Bare Bones

It's rare that I make my commute with nothing on the radio, no book on CD playing. For the first half of my commute this morning, I listened to Louise Erdrich read Lorrie Moore's story, Dance In America via the New Yorker fiction podcast and afterwards my mind was too blown to take in anything else. I flipped off the car stereo and drove the rest of the way in silence. I paid attention to the fire truck racing along the frontage road, an ambulance solemnly following. I thought about the difference between He leaves the room and He walks out of the room. I thought about secrets, and the way a story can be told by isolating pieces of information, leaving things out, like in a photograph where what makes it beautiful is the lack of extraneous details.

Tuesday

With Tom on Orcas recording with the Daffodils, the mini-farm is quiet. No Emmylou, no Mariners on the little radio in the garage. I do things he usually does, bring the garbage bin, the recycling bin back from the curb, cross Allen West Road to our little mailbox for the collection of junk mail and grocery store circulars that go straight into the same recycling bin. Before I go to sleep, I grind espresso for the little stovetop espresso maker, put the cilantro dip and poached shrimp in containers to put in the fridge. Tomorrow I have to remember to heat up the gooey cinnamon bread for breakfast, go out to the greenhouse, water the leggy tomato plants, the prolific pattypan squash, the little strawberry plants. Nothing to pack though, no forgotten cell phone charger, insufficient sock supply or wrong color shoes. Just home, every night for a week.

There isn't really a photo for this one.

On my way home from Port Townsend via Sea-tac, where I dropped Pam off for her flight back to Denver, then the ranch, I stop for groceries at the co-op. I load a cart with one of those giant packs of toilet paper, a quiche for Monday breakfast, a quarter of a watermelon, a loaf of bread, a gallon of whole milk, and two tall lattes. When I get home, Tom and I sit on the back porch in the sunshine, finally strong enough to make it warm at home in spite of the breeze, drinking the lattes instead of unpacking the groceries. I get to them eventually, but not until after we have wandered around the yard, looking at the kale Emmy has gnawed down to the bare stalk, the little path Tom has cut through the blackberries, the patty pan squash that just keeps coming. 

Tom puts up a clothes line and I cut the watermelon into huge slices and think about the essay Pam read at the closing day of the Port Townsend Writers' Conference at Centrum. Take note of the things that grab you in the world. Set them next to each, see what happens. A small part of what she had to say,  but I keep thinking about it nonetheless.

In the fenced-in dirt lot behind the state patrol just off our exit in Burlington, there are a dozen or so smashed up cars, totaled far beyond any insurance company definition of the word. Sitting at a big wood table inside on the nicest night of the summer, someone tells me about letting a family member go because of drug use. I don't realize at the time that I'm not hearing it, until it comes back to me the next morning and I do. "When I got involved, it was with my whole heart," she says "so eventually I just couldn't get involved." In some situations, there are no good choices, but hope springs eternal, we don't know what will make a difference, though we are reminded all the time of all the things that did not. For example, being there - for example, not being there. My friend's family member came back later with amends, from what turned out to be an island of sobriety in an ocean of not knowing when the next landfall will come, or when addiction sets sail again. That landscape is the same and different for everyone.

On the ferry to Port Townsend on Saturday, I couldn't decide where I wanted to be. Outside on deck, in sunshine, with the chill of the breeze generated by the boat, or inside, letting myself get lost in a book, sitting next to the window with the scenery only washing past me, unseen. I do both, not remembering later what I've read.

I come home from the co-op Sunday tired, not from anything bad, just the driving all weekend, just waking up early. I say to Tom "It's almost too hot to weed," and he says "It's too hot to weed," so I don't. I don't have the energy to tackle the kitchen myself but when he does, I pick up a towel and dry, something I never do. Usually it seems like a waste of energy, just let them air dry, but this time it's just about standing there, clearing the way, keeping things moving. It's also about not moving. About being home. My mind goes out and back again, but I work on staying. I work on finding some way to tend our place with what energy I have. I break down the boxes that have been waiting in the stairwell, put them in the recycling. I brush off the new fabric panels that James and Jessica have gifted us with, bring them in the house, look for a place to hang the bright one especially, a barn and fields in primarily colors, yellow sunshine, a green crop, a blue sky. Nothing broken, nothing burned. 

