That Thing Hanging from a Branch Over the River

Posted on October 16, 2015 by O

Suddenly the cold. Suddenly the wind. Suddenly the skies darken again.

Just last Saturday the guys came to put up the storms. Again. Summer just fled. The days of gentle delicious night breezes cooling off my feet. Gone. The vast twittering of birds at 5:30 a.m. No matter what else was going on the birds at 5:30 a.m. are delirious joy. Waking up and walking in the still dark, hearing the birds, feeling them hiding in the bushes beside you, brush by swiftly as they swoop up and out again to reach the moon before the sun flings out again. Then the slow trickling of raspberry, peach, and lemon gold swirls in the sky. Flickering neon of citrine, tangerine, and red. Like a tidal wave of new blood washing over you, so deep and slow and sure, with such profound vein bursting joy you could almost sing.

I still go out these October mornings when the air is freezing cold, the garden almost black, clutching the hot bitter coffee longing to see the garden flowers again. You can see even in the deep shadows the purple morning glories. Sometimes just one or two but you see them, really see them, the bell shape, the velvet darkness. Dark upon dark, freezing cold, the blueberry skin reveals itself and that flower rings out like Notre Dame cathedral, like the crazy old hunchback hanging on for dear life, pulling and pulling that heavy old rope and screaming while the bell rings with joy.

The leaves are not really turning yet, not into brilliant scarlet or orange or yellow. Bronzes mostly. Mahogany. Plum. Olive. A little dull a little sad. I am still waiting.

No rain. So dry. No rain for a month almost. The garden needs water but the garden is so cold now and dry, if I water too late it will freeze up like the Tundra. The Moulin Rouge dahlias are so red! Blood red. Mac lipstick Diva red. Ox blood, scarlet, vermilion …..Today there will be a deep freeze and I should gather all the big fat flowers before they die. So many buds still left to bloom!

I waited Monday for the bus by the river. Watching leaves float by. Monday was so warm. 70’s. So rosy and sunny and blue sky breezy. Maples, Lindens, Oaks, Hackberries, Locusts, Red buds. All the leaves floating gently down the river.

Last week I saw a dozen ducks. Now they are gone.

Last week I saw pieces of gold brocade cloth floating in shreds down the river.

Last week I saw gold coins swirling around and around all the ducks as they twirled in circles in the crystal water….

Looking down at the river and then south to where the water rushed past.. How clear the water is, I could see all the way to the bottom.

Then I noticed something hanging from a branch above the water about twenty feet away and fifteen feet below me, as I stood watching from the bridge.

It looked frightening, like a long wizened rat or beaver or rabbit or maybe cat, that some cruel thing killed and hung out to dry, dangling there like a hanged man.

I strained to see what it was. Human. It had a human head, a definite nose and pointy, fleshy ears. It looked like a man, a puppet. Like Pinocchio, the nose sharp and long.

It was so elongated so worn out and old. The body tapered down into two little human feet. It looked like a sad marionette wearing fancy Italian slippers. Like a ragged snowman about to melt leaving only his scarf and carrot stick.

No, it was definitely a stretched out rat. A very long beaver rat with mottled swampy skin, stretched out so long, almost touching the water.

It looked so forlorn just hanging there in the wind. It was light but heavy enough to appear weighted down and yet wave gently in the breeze like a tattered hankerchief…. and I wondered how it has managed to stay there for almost a week (I have watched it for a week). Trying in vain to know what it is.

Half human half rat half monster and half sad. Oh, dear, looking closer I think it looked a little like me. Felt like me. Hanging. Waving. Lost. Bedraggled. Old. Tired. About to give up. Speechless. Prayerless. What is left to pray for?

One more velvet morning glory in the dark. One more walk around the garden in the cold. One more icy breath while looking at the citrine sky.

Now it looks like a Venetian Mask. The scary beautiful wicked slightly cruel mysterious Venetian Mask. Reminds me of that picture of Klaus Von Bulow in “Vanity Fair” when he was accused of poisoning his wife…. he wore very fancy embroidered slippers….

It looks monstrous, ghoulish, frightening, fearful, ugly, repulsive, lonely, tortured, dirty, swampy, deadly,…..

I stare and stare and stare not knowing still what it is. Human or rag, moss or animal. Spirit, ghoul, monster or sprite.

A young woman walks by and I stop her, apologize for interrupting her walk and ask her to look at that thing and does she know what it is..

“It looks like maybe a piece of moss hanging from the …it must have got caught on the tree… but now…….. yes, I see, it looks like a—-face…Oh My…. God.. now it’s creeping me out!”… and she walks away.

I stare at the poor hanging creature and wonder what makes it so sad and lonely, so melancholy. The hands, it has two tiny hands clutching at one another and folded almost neatly against its breast. The hands look like they are praying praying praying hard and fast for comfort, for release, for something, a sign , a word, a look, or maybe just for someone to cut the string above and let it go. Just let it go to float away forever, gently, surely, slowly, following the ducks, the brocade, the maples and the geese…..

Posted in Bus Stop Stories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

The Windy Freezing Beaten Down Garden

Posted on October 2, 2015 by O

All night long I heard the howling wind, that sounded like it was whipping, slashing, breaking, pounding down everything on the house and in the garden. It’s been that windy now for three days, and today again and tomorrow it will be even more windy.

I hear my mother’s voice lamenting and then cursing the wind. She was not a foul-mouthed woman, but the wind made her curse. How she hated it. Its violence, its constant thrashing, the way it blew threw her garden and tore up all the flowers. She stood at the top of the stairs yelling at the wind, shouting for it to stop.   I am just the same.

This wind always comes at the wrong time. When there are still roses, when there are tall bushy dahlias with huge dinner plate blooms, when there are still cosmos in pinks, whites and magenta waving their delicate heads. When the chrysanthemums are sitting in shallow pots in glorious shades of bronze, yellow, lavender, and oranges. Even the house jasmine still has buds and has actually started to bloom again– a hothouse plant really and there it is still green and tall against the outdoor fireplace, wondering perhaps when I will bring it inside. A  hollyhock has started to set out buds again and some are ready to flower.

Autumn always seems to  come like that, like a snap in the fingers, always catching me unaware, resisting.   It is hard to get into the mind of cold and winter, and even autumn, because one day it is 80 degrees (like this past Monday) and the next day it is 60 or 55 and drops to 40 at night. One day you can go for a swim and the next you have to call the furnace man.

