Haunted Houses

We attended the Gwynne Vahn Park garden party as has been the tradition for the last few years, but this time it was a torrential downpour.

I don't mind returning there, I have good memories of the old Victorian lady... but I also see her as being a prison I lived in for five years. I did my time and I ain't goin' back. She seems less dark than when we lived there... the trees seem to hug the walls a little less closely. I would have taken a full photo of the grounds but unfortunately, there were tents set up in the front garden room...

How strange to see everything with this disconnection. With fondness. I can hear the ghosts in the magnolia trees... feel the echo of our lives around me. Somewhere under the maple tree, my amethyst ring, the cat's grave over there, this is where I told him I was going to St. Louis. This is where my son stood, naked as the day he was born, speaking to the Sunday churchgoers on their family stroll.

I am relieved to be done. How cellular it was to live in those worlds, rattling around in the one-hundred year old dust.

Now it's time for just remembering without the sticky nuisance of emotion.

Hall-e-fucking-lujah.

G.

This is...

Where the pictures I took on the way home should be.... if only I could get them off the phone.

Clouds. And the afternoon commute.

Tomorrow?

Besides, we have things to celebrate. Today is the third anniversary of meeting J.

G

Sparrow Suicides ~



Light play, the soft
brown of wings (delicate
belly) reaching
into broken sky
(wing tip to tail feather)

fall

sweep across the
(grass ditch)
country road, to
flash by my purposeful
hood (narrow
luck) and
miss

I calculate distance,
(check for survivors)
wonder if birds
are thrill seekers,
competetive (free
fall) racers
who enjoy tormenting
evening commuters.

(who can translate
the tricky body language
of birds)

I then (startled)
understand:
I have witnessed

mating.

Confession

Words do not come easily these days, yet they are the shadow that follows me. Elusive golems. I write in my head; the music bringing them, the pale green of freshly cut hay, the morning sky fighting the great guardian Mt. Cheam. There is something in the world I move through, beauty and pavement. In the eyes of those I walk past, the simple fact of knowing I am ok.

There is so much to be thankful for. This past fall had me in a dangerous place. There were nights when I could not articulate the mediocrity and loss of hope I felt in my daytime reality. The whore I was reduced to. The money I took on a check with my name in small print under the greedy fat heart of my employer. The soul eating day in and day out.

And then there was the snow. Erasing all of the brown shit that had started to pile up in my path.

Then, the ultimate revenge. Promotion.

April has seen me exhausted, but deep in the heart of hearts... bliss.

A wise woman once said that only I could change the path I had taken. I cleanly stepped off that LA sidewalk and into the arbutus lined pathways of Galiano.

Just
like
that.

But the words still taunt me. Only when I can’t pin them down with a pen, do they come. Beautiful and sad, beautiful and bliss filled. None of it seems to matter. Not the pretty paper I coax them with or this silent world of digital font.

There is such a wonderful sense of coming home to my life. Fragile as it may seem some days, we move through. I have to ask myself if the lack of words is due to the bright sunlight of happiness. Do I prefer the deep blue of midnight?

Three sky blue robins eggs nestled in the soft of cottonwood spun with the gentle fronds of grass. See it? Fragile. Life in that thin shell. Something the cat could get at; we struggle to protect its future. See the mother arcing above, calling out against our intention. We are the best we can be then. Communication. Collaboration. To save the miracle of three sky blue eggs.

The human spirit only needs hope. Hope. The almost, not quite tangible, promise. This will work. We made a difference.

I can
step off
the pavement.

The words have not left me. And I hope that they soon quit flirting and step out into this sunshine.



G

The Distraction on Monday

And Remember When...

It's been so long. So long. I had forgotten the way the words felt on my fingers. The way the voice coils inside me, slowly at first... then with a sudden holler, too loud to ignore it pushes out into this world of dark and light.

I heard strange music and it woke the part of me that wanted to sleep. And as a bear wakes from winter, I cleared the film from my eyes and stumbled here. Half instinct. Half purpose.

There are so many things that need to be said. So many mundane stories with the hidden heart. I have been a poor lover to my voice. I have been a poor friend to myself.

One step. One word. One broken light. And here we are... once again. Sharing secrets only seen out of the corner of our eye.


G.

Summertime (And the livin' is easy)

I woke at five this morning to the rain on the skylights. The air was thick with the stink of water starved grass. There is that heavy ozone scent... I always mistake it for a type of electricity, the renewed potential.

When I was in Tennessee there were flash storms. Sudden and violent. A flurry of lightening and rain, rain like we only see in winter here. I had seen nothing like it, really. Streaming down the roads, washing the dust out of the trees and the cane sugar. Then just as sudden, the sky would clear and paint itself with fluffy white clouds. Passive and sweet again, the sun would drench you in that southern heat that only seems to happen there. One minute you were running for cover, the next you were looking for the gin.

We are going to drive down to Twisp Washington this August. I am looking forward to a landscape I have not seen, abandoned houses I have not photographed. I think it is just the thing I have been craving. That un-named sweet.


G.

Summer Heat... Continued

Driving home tonight, I took the shortcut through farm country. It is astonishing to think that less than a hundred years ago the entire area that I passed through was under water. (They drained a large but shallow lake and created a canal to control the flow of one great river into another.)