A summer wedding

I might be getting okay at this photo stuff. The portraits, I mean. It's hard to manhandle the Bronica, whose name is dinosaur-like, even, into a quick snap while people are milling about waiting for the hors-d'ouevres to be passed, or a drink to be retrieved from the bar for them. I managed it at Carolyn's wedding, a scant 33 shots taken in all and about a third of those I was happy with. I like that average, I don't expect more. I expect a roll of 12 to yield a shot or two that makes me feel like I captured the charm of the person I was looking at through the lens, and I expect 3 rolls of that same person to leave me confused about which shot is the best. 

Carolyn's wedding was a good place for looking at people I love to look at. Still shy, I stuck mostly to one of my classic models, Kate, and the people who were orbiting around her. I shot the boys playing lawn games in their dress Wranglers and sunglasses only from a distance, but I'll sneak up on them one of these days too. 

Of course I was most sorry I missed a good one of the bride. Carolyn just has one of those faces, large expressive eyes, wide smile, long slender neck, and a cap of shiny dark hair. She looked beautiful on her wedding day, a dress no one else could have worn as well, intricate and flapper-like without being too costumey. As I drove the two hours to North Bend, I thought about how happy I would be to cry about something happy, the cathartic way that works, sorting out a long week where there were plenty less happy sources of tears. Saying her vows, she fought back tears, but I didn't bother to fight.

Full On

Summer at last, and a weekend of laziness. I had all sorts of things in mind to accomplish, and ended up sprawled on lawns most of the daylight hours anyway. I like to think this accomplished something, however invisible. A recharge, some kind of helpful space, I don't know. I kept trying to talk myself into doing laundry, or packing for the week in Seattle, or doing some weeding. Nope. Lawn time. A trip to the co-op for groceries. That was about all I had in me. At least there will be lunches for the week. The rest I'll figure out as I go. 

A Birthday Message from a Biker and a Pirate

So, anyway...

Tom wore the vintage red western wear pants with a red and blue plaid summer shirt with pearl snaps, and a white belt and a flag bandanna. I hear Jess sewed something for herself to wear, and if I had known that in advance, it would have been harder to stay home from the 3rd of July party. But we also have a house full of people coming tomorrow, and no one has swept much lately and I wouldn't mind hanging a painting or two and Emmy does not at all at all like fireworks. None of them were close enough to bother her today, so she spent most of the afternoon gnawing on a bone from the meat co-op and I spent plenty of it stretched out on an afghan reading To Each His Home. That book is pretty perfect inspiration for cleaning house. 

In the summer, it's easy to ignore the inside of this house. Outside is all birds and sunshine and tall grass today, not enough wind to fly even a small kite. For tomorrow, we have water balloons and box forts and a good spot for a tent mowed into the back field and Jenny said she might bring s'mores. Tom's been saving marshmallow sticks - we probably have more of them than we have drinking glasses and that's a lot. Yesterday Susan and I ran errands across the valley and I bought hamburgers from that lady I like so much at the meat co-op where we get Emmy's bones, and two kinds of hamburger buns from Iris at  Breadfarm and both gouda and fresh Ladysmith from Samish Bay Cheese. Jenny's bringing the boys for an overnight, and little Bitty will be here, and mom and Tom's parents. Tonight when Tom gets home, we'll taste test the strawberry ice cream cones. If those are good pretty much everything else will be too, right? We'll eat some in your honor.

Magic

Max and Thomas at Fort Tryon Park May 2011

The boys are so funny these days. Speaking in full sentences, relating to the world around themselves in ways that constantly have me laughing, shaking my head or trying not to react because whatever they've just said isn't supposed to be funny... but it just is.

They alternately kiss and battle things out. They laugh one minute - usually hysterically giggling - and then they cry the next... equally hysterically. They are quick to cry, but quick to sooth too. No grudges here. Yet.

I think about all of the things from our childhood that seemed so magical - the corner of the backyard where those drippy flowers bloomed and ivy covered the ground, the bushes we climbed in on the corner of 16th and Prospect, the driftwood at Kalaloch, hopping up the hill at River Ranch to serve breakfast, the feeling in your stomach being swung around on the tire swing at Roberta's cabin, Azalea Way at the Arboretum, the little pond in the back yard of Grandma Ellen's house in Novato that always seemed to have turtles in it - random, random things.

And I wonder what the boys will take away.

Will they remember a drizzly Sunday morning with mom, wandering through the park and finding the stone arch? The Intrepid with Papa Gary and climbing inside (and refusing to climb out) of the space capsule? Finding the park in Vermont with the wooden train and galleon with Grandma Beeba? Riding the ski lift for the first time with Daddy? Their first taste of s'mores? Touring the Little Red Lighthouse? Face painting at the Central Park Zoo?