Monday I was out drinking (again) in the garden, on a warm and balmy evening, September 30 already, but the air, the sky, the flowers all whispered August and July.  I smelled jasmine and nicotiana, and then the grapes, those old ancient grapes peeping through the  thick and leafy vines running all along the driveway.  They fill the air with scents of old Mogan David wine from someone’s childhood. Even the birds and bees have been fooled by the warm September weather, and have let the grapes ripen more and more until they are honey sweet,  almost black , but exuding fragrances that could make you faint— with joy and exhilaration. Usually the grapes are gone by late September. The birds are letting them be for awhile to ripen even more, they are waiting for something still to come.

I almost didn’t go out in the garden last night it was so cold. But the gardeners came that day.  They mowed and edged the lawn, and afterwards it looked so green and lush, still smelled like cucumbers and watermelon…. The flowers were still growing and smiling, and even the zinnias I planted in pots,   the ones with ruby red flowers — they were still  standing tall and bright even though they have been whipped by winds for three days and nights. How could that be? How do they keep upright with hurricanes beating down on them?

I went out anyway, in my robe, craddling  a Canadian Mist on the rocks (liquor my neighbors bequeathed to me before moving away— I am drinking all their old liquor, things I would never buy, but it’s all quite tasty). I never had Canadian Mist– it tasted of vanilla, caramel, and something peaty/leathery. The ice in the glass though was stale,  the cubes had been sitting in the old freezer too long. Another thing to do this fall, get rid of old, malfunctioning, ugly olive green fridge….

The cold finally sent me scurrying inside like a mouse,  though I wanted to stay and linger, watch every leaf and flower. A lonely monarch still fluttered in the air, hovering over the Buddleias that are still blooming with  many big fat bunches of lavender flowers. I sat and watched the garden for awhile from the window.  If not for the cold temperature it looked like an August evening.

After all the howling and thrashing last night I thought the garden might be battered half to death. I was afraid to go and look at it this morning.  The house was freezing ,  the floors icy, cold enough to turn on the heat.  I thought of just staying inside,  getting ready for the winter  and cleaning, organizing, tossing out old things,  sweeping up cobwebs in the basement…

Instead I walked out into the garden with my bitter black coffee and saw immediately the morning glories— 7 or 8 flowers still blooming unharmed, fresh and deep purple like they were weeks ago,  traveling on slender threads, weaving in and out of the dying tomato plants, the still ripening grapes, a pot of cosmos near the trellis, standing by like sentinels, tall and white, a deep pink verbena blooming like it was high summer. The air was cold and the wind whipping my robe around my legs, but still I stayed, looking at all the beauty,  the grass beckoning me to walk as though it was leading me to the Emerald Isles, the grapes waiting to be tasted, the roses still trying to bloom, the coleus, though they were lashed mercilessly by the winds all these days and nights, looking as though they spent time in a greenhouse…the orange tuberous begonias, their leaves as delicate as peonies, still blooming in a pot, their skin unblemished as a baby’s.  All of this beauty and magic, this fragrant peace, calling and calling to me each and every day.

Sometimes in a garden nothing dies.

Posted in Always the Garden, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Seven Great Happy Things

Posted on September 28, 2015 by O

I have not written all summer. Last entry May 29, 2015. Last night the super moon and eclipse and autumn here already.

Ah, but the super moon! I forgot it was coming and suddenly saw it between the branches of the trees next door, as I was dealing with the trash. It was so close you could almost touch it. It looked like it was coming out of the Sullivan’s garden. And the stars, there were about thirty or fifty visible stars out last night—- here that is like a million. The moon had a woman’s face in it. Serene and enigmatic, slightly smiling, slightly in shock. The moon always looks a bit like it’s in shock or startled, rising above the earth, looking down at this awful planet and wondering about us…

Later I realized there would also be an eclipse. I ran out around 9:00 p. m. in my robe and slippers and saw it, the moon, blushing rose and getting dusky as though a cloud were covering it. I stared and stared there in the dark under those stars, the street so quiet, then suddenly afraid of raccoons and possums and whatever else might be lurking there to crawl up my toes. But, hard to go back inside. The silence,  the darkness, the rich, damp autumn air. I wanted to lie down and stare at that reddening moon forever…

And then the sky. It was still so blue at 9:00 p.m., an intense robin’s egg blue that was pure summer. And underneath the blue, the other half of the sky was like a big white mountain in winter with peaks and ridges and crevices. I didn’t know where to look– the moon, the blue sky, the craggy white mountain. The stars. All at my doorstep. It looked like those Japanese landscape paintings from the 18th century.

I don’t remember most of the summer. I remember a cold, wet, windy spring. Waiting and waiting for sun, grass, buds on trees, waiting for the daffodils and tulips. And lilacs! Pining for the lilacs that came and went in a day. I just clearly remember the cold —-even turning the furnace back on in June.

Now I shudder to think of winter and snow and ice and freezing wind whipping me around on the way to the bus stop. The furnace humming day and night. No more coffee in the morning at 5:30 a.m. with the birds, wandering around the garden looking, staring and smelling earth and grass and flowers. No more pink phlox smelling of honey, licorice and rain.

So many of us are already lamenting the summer passing. But then you look around and see massive orange, burgundy, yellow, pink and white dahlias, candy colored zinnias, three foot high coleus spilling out of pots, snapdragons, marigolds, and shrub roses, tiny pops of jasmine here and there, nicotiana, all white, still perfuming the warm autumn nights, the grasses, giant zebra striped ones, and fluffy whites and pinks and taupes. The grass is still green and still smells like watermelon when it’s cut, the spurge is out in snow-like drifts, the park across the street is awash with goldenrod mixed with lavender, pink, purple and white asters billowing in massive clouds and mists …. the salvia bright and blue and spiky, morning glories in blues and pinks and darkest purple.

If nothing else is blooming if you have one or two pots of morning glories that’s enough. Mine are trailing through the grapes, dark, blue black purple grapes, some already turning into raisens, but they perfume the garden so intensely I feel that I am drinking wine. Each morning I wander with my coffee and am thrilled to see the morning glory, sometimes ten or twelve or sometimes only five but the dark purple color and the brightness so early in the morning is like a big hello, like bright eyes, like gaily painted lips and faces telling me that nothing is over.

