In What Shadow Night

In what shadow night did you fall, there between the cupboard and the stove, to a place no one will ever reach? We all have them, Jennifer said so, shadow selves, secret places, our insides out when the light moves quickly behind a cloud. But yours is long, too long. It’s wide and deep and I’m sick and sore from trying to catch you. Give me a hand, won’t you? Can you give me a sign, a flicker, a scratch, something? Anything? Because I’ll stop. I will. I’ll stop reaching. I’ll have to. No one keeps caring about another forever. Not really. I mean I don’t want you to keep it all to yourself, but come on. We all have limits. We’re all human. Just sick, dirty, old sad humans looking for some shade to stand in for a minute, just a brief second, one of those seconds that’s like God’s time, endless, too much sense, timeless, timeless, timeless. Something that stands still. Something that moves, too, that never stops moving either. Something pure something real something deep something that is everything something we all long for something none of us can ever understand. We scream for that shade that peace that union but all the weddings and babies in the world won’t guarantee it. It’s got to come from something completely interior, completely too powerful to describe, to architect, to articulate, or picture, or express in any way at all. From or to or by no one but God. And us. Just the two of us. {image via weheartit.com}

Reckoning was Re-Released Today

There is a black Memorex tape somewhere. Its label, once covered in Sharpie lines of many colors, the words, "REM reckoning" rendered in pop-art parlance, is likely fallen, like old, old paperback paper, crisp like an autumn leaf, is long fallen off that casette tape, if even the tape itself exists at all. For years, at night, in the morning, in light and in darkness, windows opened and closed, I listened to this radio-recorded album, always, always, always, for years and years, till casettes were a thing of the past, CDs took over, and college began, and we all, we all loved these songs, loved them still, loved them sweetly. I see kudzu. I feel rain on mah head. I envision old overalls covering our gorgeous bodies, the boys with their hair so long. Druggy summers. Late nights writing poetry. Early mornings sleeping still and small and so unimaginably young. The scent of jasmine coming in through the walls. The fig tree out back. The buried cat. The potluck dinners. The piles of dishes. The Cow Haus. Waterworks. Vinyl Fever. Hills. Train tracks. Ah, youth. "Something about listening to REM makes my soul do a wild dance..." those are the words of a KUT (Austin, TX) DJ introducing this album, played on the air in its entirety when it was first released in 1984. Recorded onto a cassette tape by my father...the tape stolen by his daughter...and the daughter who heard those cut-off words prior to every listen of these magical songs, over and over again, from the age of ten on. I'd say, 25 years later, I still agree. Something about early REM still makes my soul do a wild dance. Damn.

Fluffy. Bella. Boo. Kitteh.

Not a money shot, for sure, but this precious little maniac adopted me 2 weeks ago. How could I resist? We also call her Thundercat, cause she makes a lotta noise when she runs. And she runs everywhere.

Back Away from the Cupcakes!

More Than Books

I love this little lady at (Inside a Black Apple) , especially this illustration. What a talent.

Happy Friday

You've got to continue to grow,
or you're just like last night's
cornbread--stale and dry.
- Loretta Lynn

Growth is painful. I am growing. Holy lord. The reward? Right now, I feel like a Mount Ranier Cherry Cupcake from Cupcake Royale, moist and fresh and delicious!

Who's Dad's a Badass?

My dad is. That's who. The man ordered his first set of encyclopedias, filled out the order form all by himself, at the tender, monkey-eared age of four. He's been following the pulse of the earth and its inhabitants' ebbs and flows ever since. He's covered mutilated cow mysteries, French new wave film, ancient rivers, serial killers, homegrown terrorism, military militias, neo-nazis, the rippling wakes of the Iraq war, the religious right, and much more. Right now, he's following the quivering shrapnel of Mexico's drug wars. He introduced me to almost all things beautiful and new and cool...music. Check. Film. Check. Literature. Check. Art. Check. Cloudy climes and starry skies. Check. A poet's heart. Check. So. Check out his blog, July Dogs. Honestly, all daughter bias aside, he's been a step ahead on our country's darkest trends since before the day I was born. Someday we'll catch up with him. For now, just try to keep up.

