no-sulfur coconut chips

Today I went to an aromatherapy workshop, walked dogs at the shelter, and did 1.5 hours of Bhakti yoga. This is the good life.

Still I find myself wanting. Or is it loss.


I simultaneously crave late drunken nights filled with conversations we deem to be meaningful and marathoning home renovation shows on the laptop.

I simultaneously crave a half-pint of dairy-free ice cream and a cup of weak, tepid tea.

I simultaneously crave strumming the guitar until the tips of my fingers scream and lying prostrate on the couch for a while before padding into bed.

Do I want to shower or don't I.

Maybe it's the oils.


On my feet: oregano
On my solar plexus: sweet basil
On my ears: eucalyptus
On my forehead, at my third eye: mugwort and frankincense
On the concavity at the base of my abdomen: chamomile (mild)




With this I am remembering hiding behind the couch at all those house parties that got busted by the cops. Him feeding me mac 'n cheese and making out on the rooftop. That I thought I really liked him.

Each time thinking, now this is what liking is like.



The delicate silver leafprints hang from the stiffening tree. The rosemary plant is probably too cold by the window. Three days ago it was over 50 degrees.

Most mornings I wake to snow, cold seeping in through the cracks of the windows and doors.



I don't think I've ever said it first.

(don't) burn bridges

Where is the hummus?
He spreads red sauce over the crust.

I wrote a haiku while I was in the bathtub. Now I forget it. It ended with the word "red".

He washes the kale.

I listen to a podcast about procreating agreements.

I have been thinking a lot that I am only just beginning to understand what it means to be friends.



He pats mozzarella onto the top.

I spent a lot of money on having the option to run away.



My god, that's why I thought of it.

Wilson scrambles onto the couch in a burst of speed.

That bag of bananas is still so very, very green.






Those look good. 

What? 

Your pizzas. 

They've got kale on 'em.  

 


I knew she was done and the radio silence confirms it.

Picture a whale with knuckles. 

Sometimes I start with the last line first.

Sometimes I start with the last line first.

Her name was Norma and she had black hair.

I wonder what high school would be like with a name like Woody. 

It probably sucked, like it always does. 

I am choosing not to dwell in cynicism.



I can't believe she left him alone with her daughter. I sit tense on the other side of the door, ready to attack if I hear her scream.


Wilson does not like the sound or the vibration or the shape of the guitar. He sits grumpily on the loveseat in the other room while he plays.

This is my life.

That was not love,
in my imagination,
though I thought it was, or,
at least, I wanted it to be

It's like that movie that used to be one of my favorites and isn't really any more but still conveyed a lesson that I remember and appreciate today: The fantasy is not real love. 

The real thing is much more complicated.

When it's on, there's nothing like it.


Don't react. Create. 



Last night I swear to god I stood in the bloody bathroom with my psyche and we had a good chat. She is younger than I expected, but no less powerful or wise.



Today I was so tired. But the warmth and the light called to me, so I put on my running tights and I went back outside. I ran for miles with my face turned up toward the sun.

will you miss me

Woody Guthrie keeping me going.

Here's one thing I have learned: Being married doesn't mean shit about one's ability to love. That comes from somewhere else.

Wilkum wilkum falconswan long-necked waterfowl red-cheeked hummingbirds red-topped woodpeckers chillypenguins pelicans goldfinchesinpinkflowers blackestravens dancer-leggedplovers bluebirdssharingworms

The irises have been in water inside the glass jar for just about five hours now and a few of them are starting to open.

mottled gold bowl from Vietnam

One thing that is different is that when I am feeling it I know he's feeling it too.

I miss Mona.



fingerless mauve gloves is that right, mauve?

the owner of the local music shop the next town over wanted to charge me $450 for the used Martin, but due to the negligible crack in the solid wood top I talked him down, down, down and now I am the owner of the most beautiful guitar out of Nazareth (and this time I'm going to learn how to play.)