The old coffee too was good. Reheated. You’re just happy not to run out and have something hot and bitterly good to drink. Drinking old coffee reminds me of that character in “My Dinner With Andre” who said that when he gets up in the morning, if there are no roaches crawling around on the counters and floors, or in the coffee, that’s a good day…

Walking towards the bus stop, falling into a slightly dreary mood about work, worry, anxiety everything looking a bit grey and old and boring, the seas of cars again like soldiers marching to war…… then a young boy on a bicycle passes me and I step to the side and he beams a big beautiful smile at me, saying “Thank You” and I catch briefly a glimpse of a sweet and gentle, slightly chubby face, blue eyes, shock of curly black hair…

I walked past the cemetery, past the wilting pink hydrangeas, the old graves and saw a big, square, freshly dug grave right at the entrance just a few feet away from the gate. It looked strange so close to the street yet it looked welcoming somehow, fresh and green and calm and the whole cemetery looked like Balm and Gilead. It was soothing to see those graves and settled my nerves.

The air  was warm and misty, the clouds overhead pearly and grey, a calm settling on everything.

It occurred to me my knees are fine. I have had no pain for months and months. I walk run skip jump or do whatever I want pain-free. Still don’t know why. MRI showed problems. Is it the weather, is it the garlic, is it the Turmeric tea, is it the prayers, is it God? No knee pain!

After work I walked to the bus stop and sat and read “Taras Bulba” by Gogol. I’ve read it several times before. Some of his work is terribly dreary and heartbreakingly sad, (like “The Overcoat”), but this story has some of the most beautiful, evocative descriptions of the Ukrainian steppes in high summer– so I am reading it again for all the sights, sounds, and smells of a world gone by.  Of course it is also about war, and the Ukrainian Cossacks’ wars against the Poles and Tarters.  In Gogol’s story he goes deeply into the life of the nomadic Cossacks and the wars they fought and also shows them in a completely different light.   They were not only freedom fighters, but oftentimes savage, stupid drunken scoundrels and beasts.  Unfortunately. But, oh what a pleasure to sit on a bench waiting for a bus and not freezing in the snow and wind and cold!

I walked to the river and the water was brownish green but slightly clear. The trees along the banks still lush and green but leaves starting to fall and float down the river. Then I went back to the bench and read. Two workmen in bright vests were busy on a project across the street, finished and started to walk back. They were walking way on the other side of the street. I sneezed and simultaneously they called out “Bless You”. I almost wept.

I walked back to the river and it was full of ducks. Several were preening, sitting on rocks and others floating gently on the water. Some diving down to catch insects or fish? One had a green beak so bright it looked like it was dipped in Chartreuse. There were nine. One off to the side was watching the other ducks, as they played, dived and floated along. At one point a group of seven ducks was floating so effortlessly so beautifully, it was like a dance. Near some rocks the currents were moving in wide circles with the ducks in them, round and round they all went. Like the tilt a whirl at Riverview. Then the duck watching from the rock joined them and I stood and watched them all float down the river.

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Lilacs, Among Other Things

Posted on May 29, 2015 by O

I’m sitting in the garden, actually was (by the time this is posted) sitting in the garden, after a long long absence. It was as though a loud bell just went off singing throughout this land, “I Am Summer!” Come out and smell and sit and gaze at the beauty all around you. So here I sit instead of cleaning out the damp, musty basement.

My house is old and the basement  deep underneath it,  the walls two feet thick. The casement windows also set deep into the ground and now full of moss and cobwebs and foggy glass. Once I saw a mole frantically jumping up and down and up and down trapped in that window prison. Terrified, thinking it a rat, I  ran upstairs not knowing what to do, how to set it free away from the house. Even though  I thought it was a rat I felt sorry for it. I finally called my handyman who came, hosed down the moss and cobwebs, but alas he found the little mole was dead, unable to free itself from those ancient windows.

So going into the basement always feels like visiting Vincent Price in the “Pit and the Pendulum”. It is so dank and awful because I never bothered to deal with those windows, never noticed that they do not open at all,  and if you open them now, the old rusty cranks and rims will shatter to bits.

Instead I bought shrubs and trees and flowers and flowers and more flowers. In my family you never have enough money but you really can never ever have too many flowers.

There is an old trap door to the basement on the side of the house. Often I climb up the nine narrow stone steps and lift the heavy door while opening it slowly over my head.  Cobwebs, twigs, grass,  bugs, and dried leaves left over from the winter generally fall on my face and hair during the process.   I do this dozens of times in the spring, summer and fall to air out the basement. Every time I’m lifting the door I think it will crush my arms and head and smash me like a little cockroach, and someone will find me like that at the bottom of the old stone floor.

Once years ago I ran across the door to get to some weeds on the other side and didn’t notice that the door was rotting. It gave way and I crashed through, my right leg plunging in up to my hip. I sat there dazed for about half an hour. No one was home and my neighbors were gone. I was glad to be alive and not at the bottom on the floor, but couldn’t get myself out. I was too embarrassed to yell and just sat there suspended by the crashed door wondering if eagles would come and peck out my eyes, start eating my scalp……. after about an hour I figured out how to get out and was astonished to be whole in body and bones.

The basement, how I hate it. But once the trap door is open for awhile on a sunny dry day, propped up by a broom, the air slowly changes  and is almost normal. Vincent Price finally leaves. Then I sweep all the floors and the cobwebs from the ceilings and crumbling windows, mop the floor three or four times (it takes that long to clean it) keep the trap door open to dry, look around in despair and run upstairs to the garden where I am now.

It is Heaven, it is Paradise, it is beyond Nirvana. How can one day be filled with so much joy and happiness and even hope, when just yesterday, and the day before and before and before all was dull, dispassionate, full of blackness and emptiness, insurmountable sorrow?

Sometimes it is just the grass. The weedy, clovey, motley, unshaven disheveledness of my messy grass, that I also never really took care of years ago. I just let the clover grow and grow. So when the grass grows in the warm months it sticks up in tall clumps like a bad haircut and in some places like tumble weeds in the desert. The unsightly grass makes my other work nil, the entire garden which is a bit on the wild side anyway, takes on a weedy, messy, slummy look.

So I finally found some gardeners who seem decent and honest and don’t charge lawyer’s fees for fifteen minutes of work. They came and mowed and gave the garden a fine edge. Voila! Complete transformation, like a sheared lamb, like the Emerald Isles, like Yeat’s Innisfree. What was a slum is now my Garden of Eden. A finely mowed lawn at least in my garden is the frame that makes it all work. The garden is a series of flowerbeds that are scalloped around the lawn and when it’s mowed everything sparkles and glows and even the weeds aren’t noticeable. It is like a beautiful frame on a painting like a beautiful pressed sheet on a freshly made bed.