Apples Like the Evening Sky

This is a photo my dad sent to me taken during my little brother's long, long life-changing drive from Tucson, Arizona to our home town of good old, St. Augustine, Florida. All roads, don't they, dear brother, lead back to home? {From left, my dear brother Prajna (the bigga guy), my dear dad (though he says his hair looks like the original daffy duck), and my second-to-baby baby brother, Austin, all in Austin, Texas, plus pink flamingos in the Texas yard. So happy to see them together. Such love in Dad's eyes, such pleasure in the eyes of his boys, their dad's arms wrapped around them in love.

To wit, a fitting quote by John Cheever, the author born on this day, who once wrote:

"The world that was not mine yesterday now lies spread out at my feet, a splendor. I seem, in the middle of the night, to have returned to the world of apples, the orchards of Heaven. Perhaps I should take my problems to a shrink, or perhaps I should enjoy the apples that I have, streaked with color like the evening sky."

Love, in my humble human estimation, is the finale, it is the birth, it is the sweet apple. It is stronger than death. It is stronger than anything, anything, any single thing at all. And ain't we lucky to have a taste of it?

Taking Flight: It's a Major Award!

I won! I won! It's a Major Award! (And much prettier than a fishnet legged lamp any day of the week). It's a tender and lovely necklace by Stacy de la Rosa of Bella Wish, won by commenting on a post from the lovely and amazing Kelly Rae Roberts. Thank you, Kelly Rae & Stacy de la Rosa. I heart you. For realz. Boom! (Photo by KellyRae).

Feast on Your Life

It's been a hectic, kinda sad, kinda wonderful week. Working more at work so not on the up and up as far as posting goes...but for whoever out there who does check in, I found this poem too wonderful not to share. Putting yourself first in this way, remembering,

"Wow, look at me, I mean, I AM ALIVE, I have this amazing machine in my skull, and this love and this sorrow and this laughter that pours out of my heart and my mouth and my skin, that makes my blood race and my back ache and my bonesswell somehow with love for everything. I am here. All this that I see, those baby geese swimming on the lake, the way I love spring breezes, the way jasmine swells, the way it feels to hold a baby. All this, too. And me, too? REALLY? WOW."

Whatever this living is, whatever this life is, we are here. Don't let your beauty pass you by...like trees growing, our inner and outer beauty shifts and changes, provides different, equally beautiful and bountiful and painful offerings.

I'm learning to give myself permission to love me. And why shouldn't I? To quote Marianne Williamson from her book A Return to Love:

“Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

We have a divine obligation. So glad to have woken up today, to have woken up awake, to know in my body that those I love, when their bodies I've known well or fleetingly, pass in violence or in peace, which has happened lately, are so very happy and so very free.

Never woulda happened 3 years ago, when I found myself dangerously close to never waking up again. So now I feast ravenously, relishingly, ravishingly, with joy. On my own amazing, precious self. Now, you try it, too. Without further ado, here's this:

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

By Dereck Walcott. Discovered via this interview with Job Kabat-Zinn on Speaking of Faith. Picture is of my Grandma Jerry when she was 101 & fading like paper, but still feasting on life. She was a woman who knew herself, enjoyed her own company, and shone light all about her. I miss her.

Who Knows All the Changes We'll See?

By the time it gets dark. This is a view of St. A's Lightner Museum, taken from the nunnery parking lot nearing 8 p.m. I took this pic and the new header photo avec my telephone. Lyrics quoted from the song "By the Time It Gets Dark," first introduced to me through the voice of the inimitable Sandy Denny, then much enjoyed, similarly lovely version performed by the also inimitable Mary Lou Lord.