shit." I thought of my friend Nessie, who was on this trip with me.

Quando estaba en Mexico

When I was in Mexico,
hell, part of me is still there,
sand in my hair,
ocean smell on my body,
drinking at the mayor’s liquor stand
with Scottie -- big red belly
hanging over his shorts
and scabby rashed shins,
drinking on his birthday
no different than any other day.

A ten-year old boy rides up on a bike,
dirty cheeks, hair in his eyes,
and holds out a package full of pictures –
inside are a granddaughter
who Scottie has never seen,
and an estranged daughter
now a mother.
It's been 12 years, he says.
I can still see his face as he grabbed
the handlebars of his large tricycle
and rode down the beach.

Think of it all like a story, Cory says,
frame each moment in words.
The chickens we wake to every morning.
The dolphins just offshore.
Maria, and the fushia flowers
trailing off her balcony.
And the yellow-bellied sea snake
Pelmis platurus
that I found lying dead on the beach.

Trails across oceans

I've been having the urge to live in a foreign country for so long now that I can't even remember when it began. I remember it hitting me most strongly when I came back from my first trip to Europe. I realized with startling clarity that for the last 2 1/2 months I had been carrying everything I needed in a 30-pound pack on my back. I hadn't missed any of my stuff back home. In fact I had felt remarkably unburdened.

I came home and cleaned out my house, giving or throwing away more than half of what I owned at the time. That took a lot of courage for my inner packrat. But, man, there's an amazing high that comes with letting go. I've been considering letting go again.

Mike and I have been talking about taking some time to live abroad for a while after he's done with his degree. I started looking into this last fall since I knew it would go through several incarnations. At the moment we're looking at New Zealand.

It's scary, the prospect of selling or giving away a lot of our belongings and moving halfway around the world. I'm not sure what in me has changed, but that fear is part of the reason I want to do this. Or maybe I'm more terrified of stagnation than I am of jumping off that cliff. I love my family, and they are the real reason I haven't done this before now. I was afraid that in leaving them behind I might hurt their feelings, that they might miss me, that they might think I was doing something stupid, that I might actaully do soemthing stupid and disappoint them.

But I've been hesitating for so long that I feel like one of those wind-up cars that is so wound, it's going to sling-shot across the room. I've found all these reasons to justify it, but truthfully, I need the thought of it as much as I want the reality. Especially being at home with the Bean, walking in circles, I need something, a landmark on the horizon, to move toward. The sight of it alone gives me hope.

I'm sure many of my friends and family think it has a lot to do with my transition from an academic to a stay-at-home mom, but truthfully that's not it at all. It's my escape goat. He's finally gotten loose from his pasture.


PS. (If you haven't, read the blog entry on escape goats, do. It's poetic and so very true.)

Circles

I've found myself wandering the same trails lately. Circles. Facciamo in giro, is what they would say when I was in Italy. Circles are comforting, mindless, but they get old after awhile. They build my momentum for launching off into something new.

Mike and I found a book, Afoot and Afield in Reno/Tahoe, that details some great trails in this area. We tried yesterday, but our grand attempts didn't get us much further than Thomas Creek park in Galena.



Though this morning I did rediscover the beauty of my backyard