But it was more yesterday, something was different at 5:45 a.m when I woke up and wandered in the garden, even the disheveled one. The cold air warming into summer air finally. It has been so cold and wet and damp all of April and May. The sun rose differently this morning. It’s warm now about 80 degrees, too warm for some but not those of us who have wandered in cold and dark rooms and dank and musty basements all winter and most of spring… It is a gentle warmth that is warming up all the seeds in the cold wet and clumpy earth (mine especially, full of clay) warming up  the seeds I planted (Moulin Rouge dahlias– three types of dark red flowers, Heirloom Poppies, Lauren’s Dark Grape- that will grow four to five feet tall, and a large pendulous pink and blue bell flower from England). Finally they are poking through, perhaps too late to bloom but I will hope….

There is a breeze now– fine fresh delicate puffs of green scented air.

It’s a day later now, 10:00 a.m.  The blue sky has turned to white. Large grey clouds from the west have moved in suddenly, then turning into glaciers. White mountains threatening but in a mild way as though you will be drowned in freshly churned milk or whipping cream, some light benign froth. Swallowed in translucence, you can taste the coming rain. And suddenly it changes again and you can feel the ominous storm approaching, the earth is dry and needs water but this storm promises noise too and wind and chaos, broken branches, crushed roses, smothered young shoots just starting, scattered bird nests, but then the silly things, they are building this year on fragile pipes, small open eaves, tops of gutters and even underneath my neighbor’s furnace vent.

A plane glides by just underneath the milky opalescence and a gull underneath heading west mimics the plane in shape and size. Everything is getting so much greener so fast.

The yellow rose died last year. The  ancient rose that someone planted at least fifty years ago. I thought it was gone forever and there it was smothered by buckthorn which I finally cut away but did not get to the roots. The yellow rose has emerged anyway, a tall, narrow almost topiary plant on a thin needle like stem. There will be maybe 30 small roses, another shoot branching out has 20 or so buds and one is in bloom. A strong wind predicted for Sunday will probably blow it away. That is the way of beauty sometimes in a garden, fragile and ethereal, sometimes lasting only moments.

I must cut it tomorrow and save it for myself.  Place it in a beautiful vase and worship it and its Creator all the day long.

I should go inside but the almost too hot sun feels too good and the intermittent fresh breezes sublime. The birds are chattering and here and there a long trill of a song. The neighbors are all gone. I have never known such peace now and quiet in this garden for so long. How long? Ten years. Ten long years longing for peace that never came. Stealing moments at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m. when I wandered in my own garden like a frightened ghost or at midnight when the white flowers bloomed, smelling them and pining for the moon. Burying my head in the white lilacs, longing for my mother and the sunny day she came bearing huge armloads of old fashioned lilacs from her garden.

We would forget all about dinner, transfixed by the smell and the sight, the fresh almost crunchy body of them, the sharp floral scent no perfumer ever captured in a bottle. The romance of it all, the sadness, the unbearable beauty of that bunch of flowers in my mother’s arms.

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Can I Handle Another Spring?

Posted on April 21, 2015 by O

I’m sitting in a cheap Chinese (Schezuan) restaurant in my ugly rich suburb. Drinking a Rob Roy, a type of Manhattan but made with Scotch. I seem to remember that you drank Rob Roys so I ordered one. Sometimes Manhattans are too sweet, and not just because of the fake red maraschino cherry.

No, now I remember you liked Stingers. Scotch with white Creme de menthe. I should have ordered that. It sounds delicious, the slightly bitter strong and dulling taste of Scotch and then the sharp sweet peppermint of the Creme de menthe, like getting zapped with a wintery forest, maybe that’s why they call it a stinger. A froth of freshness in the mouth. The headache comes later.

The waiter doesn’t remember me though I used to come here so often with you long ago. Manhattans then were $4.00 now they’re $4.50. Unbelievable. You can’t even get a cheap glass of wine for under nine dollars in this town. But here things stay cheap, slightly stale, slightly lackadaisical, slightly dingy but customers keep coming.

There is a fish tank along the wall opposite my table.  There was a bloated white fish sitting in the bottom of the fish tank. Just sitting there, not moving. Or maybe it was dead. Hard to tell. It had scarlet markings on its forehead, or is it a snout, a bill, a muzzle? What is a fish head? It sat at the bottom of the tank for a long while then it moved slowly up to the top and just stayed there motionless, there was no where to go. I drank my drink and felt it already going to my head because I hadn’t eaten anything yet.

Earlier I walked to the restaurant from the bus stop after getting off from work, but it was too early and it was closed. I walked to the hardware store to kill time and looked at the flower and fruit and vegetable seeds displayed at the front. I saw a pack of moon flowers and read the description: “… large white flower heads growing profusely on thick lush vines…. plant them near the house to smell the intoxicating fragrance at dusk…..” I grabbed a few packs. What magic, white flowers blooming in the night! Then I grabbed a few packs of heavenly blue morning glory seeds though I have half a dozen at home from a decade ago…… I then put everything back knowing I wouldn’t plant any of it.

Walked to the restaurant. Very windy and grey and chilly, would be nice except for the wind. Harsh cruel wind. Made your bones and skin cold, blew you across the street, even made the light poles sway.

I followed a very tall heavy set woman with long strawberry blonde hair into the restaurant. She was dressed all in black and though I only saw her from the back she looked lonely.

She was already seated when I walked in. She was middle-aged and very masculine looking. She looked tired. Had on a crinkly white blouse of some acrylic fabric. Accepted the free tea and asked for Sweet and Low, ordered the Princess Chicken and sat looking at her I Phone. She might have been pretty if she was thinner, happier, richer, better dressed, not so sad and lonely looking…

I sipped my Rob Roy wishing there was some music playing in the background. Noticed the dingy blue/turquoise carpet. The black swivel chairs like in an office from the 50’s, the bottoms all dingy, dirty, dusty or maybe just old. The dull red black roses in the bud vases.

Ordered egg roll and hot Princess Shrimp. I love egg rolls. I wanted to eat about a dozen. Slathered with hot mustard mixed with sweet and sour sauce. The egg roll was hot and not too crispy and not too brown. There was lots of cabbage densely packed into the roll with a little bit of pork and onion and seasoning.

I looked at the fish tank and suddenly there were several large white fish swimming in there all with various scarlet markings. But the fish tank was so small, and they looked uncomfortable, it was suffocating to watch them…

An old man came in with a cane all in navy blue and in a baseball cap and seated himself in the back and was never seen or heard from again. The three of us sat there silently chewing our Princess chicken and Princess Shrimp with the fat chunks of white onion still crispy and all covered in a thick (but tasty) brown sauce.

Other diners started to file in. An old couple with white shocks of hair who sat there side by side not saying a word to each other. They didn’t seem happy. Then their friends came, another old couple, and suddenly they all got animated with talking and laughing and staring at their I Phone photos.

