Nicknames for Wilson

Willy Billy
Wilson Bobilson
Willie Bobillie
Bud
Buddy
Buddy Boy
Little Dude
My Man
Little Man
Bug
Little Bug
Bugaboo
Bugaroo
Bugarug
Bugarugaroo
Bug Boy
Bugaboogle
Rumblebutt
Rumblebucket
Shnoodely Boot
Cutie Patootie
Cutie Patootoot
Cutie Patootietootoot
My Cute Little Patoot
My Little Prince
I Mean Little King

Do not you dare (piecemeal)

What kind of person spends money on a palm tree license plate frame? And how is it that the same person would invest in double exhaust pipes so as to release her frustrations in the form of giant plumes of toxic chemicals onto unsuspecting cars behind her.



I do not believe for one fucking second that the town of Buellton, California is the home of split pea soup.

Sometimes I'm a freak (October)

Five more to best 2012.

I listened I have been sad ever since. 

I am so sad about it I don't really want to eat this homemade chili or wash these dishes or dust the bookshelves, though the bookshelves are covered in dust. I'm clammed up; I'm sad about it; I'm so sad; for too long I have not been as honest of a person as I would have had myself believe, but I know (because I must) that I am/we are capable of atonement. 

It is so cold in this apartment; I am cheap; I do not turn on the baseboards; Wilson sits on the toilet in the steam after my shower trying to get warm. Hanna presses her face into my lap and her chest into my thigh and Wilson moves from the bathroom to the other side of my lap; together we create a warm zone as good as any electrically powered heater. At least until one of us (most likely me) gets up to pee. 

I am now the owner of a gigantic novelty mug with the word "spooky" written across it in multicolored lettering; of course I love it; what should I fill it with red wine or whiskey. 

Because I have witnessed life's grand capacity for detours I do not will not believe that it's too late. 

You have to be free

I am writing this from the sea of California. This afternoon I drove four hours up the coast to the tiny house that I've rented; its walls are covered with seashells of various types and in a variety of presentations. This evening I walked down to the beach--I nearly forgot how to move my legs while walking down to the beach, that's how beautiful it was. I hadn't seen the ocean in at least two years. It is some kind of spectacular.

I stood in front of all that raw power with my bare feet planted wide in the sand and I took it--the wind, the waves, the inexplicable flood that reached all the way up to my toes one time--when I first stood in front of the ocean--and then not once more in the 40 minutes that I stood there. My hope is that mother Ocean was saying hello after all those years of separation.

People talk about the sun "disappearing" behind the clouds, but it doesn't disappear when clouds move across it. It's just temporarily eclipsed. To stand on the edge of the Pacific Ocean is to watch the sun actually disappear--to shine so bright that you can't even look at it and then slip away, regardless of whether you missed that last split second of great orb shining. Only it's still not that immediate; I laughed out loud when the sky started pulsing again, a few more shimmers showering the ocean with light, then the stillness of wind and water and waves.

From "The Bones of August" by Robin Ekiss

Not to ask, Did you

           love her? and leave

the answer in the ground,

                     where everything difficult

       is buried.

....

Is it necessary

                      to remember

      absolutely everything?

Do not fuck with the ones I love

As I am walking Hanna back to the apartment in the early fall evening, feeling so peaceful and glad to be walking with my dog down a leaf-lined alleyway on an early fall evening in Colorado, a large gray dog barks and growls on the other side of a fence. I tell Hanna everything is okay and to walk on, what with the fact that the large barking dog is secured on the other side of a tall fence, and then the large barking growling gray dog stands up on its hind legs and crashes its front legs down on the gate, which swings open, and in a moment of horrifying certainty I know the latch has uncaught, and the large snarling 80-pound gray dog is freed from the gate and lashing at Hanna, he doesn't even pause to register the surprise of having crashed through the tall gate, he just lunges, catching her shoulder as she darts to the side, and then I am standing up tall and inhaling and I am shouting No, and my voice is so ferocious and unafraid that the large biting gray dog sits down and snaps to attention. You leave my dog alone--now I'm the one snarling, I curl my lip and grab its collar, drag its body so swiftly that it catches air as I turn, practically throw the large gray dog back into the yard, its paws skidding into the dirt, and slam the gate and secure the latch. I am breathing hard, enraged, and I admonish the large gray dog again, I can't remember what I said, and then I am turning to Hanna and crouching by her side and petting her head and examining her shoulder, which is wet with the spit of the large gray dog, and telling her, as she cowers in the stonedust alleway, that everything is okay. As she slinks away I turn to administer one more aggressive stare at the large sulking gray dog, and then I walk Hanna the rest of the way home, talking softly, and when we are safely back inside the apartment I feed her several salmon treats, I hug her, I tell her again that everything is okay. When she exits to the bedroom I walk to the sink to fill a glass of water and my heart is pounding so hard that I am surprised my hands are not shaking.