It was incredibly hot today, further in the valley reaching close to 40~. Unusual in these here parts. We all were sweaty and irritated, the pavement of the city streets baking us despite the consumption of non fat, no whip, decaff mocha frappachinos. That pretty outfit you put on this morning looks less so as a dish rag. Some of us glow in this heat, savouring the depth of it. Others, admittedly I am in this group, go from one air conditioned building to another. I don’t mind the heat, but for fuck sakes... give me a cold stiff drink.

It was just dark on my voyage through the tall grass ditches and corn fields. The farmers were irrigating the crops, something I always find delight in. If you grew up in the country you may know what I mean... or if you had the luxury of a sprinkler to run through. The rooster tail sprinklers, you know the ones I mean. They make that Tsstk tsssk tsssk sound as they pivot, each beat of the guard mechanism causing a pause in the arc of water. My father used one to water our lawn and I liked to hear the sound as I fell asleep on hot summer nights. It’s sprinkler music enough to cool me off.

But the farmer and his sprinkler... is an entirely different experience.

Amplify the lawn sprinkler by ten thousand. This HUGE arc reaches out, fingers stroking the edges of the field, corn leaves glistening in the spray. Hundreds of litres of water, thrown out to sparkle against the sky... each pulse seemingly reaching out further than the last. And the sound... I wish I could capture that sound for you. It is more than a calm lawn experience. You feel wet just standing on the road near one, the mist drifting.

Sometimes the farmer misjudges the arc of water and it will fall on the road. I love to drive through these mistakes, a summer rain in the holocaust of summer light. The music of it raining down on the hood of the car.

Don’t get me started on the scent of the pavement... hot from the sun, touched by cool fingers. Such a simple girl...

I reached for the camera and nada. But I don’t think the camera would catch the feeling these beautiful dancers evoke. Most definitely, you could not taste the difference in the air....

G.

Summer Heat

“When you see daddy comin’
You're licken' you lip
Nails bitten down
To the quick.”

Summer.

Today, a tanned vixen in a black bathing suit, white convertible, tattooed boy. The grass is nipple high. Everything screams of sex. I was listening to Junior Kimbrough on the highway today, windows down. I had cravings of late night dancing in some blues club in Memphis. Past summers of working in the sweat. How quickly things evolve from a faint glow to that slick of burning.

There was once a boy I used to sleep with. Sleep... we did none of. When we make love it was always hot and sweaty, I remember a droplet running down his nose... tripping down between my breasts to rest in my belly button.

“A man makes a picture
A moving picture, in the projected light
He can see himself up close.”

Now, in retrospect, I think it was always hot when we were together. Summer or that early spring.

I often wonder what became of him, the graphic artist who fucked so passionately but married a prudish lawyer. Is he happy in his marriage bed? Does he dance in the sultry way with her, wetting her breasts with his enthusiasm? I somehow doubt it. How insatiable we are in our youth, that constant ember burning in us.

I must admit, this is my absolute favourite time of year. And although I am happily coupled there is this quickening that we both will enjoy. The automatic, primal swing of the hip in pace with the wavering grass. Last year we had some lovely adventures in the heat... I wonder what this summer will hold.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,
She moves in mysterious ways.”

The summer night sky is something beyond me, elegant and promising all at once. The construction paper cut outs of trees against the azure deepness of coming night. Streaks of purple clouds, the touch of pale softness on the horizon. Jesus. It makes my heart ache. Everything has potential under that sky. Everything is touched by magic.

There was a night when I was a teenager. A boy who I had a mad crush on (later to become my husband) and I were standing out under a streetlight. I was in my bare feet, walking on a crack in the hot asphalt. I can feel of the chalk they used on the patch, the heat and soft of the road. There was a shadow design from a tree crowding the lamplight. If I were to go stand there tonight, I imagine that there would be some of that magic still lingering. I remember how his skin tasted of salt and I had the faint recollection that all freckles must taste this way. His skin had that man feel, tougher than mine. I walked home that night high in the azure of sky.

“I am gonna run to you, run to you
Woman I will.”

The entire summer that J and I dated, feeling out the potential between us, there was the sleepless nights with the window open listening to the far off frogs and wind. My hungry exploration of what he could make my body do, the shaky feeling in the morning. Tired, but exhilarated.

We would go driving then, anywhere... aimless. The windows down and the music on. Of all the things I miss from prior living together, it is that. The random freedom. Oh yes, and the quiet basement sex. I slept so well in that cool darkness. A calm reprieve from the violent heat of the day.

I miss running on summer nights, just my breath to keep me company. Here I don’t have anywhere I feel safe to run... there are no hills and no streetlights. I liked lying on the lawn to cool off, looking at the sky. Midnight runs, the pristine quiet. My body my own, wondrously tired and sweaty.

“Don’t turn around, don’t turn around again
And don’t look back”

Tomorrow J and I are going to head out on one of those rambling drives. I hope to find some warm water and interesting photographs to take. Perhaps lunch in some small place... bliss, to spend the time with just he and I and an open day of surprises.


G.

“Hey I lost you
When you took me in, my friend.”

Beauty in the Breakdown

Tonight... the first sign of spring. Soft, far off...

The music of frogs.

I have finally pushed up through the murky water to take my first breath of sweet air and found the sky full of magic.

G.