A quartet came in. Also white haired, in jogging suits and tennis shoes. One of them looked like Jerry Springer but older, whiter. At one point they all joined hands and said grace.

My bill came and it was $12.00. I left a good tip and walked home in the wind. The sun came out and then I felt a few drops of rain. I forgot my umbrella. The rain stopped, the wind got stronger. The sun came out and then disappeared again. It got windier. Then it started raining again then stopped.

There were a lot of cars everywhere. No matter how pretty or even ugly the day is all I see are cars, because every day there are more and more cars. I am obsessed with cars, I know that. But they are ugly and noisy and they fill the landscape with so much metal and tires and rubber and hardness it’s hard to see anything at all anymore. You have to look up at the sky, the only quiet and empty space.

The gardening trucks are everywhere too. The leaf blowing teams. One crew starts then stops and a few houses down another team starts and stops and on and on again all through April May June July August and September and even October and November. There is never any gardening peace anymore.

Found a bottle of old pain killers, the ones from after my operation, years ago, and took a few. The pain in my bones was so bad I thought I would pass out. I think I could get used to these. Sleep comes easily and lasts and dreams come quickly and last. I dreamt of a very old person with very shiny hair. That was it. Idiotic and senseless but it seemed important at the time.

Was so tired after work yesterday I had lunch, took a very hot bath (the house is freezing cold again) and went to bed, took a sleeping pill and started to feel that delicious slow passing out dreamy hazy feeling when suddenly I heard the next door neighbor’s gardeners and their disgusting mower and their leaf blowers again. There is not much grass, hardly any leaves but those idiots were walking up and down the driveway with those demon blowers and I wanted to get up naked from my bed and strangle every one of them. Three neighbors down use the same gardeners and the noise was so loud and nerve-wracking even the sleeping pills didn’t drown it out. I wanted to take their leaf blowers and ram it down every orifice they had and teach them a lesson about ruining spring…and fall and summers for ever more again..but I just tried to go back to sleep….

I knew there would be trouble when I went out in February and noticed a huge crack in the bird bath and realized there would be no birds drinking and bathing and singing in the garden anymore— I should have covered it but I leave the bird bath out even in winter because the birds need water then too.

There are gardeners in the park across the street mowing the grass. The mowers are so loud I can hear them behind two sets of closed windows and doors. Will it ever be quiet again? No.

There is a constant sound of leaf blowers and mowers and screeching cars in my ears. Nothing now makes it go away. It’s not all in my head. Well actually it is in my head and my ears and my skin and my bones. I am one mass of rattled frazzled nerves.

Oh to be in the world of scythes and rakes and gentle quiet lawns again! Or goats and sheep who just eat the grass naturally,….. To have for once the peace that prevailed in towns like in Agee’s “A Death in a Family”, when you could hear the hissing of the garden hoses after dinnertime, the fathers all coming out after work and watering the grass quietly…. gently, when people came out and spread their blankets out on the lawns and watched the stars together… there were still stars then…

My viburnums are dying. My roses are dying. My serviceberries are dying. Maybe I should have pruned them. But some gardens grow and grow without pruning. Like the one in “Les Miserables” where the lead character and his daughter escape to, near that convent in Paris. I want my garden to be like that, overgrown, wild, huge and dark, and unknown to all but me and the birds.

I saw a duck in the plant’s parking lot the other day, looking lost and disoriented. I watched it and wanted to go away with it somewhere. It found a puddle of water on the sidewalk, drank and flew away.

I saw a hawk last week, thought it was an eagle but don’t think there are eagles here. I see one now and then early in the morning. I fear for the little birds who are its prey. You see a hawk in the middle of a suburb and it is weird but then squirrels and even birds seem weird. How can they live here? They all fly away at most human sounds and always take off when the noisy gardeners come.

My new neighbors next door are keeping a lot of lights on at night and my back yard is illuminated like a parking lot. My trees are a weird yellow orange blue color at night from their lights. I feel sorry for my trees and my shrubs and my grass and my flowers and everything in my garden having to be in that horrid light. They all look frightened and I seem to feel them wincing with pain, with horror with frazzled plant nerves. Nothing and no one sleeps anymore in the dark. Last night I woke up to the neon glare and I wanted to bash out their lights with a baseball bat. They’re new neighbors. Maybe I should talk to them.

This morning I saw that hawk again, about 5:30 a.m. while walking around the garden with my coffee. It was sitting on top of a tree by the convent. I got a little scared it was so huge and it was so early in the morning. I thought it might mistake me for a rabbit or a squirrel and fly at me and gouge out my eyes and eat me. I ran into the house spilling  the hot coffee all over myself in fright.

Today I saw it again sitting on top of the fence behind the schools trash bin. I had to look twice because it was so huge but mostly so still. Like a statue. It looked like a huge pigeon, or a penguin. Like some weird statue a kid might make in those fake pottery classes. It was perched sideways. It was a speckled color. It looked fierce, like it was going to eat up the whole world. I wish it would. I kept watching it because it was so still it was unnerving. What was it waiting for? It was searching out its prey, waiting and watching. It had all the time in the world. There is all the time in the world when you are stalking your prey. Then the garbage truck came and scared it away.

Just overnight everything got very green. All the trees are in bud. The willow’s hair is a golden Chartreuse. The rhododendrons and azaleas are in bloom suddenly and I have no idea how that happened. The forsythia this year has a deep gold tinge. My grass has not been cut yet. Lawn mower broken, can’t pay a gardener. Too much money they charge for ten minute’s work. And they are loud and reckless –all the birds fly away when they come.

J’s parents are sick again. I hate it that his parents are sick. They are two of the prettiest parents I ever knew. I thought they were going to live forever, be pretty and fashionable, and drink Rob Roys and Manhattans and red wine forever. Dance forever. Have bridge parties with chicken tettrazini forever. I thought we would play tennis doubles again sometime in Charlevoix in our white tennis skirts and shoes, the sun shining down on us forever.

I’m beginning to hate April. May is not much better. April is cold and windy and rainy and today there was tiny hail in the morning falling on all the daffodils. But in May a lot of people die. It is so gorgeous sometime in May with the tulips and the lilacs. The lilacs! Is there anywhere a scent more sublime than lilacs? Lilies of the Valley maybe. Hyacinths…..

E sent me her diaries to read and I am afraid to say they were boring. I just read Franz Kafka’s diaries. I had no idea what he was talking about 99% of the time. I got angry reading them. I got depressed reading them. I got bored reading them. Mentally ill people are only interesting up to a point. Their self-analysis gets so tedious. If only once he had described a dinner he ate; I don’t think he ate. Most critics say he was brilliant so I must read “The Castle” and see.

