It's fiddle time

Who's the sugar nerd now



I have been missing Y terribly of late, the onset sudden and breathtaking. He touches me and I imagine his hands


Where once I would have relished the enthusiasm of the boy with the dog who wanted to play with my dog, today I tripped over myself trying to keep space between us. It was no use--my dog stole his dog's ball, and before I could kick it back he'd run to my feet, hand outstretched. This is the time I find myself in, when I am afraid of a child playing in an open field by the river because I have asthma and an autoimmune disorder and I do not know what, if anything, he's carrying. Nor do I know what, if anything, I am carrying; nor do I know, anymore--I who have made it my mission to make sure every child I encounter is safe in my presence, as I was not safe in the presence of so many adults before me--if it is safe for children to be around me



Maybe I'm not missing Y. Maybe I'm nostalgic, instead, for innocence, for the uncertainty of taking off my clothes or nodding my head to classic rock or drawing on a diner's placemat or seizing a truck's stick shift and not knowing what would happen next. Maybe I'm nostalgic for falling in love, which is so much easier than loving someone.




I have always been annoyed by writing that uses letters in place of a person's name.

I kept trying to get to the part where men explain Fiona Apple to her



Last night I saw my girlfriends' faces for the first time in oh-so-long, smiling and blowing kisses through a phone screen. It was more heartening than I'd expected. Tonight we will FaceTime with an old friend while watching Raiders of the Lost Ark. We will munch on big glass bowls of popcorn, us high up in the Rocky Mountains and him in the middle of Austin, hands reaching back into the bowl simultaneously, but never touching. It is both a heartbreaking and heartwarming state of affairs



I keep a list of the items we would like to purchase the next time he ventures to a grocery store, as many weeks as possible after the last visit. He goes each time--stepping into the shower the moment he returns--because I have asthma and an autoimmune disorder. I don't know if it's right. I am grateful. I do not know how long I can accept it. It's humbling and uncomfortable. It begins with vinegar

From "Of History and Hope" by Miller Williams

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?

"Goodbye to Tolerance" by Denise Levertov

Genial poets, pink-faced   

earnest wits—

you have given the world   

some choice morsels,

gobbets of language presented

as one presents T-bone steak

and Cherries Jubilee.   

Goodbye, goodbye,

                            I don’t care

if I never taste your fine food again,   

neutral fellows, seers of every side.   

Tolerance, what crimes

are committed in your name.

And you, good women, bakers of nicest bread,   

blood donors. Your crumbs

choke me, I would not want

a drop of your blood in me, it is pumped   

by weak hearts, perfect pulses that never   

falter: irresponsive

to nightmare reality.

It is my brothers, my sisters,

whose blood spurts out and stops

forever

because you choose to believe it is not your business.

Goodbye, goodbye,

your poems

shut their little mouths,   

your loaves grow moldy,   

a gulf has split

                     the ground between us,

and you won’t wave, you’re looking

another way.

We shan’t meet again—

unless you leap it, leaving   

behind you the cherished   

worms of your dispassion,   

your pallid ironies,

your jovial, murderous,   

wry-humored balanced judgment,

leap over, un-

balanced? ... then

how our fanatic tears

would flow and mingle   

for joy ...

the again-and-again of it*

When I move the book onto the table and it makes a noise that startles her, Hanna knows what medicine she needs. More belly rubs


When the worry escalates I stand up, move around, say, let's remember to focus on what we can control. Then I read a story about a man who pretended not to know what potatoes are and laugh until I cry


When I read Leslie Jamison's essays I realize what I want to do with my life. She is masterful. This is the closest I've come to idolization since I first discovered Lydia Davis. I have five years for refinement



I'm staying inside a lot these days, aren't we all, when I venture out it's to take Hanna walking up the ridge, far above the houses, or down alongside the river flowing faster and brown with snowmelt. When I go outside I feel my feet on the earth, I see the trees are still standing, two red-tailed hawks screech overhead.

Mary Oliver: Meanwhile, the world goes on.


I am endeavoring to shine whatever light I can. Let's keep writing, let's keep creating, because the human spirit is nourished by art and our spirits are in need of nourishing



I have been working, I have been trying to do, too much. It has been apparent to everyone around me and though I said I knew it, I have only just come to know. It has been A LOT. For nearly a decade my workload has been inhuman. I am tired. I am ready to come back to life, and grateful for it.


The First Healing took place in a cement-block room in a violent city in Guatemala, me alone with no windows or screens or sunlight writing to save my life. This time is different; it is slower, more circuitous, it is less clear, at all times, whether or not I am climbing up. Still, there are clues even here in the dark: I am crying more, because I am feeling more, I am doing less, I am writing again, I am on a path again, I am, in so many more ways, taking care of myself. I am focusing on the gains as I fill in the gaps.




I say: I worry that I've wasted my life. 

He says: Alton Brown also puts nutritional yeast on his popcorn.


So you see. The stars are just like us.







*thanks to Leslie Jamison, Make It Scream, Make It Burn

"Try to Praise the Mutilated World" by Adam Zagajewski, translated by Clare Cavanagh

Try to praise the mutilated world.

Remember June's long days,

and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine.

The nettles that methodically overgrow

the abandoned homesteads of exiles.

You must praise the mutilated world.

You watched the stylish yachts and ships;

one of them had a long trip ahead of it,

while salty oblivion awaited others.

You've seen the refugees going nowhere,

you've heard the executioners sing joyfully.

You should praise the mutilated world.

Remember the moments when we were together

in a white room and the curtain fluttered.

Return in thought to the concert where music flared.

You gathered acorns in the park in autumn

and leaves eddied over the earth's scars.

Praise the mutilated world

and the gray feather a thrush lost,

and the gentle light that strays and vanishes

and returns.

From "At Least a Dozen Bluets" by Alison C. Rollins

I keep a pay phone in my living

room for you.