I know that I can because I'm gliding down icy downhills on my cross-country skis now and a month ago I side-stepped down the edge of them.

What a bowl!



As expected, the stand-up veterinarian was pretty entertaining.

I made the green clay cup on the pottery wheel--my first project in that class nearly a decade ago--and it has been a source of some embarrassment but also a functional change jar or rinse water cup for painting ever since, and that is why I brought it with me (along with an extremely limited assortment of possessions) to Colorado. now it sits on the little ledge behind the door and spiders have turned it into a mansion. I will not use it as a change jar or a rinse water cup for painting because they have covered it in such beautiful webbing; it is their home, and I'm happy to have provided it, all the way from pennsylvania.

watersheds soils entomology tree and shrub pruning landscaping vegetables

I do not know him that well but I think we love each other in some way and today when we met unexpectedly in the coffee shop he was so genuinely happy to see me that he put his hand on my back in my copper wool sweater and it felt good

When I start to feel like I made a huge mistake I remind myself that love is still real even when it's temporary.

the second word from every book title on the brown wooden shelves in my apartment

And
Garcia
Dangerously
Manifesto
Fat
Next
Stories
Esme
Work
by
to
Sunrises
and
Way
Power
Rumi
No
About
Work
Stone
Virgin's
Shoes
Horse
Poems
The
of
American
Master
Beloved
crazy
Sinister
Tao
Open
After
Behavior
Wood
Cloud
children
Nutrition
Bride
Cooked
Poems
Healing
Bums
air
laughing
County
Maps
With
in
Birds
free
Leap
Genius
Economics
Solitaire
Walls
handbook
Rain
Angler
Pleasure
House
Book
Work
Introduction
Building
Reasons
Revolution
Earth
Blues
Nature
Haven
Caretaking
Poetry
Fourteeners
Nothing

the first word from every book title on the brown wooden shelves in my apartment

Neurosis
How
Create
Organic
Gifts
Transfer
Fire
Collected
Homeland
For
Field
Standing
Room
Three
can't
Artist's
Introvert
Essential
Wisdom
Questions
Dream
Teaching
Kissing
Red
skin
Selected
For
End
Best
Junior
Cry
poem
Bend
365
Solace
Week
Flight
Chop
Leaf
Midnight's
Doing
Robber
Who
Two-headed
Poetry
Touch
Dharma
actual
away
Sand
Graphs
Negotiating
Speak
Floating
Field
Feel
Taking
You're
Home
Desert
Memory
Thirst
Earthsteward's
Waiting
Complete
Beyond
Wood-Frame
Sewing
Home
Geosystems
Natural
Good
Kombucha
This
Rock
Lifguarding
Meditations
Creative
Stop
New
Colorado's
There
Enchanted

those sixteen measures

"It is not surprising that in his later years variations became the favorite form for Beethoven, who knew all too well (as Tamina and I know) that there is nothing more unbearable than lacking the being we loved, those sixteen measures and the interior world of their infinitude of possibilities."

(Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting)



I still believe in love but I am not sure about romantic love.


I laughed and replied, I've become less whimsical over the years.

Still in the past six months I have returned to flesh and blood. I have returned to being a person who is, at the very least, receptive to whimsy.

Even better, I can receive whimsy and decide whether to act on it, and how.


I have returned to being a person.



I do not miss you all the time, any more, which seems significant. Which is not to say that I do not miss you.


When I tell him about the dog at the shelter who stands up on her back legs and hugs me halfway through our walks, I see that it affects him. It makes me feel hope.



I am imagining two become three,
temporarily,
four pairs of hands and two tongues


To be able to lay down the guitar and step to the marimba lumina. To be able to walk softly aross the stage while your bandmates play around you, pick up your guitar again, and start to play.



On Sunday I road a lift to the top of the mountain and snowshoed three miles into the backcountry. Oh such a wide white expanse, snow above and below. Such quiet, such godliness. The entire time I was completely alone.