I tried to fix the bird bath. I am tired of buying new things when something breaks. I am so inept. People like me shouldn’t own houses. The man at the hardware store gave me two kinds of products. One a kind of putty for the large crack. And a silicon tube of something or other for the finer cracks. I cleaned out the bird bath and then dried it and then rolled around the putty material like they said and pressed it into the cracks. Then I took out the silicon tube and snipped the nozzle to the right shape etc. Squeezing out the stuff hurt my hands, the tube was made of hard inflexible material. You need big strong hands to get it out. It was hard to get it into the cracks too. The cracks were too fine. I used it anyway and kept putting more and more into the cracks. There was silicon all over my hands. It didn’t say you had to wear gloves so I didn’t. I let the birdbath cure for 24 hours. The next day I filled it with water and watched as it all leaked out. What a disappointment. I did the putty and silicon thing again until my hands ached. The birdbath is still curing. Now I know why handymen charge so much money.

My hands are full of silicon I think. I washed them several times with soap and water but the pores seem closed and I feel poisoned. There was a spider crawling on my comforter last night while I was in bed reading and I killed it by smothering it with some damp tissue paper. I never saw a spider on my bedclothes before. I wonder if I have been bitten by spiders and if that is why my bones all hurt and I feel like I am going insane.

I have a temporary bird bath. It is one of my good round cake pans. I placed it on top of the old pedestal and there is room for only one bird. It works. The birds found it and every now and then a big fat robin sits there like an old lady in the bathtub and splashes about. It is funny because it is a cake pan. I have baked many cakes in that pan and I think of that bird sitting in the birdbath/oven baking like a cake. Tiny little birds also come and gingerly sit at the top and dip their little beaks in and drink, but I miss the old bird bath and having dozens of birds bathe and sing.

I can’t seem to fix anything, nor can I find anyone to fix anything for me. They are all too busy or when they are not busy they come and I pay but they never fix anything right.

I want to go outside into the garden but the wind is getting fiercer and everything is being whipped to pieces. I sit here again with a blanket over me. Only hot baths feel good.

There is a bowl of mandarins in the kitchen. They are sweet as honey and if I eat one I can pretend I am in Tangier or Morocco when Paul Bowles and Allen Ginsburg and Burroughs all lived there in the 50’s and 60’s. They weren’t very happy though, and played a lot of Russian Roulette, but they were all very interesting and I liked reading about them.

After that Chinese lunch I am still hungry. I should have had another egg roll. Maybe another drink. Maybe two drinks. I feel like going to sleep and waking up some other year, in another spring.

The one thing I remember that is still good in the morning is hearing a very loud (but pleasant loud) song of a tiny bird with a white and black cap, a chickadee I think. It sits in my dead European Mountain Ash that oddly still has a small live branch with two twigs sprouting from the sides like horns, and it sings, bleating out its song like a bird-goat creature. I see it open its beak, but then the beak disappears and as I look closer the sound is coming out of the little throat that has expanded and gotten bigger and wider until it is a black hole and it is the only bird song in the morning, the few simple notes loud, clear, and triumphant like the horn at Easter service.  And it feels like the whole world is being swallowed up by the bird and I want to go there, I just want to be swallowed up by the little chickadee– because inside that bird is another quiet, gentle, and more beautiful spring.

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Yes, It’s Still Cold and the Tree is Still Up

Posted on February 17, 2015 by O

Yes, it’s still cold and everyone is sick and tired of the cold and the shoveling of snow and the icy streets, and now the awful pockmarked black snow full of plastic bags, gum wrappers, cigarette butts, dog pee and sometimes even poop. And the wind blowing when it’s twenty below and it feels like someone slapping your face.

That’s good we all deserve a slap in the face. It is winter after all and in winter there is snow and cold and ice and wind. And in February that is nothing new. Sometimes when I walk out in the morning it is so frigid and windy it feels like a dozen slaps in the face and it’s good, it wakes me right up and I walk faster and faster and get to the bus stop on time. So we should stop complaining and instead worry about why the snow is black and full of pee and gum wrappers and dog poop.

Back went out the other day and also my knee. I never had back problems before, no pain, no headaches, or stomach aches or bad knees. I was always fast, energetic could dance the night away. I remember how impatient I once was when my mother couldn’t walk fast enough with me down the street.. I think her feet hurt, or when Jay had such a bad back he had to lay in bed for days. I thought she was exaggerating; I thought he was faking. Now I know.

Last week suddenly one morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. Literally. Felt like a knife in my back. Couldn’t move even an inch. I had to move! I had to go downstairs, make coffee, get dressed, walk to the bus stop, get to work…

Could not move one inch without feeling excruciating pain. It took twenty minutes or so to move inch by inch over to the edge of the bed and then to lower myself down to the floor and crawl to the banister, then crawl down the stairs to the kitchen. It took several minutes to get the milk out of the fridge. Just bending down a few inches was searing pain. Holding something in my hand, the weight of it set my back on fire. Coughing hurt so much I’d rather be getting all my teeth pulled. So, now I know, back pain is very very painful and you don’t want to wish it on anyone. Well almost anyone.

This has been going on for seven days now with just a little bit of relief. I can’t call in sick, I can’t go to the hospital I have to get to work. And unbelievably I have managed and haven’t died yet. Though I might still and frankly it would be a relief.

What this has taught me or maybe reinforced very strongly is that the human body can take a lot of pain. A lot. What a revelation! I suppose that is why people get tortured and that is why it is such a powerful tool to get people to talk, divulge secrets, give up their families and friends, even admit to horrible things they have not done. It truly never sunk in my head like it has these past few days. You can take lots and lots of pain before you finally die.

After awhile all you know is pain, and one or two minutes sometimes when it doesn’t hurt feels like a vacation. I suppose you could take a lot of painkillers but I can’t for various reasons. There is just the pain and you can use it a little to get through the day, to get to some deep part of you that will supersede the pain and work through it. Or be enlightened
by it somehow, feel transcendence to another level of existence, if only another level of your own puny existence. You understand something really simple, like oh, today I was able to bend down and get the milk out of the refrigerator and not feel like someone was pushing a ten inch screw into my back. This is good and my life is good and it is a miracle. My life is a true miracle. And this is not facetiousness or irony this is real simple sweet life.

That feels really good bending down without pain. The higher levels are being able to stand for two minutes without support and put on your boots. Or walk down a step and not feel knives.