Me-ow-ahh

I made the typo because I was slightly drunk when I wrote it. The waitress kept refilling my tequila and I kept drinking it.


Here is the thing: There is nothing I can say to convey the beauty of the instrumental melodies on this Allman Brothers album, even though I am and forever will be a proponent of words.
Ed. note: Same goes for describing Sung Tongs.



Today I drove 45 minutes through the huge slabs of the gray rock canyon and watched the colors change as I descended elevation. I parked on a residential street in a part of town I'd never been to before, and then I walked to the used book store. Two hours later I emerged with five books of poetry, an Emmylou Harris record, a Bonnie Raitt record, and four Merle Haggard records at $3 apiece.

Then it was on to the rock store, where I picked out rocks as they called to me, without knowing anything about them, filling a little wire basket that was handed to me by the kindly rock shop employee in the wizardly vest. I chose tangerine quartz, blue soda stone, several rocks whose names I no longer remember (one is purple; one green; one blue-gray-green; one black), and three lodolites, I was so taken with them, each one containing a small world.

After stopping in at the pet store to pick up the only food brand Wilson will eat, some cat grass, and two new stuffed animals for Hanna, and then buying some new sports bras at Target, and then picking up bags of cinnamon, almonds, bee pollen, leeks, squash, and kale at the natural food store, I drive back through the gray slabs towering above me and return to the apartment, where I spend several hours organizing the shelving unit in the study and dismantling cardboard boxes to take to the recycling center after tomorrow's big hike, then cook dinner--rice, roasted veggies, sauteed kale and garlic and garbanzo beans, boiled corn--and then I sit down at the computer and google lodolite:

Lodolite is usuallly used in meditation, and its powerful but soothing energies can instantly put you in a deep meditative state. 

It will bring energies of manifestation in your life so that you will be able to fulfill your heart's desires. 

Lodolite will enhance your communication with beings from other higher realms and increase your spiritual energies. 

Lodolite will bring loving energies into your life. 

It will infuse you with a quiet and gentle strength that will help you overcome personal challenges. 

It's also an excellent healing stone that will give healing to your subtle and etheric bodies. 

I can't wait.

You know I do believe

I don't mean to do it. 

I can't stop listening to Music from Big Pink. And Angel Olsen. I am going to see her live soon; it has been so long since I saw one of my musicians live.


Yes and tomorrow I'm going to drive through the canyon and purchase some crystals at the rock shop; I've heard they will string them onto a necklace for free.

Yes I know exactly how it sounds.



What the fuck. The Arsenal game is on NBC Gold. Looks like I'll be looking for a free stream.


After I told the stranger that I love her, that my heart is feeling for her and I am sending her love, I told her that I am giving myself room to breathe. I said I shared that anecdote in the hopes that it might be useful to her too.

I am here to be of service.

This is not the same as servitude.



The pet store has moved several blocks closer to the park.

(The better to purchase treats for Hanna.)


When we pull up to the dog park 20 minutes down the road through the red rock canyon, Hanna starts crying with excitement. She can't control her body, most especially not her tail. I open the car door and she leaps out, arrested immediately by smells on the very edge of the spiky green grass. There are SO MANY SMELLS. It is THE BEST DAY EVER. And then she gets to play with other dogs, chase balls along the grass, bound into the water from the pond's sandy edge? What a great day. The best day ever.



She is a mother now. Most likely this will create a lifeline gap between us. Not a lapse in love, but a distinguishing line between our identities. As for me? I think I am an odd, free bird. I think I am married to being free.

Then Wilson curls up on my chest, and even though I do not want him here right now, really--what with enjoying feeling free, feeling like myself, and all--I let him stay. I press my lips into the top of his head when he presses it to my lips. I think, his getting to experience this receptivity and love is more important than my desire not to have weight on my chest right now. Isn't this what it's like to be mother.


I love my children as if they were my own. I am a keeper of the Earth and all of her creatures.



Man I hate to be tickled.

Look out the window tell me, what do you see? 

"The Birthday of the World" by Marge Piercy

On the birthday of the world

I begin to contemplate

what I have done and left

undone, but this year

not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged

psyche, shoring up eroding

friendships, digging out

stumps of old resentments

that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call

myself to task for what

I have done and not done

for peace. How much have

I dared in opposition?