I wonder what they will think was magic.

Weeknights

Sometimes when I'm in Seattle, I think about that new peony plant that Peggy gave me, which has one large bud and may or may not muster the strength to bloom this year. Or I think about what I keep saying are giant poppies in the circle in the middle of the driveway, or the green strawberries clustered on the plants just outside the greenhouse. I wonder how the raspberry canes are doing in all that wind, and whether Tom remembered to take another meat co-op dog bone out of the freezer and put it into the fridge to defrost for Emmy. Sometimes I remember to ask him about one or two of these things over the phone at night, most times I just wait til I can get home and see for myself.

Sedona wasn't really a dog who had much interest in letting us near her. She was vigilant, keeping an eye on the goats and slinking around with the grace of a little fox. I never got a good portrait of her, the get down in the dirt, look a dog in the eye kind. It takes a certain kind of dog to make that kind of portrait. Sedona was too elusive. 

Emmylou is just the opposite, and I missed her for that and plenty of other reasons. When I came home from 5 days at farm camp, it was with a digging fork and four-tined hoe for the mini-farm and a stuffed bunny for Emmy. At dinner, she came and put her head in my lap and wagged her tail, looking up at me.    

The day after I got home was heaven, waking up on my own land, with what felt like a day stolen from work. In the afternoon, Tom came home and we took a long walk in the tall grass at the duck fields, Tom and I picking our way through the mud, using the tiny islands of grass to make our way through the marshy landscape there, Emmy just trotting along through it all, legs and belly dark with mud. It was too late in the afternoon for sunburn, but bright the whole way, small green frogs hopping out of the grass leaves and everywhere the calls of birds I don't yet know by sound.

A Small Act of Faith

Rooms Where Writers Sleep

This is a dream about road conditions, this is a dream of

the library. Other people love cowboys, love liberals, love

men who say “I want you to feel safe with me.”

The next morning in the dream, she was wearing

a bathing suit the color of goldfish, saying “He wouldn’t

want to hear something like this”, heading into the basement.

Someone else was there. I can see you leaning back

in your chair, black and white postcards in hand.

If the Denver Art Museum is so upside-down, why

isn’t it closed on Saturdays, open on Mondays?

I wanted bewildering Modern Art, I wanted the way

the mind string words together, writes the poetry for me

like it should in an industrialized nation. Out comes a pun

and we love it for the automated nature of it’s creation.

I love to linger and confess. We spend time together,

someone loves the word “swarm”, someone loves

shimmering, someone loves Sunday, someone loves

the terms of taxidermy. When we go home, we take with us

the overstuffed bodies of the poems we’ve hollowed out

and filled again with what we all love.

Progress

Writer's studio at Icicle Creek Writer's Retreat

The whole neighborhood seemed to smell like lilacs when I got to the Ballard house tonight. Kate and Jason had the front door open, and it felt like time to look at the garden, so Kate and I wandered out into the back yard to look at her little bed of shallots and greens and climbing pea vines. I thought about our new peony plant at home, a gift from Peggy's lush garden, and how tomorrow I would be home in Bow and could check on it, the first thing I've planted there myself. I want it to live forever and ever, and I don't care what color the flowers turn out to be.

Our writing retreat was good, ultimately. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. I have a notebook nearly full of scribbles from my new Montblanc pen - thank god for that pen, I'm not sure I would have kept going if it hadn't been such a pleasure to write with. There wasn't much in there that I was tempted to go back and edit or fiddle with, not typically a good sign, but being in those little writing studios was so pleasant, and reading was so pleasant, and the conversations with the other writers there were so worth having. A little writing habit was built up, just somewhere to start from, as though I had taken a long walk every day for a week, on my way to building up to a run. More words, every day, that's all there is to it.

Better

So much. Yesterday at writing camp was hard. There were no good sentences and I was missing home, wishing I was home with my dirt. That turned out to be the key, ultimately. I had been hoping for fiction this trip, or maybe a few little prose poems, and those things were just not in me. When I gave in to that longing for home, my notebook filled itself up and I didn't mind at all that the writing had nothing to do with anything but me. 

Longhand

All the words until now have been longhand, computer left behind in my cabin with the cell phone, and no photos to write from. The eight of us retreat participants plus Ryan met the first day, at a table in the middle of a recital hall, all wood paneling and one whole wall of windows, a piano on a dais in front of the windows, and I kept thinking things like "naps!" and "manicure!", thoughts of leisure and vacation. But after we left the recital hall, I sat down with my notebook anyway, and just started to use ink. I made a manicure appointment and then cancelled it, and was sorry when I slept in until 9:40 the first day. No naps yet. 