Then it snows one night and you feel so sorry for yourself. Your little miserable self because you can’t go out walking and pick up your medicine at the drugstore, you can’t go to the store and buy some fruit, you can’t take a walk to the mailbox and mail the letter, you can’t even sit up and watch TV.

One evening you notice it’s snowing and snowing and everything is getting very white and deep again.

You simply cannot move and you sit in the chair and you realize the Christmas tree is still up! The rule is the tree must come down February 7 the latest. My God it is still up in all its red and gold glory. It is still beautiful and has a very faint sweet piny smell. It does look a bit strange too, and for some reason I feel rather ashamed that it is still there. If my plumber or handyman had to come by for some reason and saw the tree they would be really taken aback. But now it has to stay up because my back hurts so much I can’t take it down.

No one has really understood why I keep my Christmas trees up for so long. I keep it up all during the Christmas season until January 13 or 14 at least which marks the New Year for many eastern Europeans who celebrate the old calendar. Then I think, why not keep it up a few days longer until the 18th or the 19th which is just a few days past the New Year, really like keeping it up until Jan 2 or 3. It feels more like Christmas in January than it does in December, why not indeed keep it up? And I don’t usually put the tree up until the second or third week in December so by Christmas it is hardly a toddler by Christmas tree standards. I find myself thinking that I have to justify keeping this tree up as though it is some sin to keep it.

I read a story by Lillian Christensen Anderson a while back. She was one of “Gourmet” magazine’s most accomplished and beloved writers. She studied design with Josef Hoffman and before writing travel and food articles was a professional set designer working for major opera houses. The last twenty years of her life she lived about 80 miles from Vienna. Her snowy beloved Austria where she lived an idyllic life in the countryside. She often wrote about Vienna, the Sacher cake from Hotel Sacher, being snowbound some winters and just enjoying the warmth and coziness of her home and her quiet life there. She once wrote about Christmas in Vienna and in that story quoted a child, who when she was asked what she wanted for Christmas, said “I want Christmas for Christmas”. Christensen-Andersen said that she understood this child completely. Christmas in Salzburg was what she wanted and in a marvelous story told about the wonders of Christmas in that city. The beguiling shops on twisted ancient streets, the delicate little lights that didn’t sear the night sky with gaudiness. The aromatic coffee in the old wood paneled coffee houses, the chestnut vendors in the streets, the Christkindle markets with toy nutcrackers, dazzling hand painted ornaments and freshly baked strudel, hot cinnamon roasted almonds. The long hot wursts from red cheeked vendors, the people rushing home from the markets carrying their fresh ducks and geese, pates, and marzipans….

When it snowed Sunday it suddenly got so white and peaceful out and the snow seemed to be raining down purity and freshness, a new purity, a new snow, all white again. Snow falling on all the black snow, and plastic bags and candy wrappers, and dog pee and dog poop– covering it all up again. You have to walk out in it and just go. The physical act of just being in it, in the falling snow in the city especially, your own ugly soul seems purified, or at least calmed for awhile, given a chance to renew.

So I got dressed and put on the boots and ignored my back and walked and walked until I didn’t even feel the pain. A few people were out and they seemed to want to be there, some were shoveling quietly and some talking about the new houses going up. Big ones big as hotels. I kept walking until there was no one else around. The snow was starting to cover all the icy patches and it was still very slippery out and you had to watch your step, but a fall in the snow was nothing at all and with enough snow it’s soft and doesn’t hurt.

I got to Ocean Park and there were cars but not as many and I pushed the button and the walk sign came on and the cars halted magically. I walked on and climbed over the snow onto the sidewalk and on to the park that was all snow and trees and silence. The benches all white. I felt sorry for the people in the cars who had to rush to be somewhere.

Almost at the drugstore I crossed the parking lot and heard it again — the huge twitter of birds. There are five or six cropped trees about the size of small apricot trees, against the brick wall next to the cleaners. The birds were singing at the top of their little bird lungs. A genuine chorus. I stood still and looked up and saw maybe twenty to thirty birds in each tree. Five or six birds on each branch and as I watched they were flying in and out of the various trees sitting, singing and then flying again. There were large nests in all the trees. I wondered if there was anything in the nests or if some of the birds slept in them.

Suddenly I heard noise behind me and realized it was a large group of teenage boys walking about ten feet behind me. I decided to walk away though I could have stared at those birds and listened to them for a long time. I walked on but then panicked for a bit wondering if the boys upon hearing the vast music of the birds might investigate and do the birds some harm. Teenage boys can be so mean sometimes. I flashed back to my condo days in the City and hearing screams very early in the morning.  It was a young girl and her mother waking past my window. A robin had built a nest in one of the lower branches of some shrubs along the condominium building. Many of us watched the robin building the nest and taking care of her eggs all spring– flying in and out and watching over them. Some of the birds had hatched already. Sometime during the previous evening or night some horrible, evil jerk had walked by and smashed the nest and left his or her beer bottle in it. That is why the little girl and mother screamed. That whole spring and summer everyone in our building was sad.

That is why I like walking alone often at night, always in the winter, in freezing cold or blowing snow, in a blizzard, or pouring rain, or a thunderstorm. Alone, walking, the snow falling, a night star here and there, prehistoric whiteness and suddenly like someone calling you, finally to rest, to a place of beauty and peace, you hear the vast twittering of birds, the music of a snowy night, the Balm of Gilead where nothing hurts or is sorrowful or bad, how can it be, just look at the little birds still in their little trees next to the cleaners happy as can be.

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Bowl of Stracciatella, Hot Bath and a Laugh

Posted on January 14, 2015 by O

Still cold, very cold but getting used to it. Dark early, coffee hot and bitter but good, Christmas tree still up, and sometimes in the early morning I light it and drink the hot coffee, sit by the Chinese red lamp, and think.

Today is New Year’s day, I believe, old calendar, Julian. Happy New Year! Then after New Year’s there would be another big celebration the 18th or 19th to celebrate Christ’s baptism in the River Jordan. I remember an image of a huge icy cross being lifted from the Dnieper River, the cross dyed red with beet juice….

Walked outside and everything is all silvery hoar frost misty and foggy like an old English town. I would love to live in an old English village somewhere with old stone walls, old grumpy men and women drinking delicious tea and climbing frozen hills with their big old English dogs, tapping the ground with old knobby English canes. Having a pint at an old timbered pub and going home in the dark alone unafraid under a torrent of blazing stars in a black sky.