How much have I put

on the line for freedom?

For mine and others?

As these freedoms are pared,

sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who

have I tried to move? In

this holy season, I stand

self-convicted of sloth

in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric

bends reason to slithering

choking pythons. Here

I stand before the gates

opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes, and as I approach

what judges me, I judge

myself. Give me weapons

of minute destruction. Let

my words turn into sparks.

Take a load off, Fanny

For many years he put the load on me.

Now my new guiding philosophy:

For the most part, I only help to carry the load of people who demonstrate a willingness to help me carry my own (with the exception of when I am volunteering or doing work that is directly related to the purpose of uplifting others without regard for whether they return the uplift, or perhaps because of a professional relationship wherein such reciprocation might be construed as or involve the crossing of boundaries). 

Caveats aside: I only help to carry the load of people who demonstrate a willingness to help me carry my own.


I've been carrying a lot for a long time, all silent and smiling but gasping for breath on the inside.

Now I am realizing what a responsibility it is to carry my own load.

Now I am realizing that I want myself to be happy.

Now I am realizing that my job is not to kill myself while other people derive their own temporary relief (however conscious or not, however assuredly un-malicious) from sucking me dry.

Is that a euphemism.

Now I am listening to Music from Big Pink and sweating a little in my black capri sweatpants. My stomach full of homemade green curry and sucking on a spearmint candy, a book about hating poetry splayed across my thigh.



It's been years since I've thought of her: perhaps the sexiest woman I've ever known in my life. I remember how badly I wanted to place my hands side by side on her hips, to press my forehead between her breasts and breathe in

How devastated I felt when she started dating another woman. How desperately I craved to be wanted, there amidst the soybeans in the center of the Buckeye State 


Yes and same with the mix tapes and lingering in your truck hoping you would kiss me

Same with draping my head on his shoulder in the back of that Geo Prizm, high and thrilling to his arm around my side


I drink wine chilled with frozen black cherries out of the massive red-striped glass that I bought for 50 cents at a yard sale, its partner safe and sound in the cupboard because it's too large even for the conventional wine glass rack. I fucking love those wine glasses.

Every other creature in my little interspecies family is asleep, and here I am waking up. I guess Wilson and Hanna don't really need the practice.

Dirty river dog

What's left to show for it:
Not the dampened stick fetched
from the edge of the current. Not
the thin beige hound galloping
down the waterway beside her, wet
leash slapping the banks as they
bound. Certainly not the rare bath
she had on Tuesday.

Only a slight dampness of the
belly, wet
white hairs and large brown paw
prints on the Honda's back seat,
driving her home for
the resting:

Nose tucked to brown-black tail,
the scent of the river wafting into her dreams


The cat sniffs her paws where she sleeps,
awakened by something he
does not know and
cannot name.

Am I doing this right?

Where does it hurt?

The marble quarry is overrun with marbles.

I closed my eyes and I forgot.



Willow creek - Will it every stop being you?

Be part of the conversation.


Blog ideas: Joe needs an actual chill laid back woman.


Where will you have me go?
What would you have me do?


How to rewrite guilt:

That is so messy.


How did it all resolve?
Did you get my Harry Potter?
Where do you learn about the news?


The homecoming: Hanna watches the ball.



Love:

Focus on your tender heart.


Here is my light motherfuckers

Of course I meant to do that.

sleep on the plane

Well should we do it should we buy the tickets

Should we touch down in Los Angeles, grab some tacos, catch the show, hit the LA bar scene, hop the red-eye back to Denver and drive several hours into the mountains

I'm not sure yet; tomorrow night I'm driving several hours to dance with a large group of strangers in a place I have never been and then driving back into the mountains.


I have read too much about the dangers of drowsy driving.


Once again I have talked plants back to life, or at least I believe I have. Those sad little transplants wilting away in the record heat, and me telling them every day, over and over again, that they could do it. And now here they are: kale and arugula and tomatoes and collards growing to my knees. I feast.


The guitar case is less dusty than it was several days ago. This is what people are referring to when they mention silver linings.

Is it possible to separate the child molester from the music?



When I was young my favorite author was Dave Barry.

They just wrote fuck on TV.

"How about we throw in some actual donuts?"



I know I am a farmer at heart.

All I have to do is live from my zone of genius.

