The birds are singing madly.  Madly, joyously, outrageously.  If you sang like that I would love you forever.  And ever.   Not once did a bird make me angry, or sad, or confused.  They just are.  Perfect beauty, grace, joy.  Until they shit on your head.

I don’t know why I thought that.  Because it is.   The most beautiful thing will eventually shit on your head.  Things will fall apart.  Things will die. Things will get twisted and turned around in your stomach and head.  Your feet and hands will tingle from nerves.  Mine are doing that now, but it’s my fault.  Coffee.  I drink and drink and drink this coffee until it rots the guts inside.  No more bread, eggs, cheese or pancakes, bacon or God forbid, yogurt and granola, or something dry and hard like Cheerios.

Last night at the grocery store everything stood out in glaring neon. All the boxes, jars, cans, plastic.  Anesthetized food in jars. Slop. Dry. Pellets. As though we are pellet eating creatures now…. everything looked fake, false, artificial. Miles and miles of frozen seafood, burgers, various meats, pizzas and rolls and TV dinners… tasting of seas gone bad….grasses gone astray… I have eaten so much fake food I can’t talk walk think or sleep anymore…..

Walking home in the dark last night…. birds were murmuring in the trees and the shrubs…

All my bones ached last night and the grocery bags were so heavy.  I was wearing those stupid Mephisto shoes that look good but make me fall.  I had to pretend I was walking on stilts all the way home…. carefully, gingerly, like a prowler stalking myself….it felt like cancer.. what happened to my bones!  Then I remembered I told Jane about that article I read that said for stronger bones you should jump up and down forty times a day… Twenty in the morning and twenty more at night… then we jumped right there and then she and I, up and down like teenage girls doing double dutch…. she was wearing sensible shoes but I was in these stupid Mephistos….. I must have shaken up my bones so bad….

It’s Palm Sunday and I should think about beautiful things.  Calm, peaceful, joyous things.   I walked around the garden this morning but it was already late.  The cars were out and people were out…. the feeling of a new world.. the one you get at 5:30 a.m. was not there.  There were large brown oak leaves scattered on the lawn.  The two large trees across the street by the school hold on to their leaves forever… they are large, dull brown and crinkly and all over my lawn.   Because those gardeners yesterday came to do the school’s cleanup and they used those leaf blowers…. the scourge of modern gardening.  They blew those leaves so relentlessly so long and hard and created a tornado of dusty brown wind that blew everything to me.  Just after I washed all the windows, blinds and shutters.   I went  and opened the front door and wanted  to scream my head off at them but I just stared.. they stared back..

It’s Easter week and I have to be quiet, calm and meditative. Peaceful ….but the more I meditate on the way things are the less peaceful I become……

Peace is hard when all you hear is war, bombs, and chemical warfare on men and women, children and babies… little babies dying from nerve gas… What can I do?  Nothing.  I can do nothing, because I seethe inside even at little things, the little things that are inconsequential.  People and their noises.. their daily little life noises…. even dogs and cats bother me… I saw a cat on the way home and wanted to shout  “Bird eater!” but left it alone.. the cat probably felt the same about me…..   the leaf  blowing men I could have blown them to bits… but it’s their job… they barely make $9.00 dollars an hour, they don’t even wear masks and all that dust is going right into their lungs…. one day they’ll have asthma or COPD or lung cancer….or one day they won’t —they will just keep blowing and blowing the leaves forever… and I will keep blowing my mind out…

I could have just given them a rake.  Who remembers rakes anymore? I love rakes.. the quiet sound of rakes… now I have to put it in that memory bank like Sherlock Holmes…

A mass of daffodils are blooming out front.  The big creamy white/ yellow ones… some of the Hellebores  dusty pink.. the little almond tree has hundreds of tiny buds and when it explodes in a big froth any day now I will be happy because it looks like a ballerina dancing on my lawn…

I could have another cup of coffee but that would make three or four I have lost count…my insides already feel like they are rotting out.. I also now have acid reflux from that bread I ate..  from La Brea bakery in LA, that wonderful organic artisan bakery that makes real bread.. Well this real bread even.. is making me sick.. What have we done to the wheat, oats, rye, the spelt and the corn……

Ah, I wish I was a farmer again..  long ago.. a farmer with big fat ruddy cheeks  surrounded by goats and chickens and pigs and cows and meadows… oh don’t tell me about the work, I know about the work, the weeding, sowing, harvesting, pulling and digging back-breaking work of farms and farm life.. how little you get for all that work… ah but the eggs and the bacon and the hams and potatoes and flapjacks and syrup and jams and jellies that old woman made… the sound of the birds that morning the distant whacking of your neighbor getting up early, earlier than you and whacking something.. whacking weeds or grasses or his corn that is rotting in his fields from too much rain..or maybe that old woman is whacking her carpets whacking them to blow the dust out…. remember that?  Whacking things to get them clean.  Soap and water and hands. And maybe an old tennis racket…

I have had too much rain now.. way too  much…. there is a duck pond across the street in the bowl of grass near the park.. duck and geese swim there now and look happy… they glide and gliding is nice reminds me of Joni Mitchell and her river she could “skate away on…”   There are large pools of water around the oaks, maples, lindens and evergreens all over town… large dark pools of water.. I thought the trees might be uprooted or drown.. then when I think of it… I like the water.. dark inky pools of water, cold and deep… I remember last July and August when I had to water three gardens.  My neighbors to the east and west and mine.. there was no rain in July and August no rain at all and I watered and watered and cursed ..what is worse too much water or none at all ?

The birds don’t curse.  They just sing and fly.  Sing murmur chatter.  But they can get out of hand too and fight sometimes… everything fights and fights on this planet.

The man next door is playing basketball and the Thud!  Thud!  Thud!  is getting on my nerves…. bone shattering thuds thuds thuds.. I wish he would thud away to another place… all the ball whacking hitting  bouncing  ball players I wish they would find  another planet all the noise they make with those balls… they and the leaf blowers should find their own leaf whacking ball thudding planet and …

I will stay here with the birds. Invite them to dinner, sing a duet maybe with them… make them tiny bird cocktails.  I will fill the bird bath with Cosmopolitans or maybe Elderberry wine.. Tequila maybe for the crows… birds make good drinking companions.. While you complain and complain, whine and whine about this world and the infernal noise and dirt, the whacking idiots everywhere.. the birds just sing sing sing and maybe when they get good and tired of you they will do what they do best… or maybe they will take pity on you, and tie a very long string around your neck as though you were a kite, and take you far away into the skies, away from this God forsaken planet… or maybe the birds may decide you are not worth it… they may just decide to fly away for good, birds can still fly,  and then flying away as you look up at them longingly, your last hope of escape,  those pretty little birds may just decide to drop something, on your stupid little head…..