My writing so far has been constant but scattered, concerned more with the problem of writing than with any story in particular. This second full day has been tainted with migraine, and at lunch I felt that odd migraine-related grief draining the words out of me. I sat and looked out the window at the shaded picnic tables, the practice rooms converted to writing studios for us for these five days, the small birds in the trees. When at a loss, I do come back to the birds, the house finch with it's rosy crown, the white-headed woodpecker pecking out a lacy pattern in the bark of the evergreen it mines for bugs. It's the simplicity of it that I love, the pleasure in naming something, in noticing it. White head, black body, white arm band, the tree-clinging shape. 

Clearing out

 The night before, I kept saying "I'm on vacation!" and Tom and I stayed up later than we should have, and I lingered in bed longer than I meant to and then there was coffee for me, made by Tom, and the walk around the property, and new blossoms on the apple tree and more weeding to be done in the circle of the middle of the driveway, and it was hard to leave. I wanted to stay and eat the good salad from dinner, with leaves from the garden and I wanted to open the watermelon I had brought home from the co-op, and suddenly it seemed like clearing out the spare room upstairs would be possible if I actually had a work day off, and I would have been happy to just move gravel around, for that matter, any of the things that would mean the mini-farm could be a still better version of itself.

But I got in the car anyway, headed off to a five day writing retreat near Leavenworth, with a box of books and a bag of knitting and two camera bags and enough clothes for three times as many days as I'll actually have away. It started before I even got out of Skagit county - little fragments of writing, nothing special, just throat-clearing sorts of things, a few words strung together to articulate the most obvious things. But a certain kind of writing, my mind starting to write itself, is how I tend to think of it. 

Where to

 Can't wait to go to the co-op, then home for the last few minutes of daylight. Two days at home, then two days of work, then off to Icicle Creek for a 5 day writing retreat, where who knows what things will happen or show up here!

Some of what's going on.

Sunday Stop

 Samish Bay Cheese was everything I hoped it would be. One small room with a stool and a cash register, a few chalkboards telling you which cheeses were available that day. Ask about something special and the woman working there will open that little white door inside to search the racks and racks of aging cheese for just the thing you are looking for - 4-year aged Gouda or something with nettles in it, or something spicy. There was a little dog sitting outside   waiting for a little cheese snack, patrolling in the most friendly way. I bought fresh Ladysmith and the cheese crackers that Breadfarm makes for them, and some sweet italian sausage for a Bolognese sauce I'd make later. When I got home, Tom and I took a break from the yard renovations currently underway and sat at our little table eating salami and apple slices and the crackers and all our cheeses. 

Going Home

Wednesday felt like a tease this week. One little night at home, dinner with James and Tom as though it were the weekend and movie night. Jessica was missing, off on a field trip to Portland, and so was the day off that I so wished would follow that night. 

After James left, Tom and I went outside, the way we do, a single dim flashlight illuminating the parts of the yard that he had worked on since I was home last, the parts of the yard not illuminated by the big floodlight from the back porch. Sweeping it along the fence line, the beam of the flashlight caught something glimmering, like a fishing lure in water, then a quick beat of wings as something dropped off a fencepost, then lifted up to perch on the next post. A little owl, I think, and the reason that the frogs were singing so loudly in the front part of the yard, and not at all in the back. He flew off eventually and the frog song flooded the property entirely. 

My life is so much more populated by the feathered and furred creatures of the world these days. I love that about the mini-farm. People always ask me if we have animals there, and I know what they mean so I say, just a dog, though she is so much more than just a dog, and the rest of the creatures we share the land with are so much more as well. I should say yes, harriers and moles and eagles and frogs and there will be swallows again this summer. Herons fly over and so many other birds that I have yet to name, and hopefully more than I will ever be able to.

Sleet

Technically, there isn't any sleet around here at the moment. But for some part of nearly every day, the cold, rain-slanting wind makes it feel as though there is. Coming home from dinner tonight, Tom and I sat in the car in the driveway for minutes, engine off, just looking at the cold rainy fields, still pond-like with flooding. Yesterday was different, though, the evening around sunset was lovely, warmish and made musical by the frogs, the spring bird songs, and when you stood in the back field, the quiet trickling of the groundwater sinking back into the earth.