“When you’re doing something, keep 9/10 of your attention on your mind and 1/10 on the work. If your state of mind declines, then stop what you’re doing until you’ve got it back.”

https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/staying-civil/?utm_source=Tricycle&utm_campaign=25fd2e516a-Daily_Dharma_2018_07_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1641abe55e-25fd2e516a-308120453

dogs for adoption

I was unpacking from vacation when I opened the closet and your coat caught my breath.

At the record store yesterday the man showed me the fire behind the counter and then informed me that my voice mailbox was full.

Speaking of fire the county is burning. 

Wilson is so happy to see me again that he can't stop pressing his face into my face.


It is so hot in this apartment; droplets of sweat roll down the backs of my calves, between my breasts, along the inner edge of my left arm. Nevertheless Wilson curls his hot little body onto my chest, presses his face to my face, and purrs and purrs and purrs.

I feel like I've been here before. I listen to the album again and again.

How many chances do you give a friend before they are no longer a friend.



I was going to be a middle school English teacher, but I am no longer going to be a middle school English teacher.



For dinner I have eaten a giant bowl of mixed greens, sliced tomatoes, a burger made from ground nuts and seeds. It is too hot for anything else but popsicles.

I sincerely regret that I have not been your friend.

I showed my brother-in-law the album and was pleasingly nonplussed by the labia on the cover.

I am making decisions in a different way. It is uncomfortable but I think I am on to something.

What an honor to witness: At first she claimed to have no emotions; now she initiates great big hugs and beams about how much she loves her art.

No matter how intensely I scrub them, the calluses on the bottoms of my feet remain dirty. I have taken to wearing sandals instead of boots on the trail--an attempt to pacify the stress fractures in my feet. Consequently my feet are exposed to dirt and dust nearly everywhere I go. Consequently the calluses on the bottoms of my feet remain dirty, no matter how much I scrub them.

I wish I saw my family more than once a year.



The flowers in the glass jar on the kitchen table are so beautiful; one glance jolts my brain into presence and gratitude. 

He sticks his tongue out at me and I send a stuck-out tongue right back.

I have been meaning to call him for ages.


Because my family did not finish all the food in the fridge I am now the owner of several half-finished condiments, opened yogurt containers, low-sugar tonic, balsamic vinaigrette, pop chips, seaweed snacks, a full bottle of locally crafted gin.

There are so many ways I want to feel. 

Tomorrow is the beginning of the rest of my life.

From "Culture and the Universe" by Simon J. Ortiz

It’s not humankind after all

nor is it culture

that limits us.

It is the vastness

we do not enter.

"To The Angelbeast" by Eduardo C. Corral

For Arthur Russell

All that glitters isn’t music.

Once, hidden in tall grass,

I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air:

doe after doe of leaping.

You said it was nothing

but a trick of the light. Gold

curves. Gold scarves.

Am I not your animal?

You’d wait in the orchard for hours

to watch a deer

break from the shadows.

You said it was like lifting a cello

out of its black case.

From "Bird" by Dorianne Laux

I'm alone with dead roses in a jam jar.

From "Time Problem" by Brenda Hillman

I have borrowed the little boat

and I say to him Come into the little boat,   

    you were happy there;

From "A Perfect Mess" by Mary Karr

It’s not law but the sprawl
of our separate wills that keeps us all flowing.

A reminder when I needed it

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.


Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.


Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.


Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.


Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.


Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.


You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.


Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive [Her] to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.


With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.




-Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

From "Age Appropriate" by Philip Schultz

In other words, when evicted from

a strange lobby into a stranger street,

where every scaffold is full

and bodies dangle in the long

blue sorrow of the afternoon,

without context, explanation, or sympathy,

it’s good to know, even momentarily,

how to live, among the relevant,

    the passionate, and the confused.

From "January Drought" by Conor O'Callaghan

I have reservoirs of want enough  
to freeze many nights over.

"Grandma's Outside Painting Moonscapes"

Well I did it

I made something and I shared it, and I'm pretty sure it went well

Good way to start the new year


Also doing morning planks and squats and pushups on the rug in front of the refrigerator

Also eating one large grapefruit, two fried eggs, and a gluten free muffin for breakfast, hot off the skillet

Also coming home famished after five hours of sharing what I made, eating curry and salad and relaxing into a release more than a month in the making 

Also dozing on the loveseat at the end of the day, Wilson tucked into my left arm and Hanna curled under my right

Also walking sleepily to the bedroom, snuggling under the blankets and around the soft warm animal of his body

Also showering with the almond-and-peppermint holiday soap, upturning my face to the hot water, scrubbing off the grime accumulated over the last 12 months to make way for a year of courageousness