Walked past park. The trees have that thin coating of icing, on each and every branch, on each and every pine needle, that gives them a magical look, you almost expect the elves and fairies to appear or hang from the heavily crusted branches. The whole town looks frosted over and misty and I felt I was sleepwalking. The grasses in the park bent over by the heavy dew that froze them in all manner of abstract poses, the Cypress trees a brown iridescent color like trout in Scottish streams…. patches of grass here and there peeking out of snow looking like frozen horse hair, mountains of snow from parking lots looking like mammoths in the tundra, the snow black as tar all along the roads, clogged with cars and cars and cars a sea of cars with no where to go.

A man in a red puffy parka walks ahead of me. This is the same man who has walked past my house the last ten years or so, and walked in front of me coming home from the train station late at night. He is a young man but walks so SLOWWWW…..SLOWWW… I used to curse him silently at night when he walked in front of me for his slowness, his torpidity, his lack of energy. I am so much older and my step was always brisk and sharp and quick and his plodding seemed to zap me of every ounce of energy I had those many long nights ago. Now, I walk like a bag of old bones like a ghost like a sick old half dead woman, dragging my bad leg along the icy sidewalk like poor Quasimodo of Notre Dame. I am sorry young man for cursing you so long ago! Now it is me who walks and drags the energy out of this day and night.

Waiting alone at the bus stop again alongside the sea of cars. Why do these cars depress me so? Such a long line of cars, all spouting exhaust that blows it seems, only at me.

Sleepless night. Worry again. Bad news again. Everybody sick everybody in hospital everybody woe is me again.

All the ladies at work sitting in the lobby cackling again. Complaining, and whining and moaning and groaning again. Bad pay bad job eating poison again. I am a jester testing the kings food so he may not be poisoned again. That is my job testing testing testing. Testing testing testing, oh the FDA is my friend again. No harm done all is good the King can eat and you may go home again.

Home. Close door. Lock it tight. Do not answer phone, door, e-mail, mail.

Suddenly a great calm is flooding the rooms drifting like gas like melting snow and pure air. I see jesters dancing ladies in waiting waiting and a Kingly man ruling. Some old madrigal is on a harpsichord, the music is rippling. Happy and gentle and exciting at the same time.

I eat my lunch which is almost good except for the corn tortillas which are not the good ones from real Mexican grocery stores. They are from my upscale store down the block and they taste of food preservatives. They are poison.

I start weeping as I eat them, thinking about my mother and the last meal I made myself, that I remember, the week she died. I made some tiny English peas cooked with a little butter and salt and pepper a tiny bit of shredded lettuce like MFK Fisher used to do. I scrambled eggs with a little cream and butter, stirring them slowly, slowly, on a low low flame, also like MFK Fisher said to do. I made of circle of peas on a white china plate and I put the creamy hot scrambled eggs inside like a little nest. I poured a very very cold Alsatian wine in a thin long stemmed goblet and I ate and drank this dish and this wine and the phone rang and rang and I did not answer because even then I was tired of old age and sickness and death.

I sit here weeping listening to Madrigals and remember the hoary woods I passed on the way to work. The quiet. The thousands of tall skinny trees and pines all bare of leaves some old trunks scattered on the ground leaning on the ground leaning on other trees, some with layers of ice and snow thick as whipped cream, All misty and silvery and grey. The woods I could peer into them far far away and feel the quiet the stillness and the cold hoary frost ice peace of it. Oh I wish I had the nerve to get off the bus and go and sit on the bench like an old Indian of old or some pilgrim before the west was won. Sit down and maybe freeze like statue and there I would be all ice and hoary frost. Instead I go to work with the cackling hens. I can say that because I am a woman and I cackle too, but when someone tells me to shut up at work I shut up. I work with women who never shut up and that is why I want to go and freeze in the woods.

Sitting at the table still weeping. Wishing I could just drink an entire bottle of wine. Why? Because it is like Richard Burton once said, when someone asked him why he drinks so much: “Because life is so beautiful and it is so sad.”

Suddenly I remember there is ice cream in the refrigerator. Stracciettella. Oh Joy! I go and grab the ice cream, scoop out three huge spoonfuls into a little yellow bowl, and I sit at the dining room table in front of my mother’s ashes and I weep, because the ice cream is so good so creamy, it was already soft, because the fridge is not working properly. It was like eating snow and clouds and air and whipped cream and all the sweet baby dreams I ever had.

Water! Hot water! I will take a hot bath and I will weep there. Hot water. What a luxury. I remembered visiting Ukraine years ago and so wanting to take a hot bath and the poor woman of the house felt so sorry for me. She boiled and boiled and boiled water on the stove for hours so I could have a little hot bath. Here I turn on the tap and Viola!!! Hot water. Hot bath in the middle of the afternoon, you poor stupid little cackling hen, what do you have to feel sorry for? Yes, what indeed and I pull myself deep down under the luxurious water and have a long big laugh.

Posted in Eating, Drinking, Cooking, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Oh My Icy Breath and Trees full of Starlings

Posted on December 31, 2014 by O

Icy cold today, maybe 10 below zero. Need to go out to post office and bank, bills, end of year things I forgot, almost overdrawn, wrote too many checks forgetting the money is draining like the bathtub.

Slight hesitation. Still slight cough. Remembering Monday morning and feeling like a truck on my chest. Anyone who has any respiratory disease like COPD or emphysema, asthma, or panic attacks, anything that rips your breath out of you… knows the feeling of fear when venturing out the day after, wondering if the breath will go in and out of your lungs or get stuck in the throat like a chokehold.

Ventured out and it is icy icy cold, sunny blue sky. The ground feeling so cold it will crack underneath your feet. But onward I went all bundled up and felt immediately that I would be ok.

What a feeling! Breathing in icy air and not drowning. Walking and moving normally, not bent over like an old woman taking baby steps and crawling like a crippled frightened little sloth.

Sad to see my neighbors already tossed their Christmas tree on the parkway. A fresh green vivacious young tree, still full of wonder and magic, even lying there forlorn, unadorned, no ornaments or lights and still beautiful. Don’t they know it is still Christmas, actually still Christmas even here in America until January 6th? It is only December 31 the year winding down, and it is so lovely to have lights and candles glowing in the house to welcome the New Year. It is lovely and joyful to walk down the dark winter streets and see the Christmas trees in cozy living rooms or dining rooms twinkling with lights, especially soft and warm winter lights. Why must the trees always be tossed so soon? Many people in town toss them December 26. December 26! Oh well, their loss of joy and magic.

To bank and post office. Very cold, but I was dressed warmly and glad I didn’t see any more trees tossed out. My cheeks cold and almost icy, the air going down my throat in little jagged breaths. I breathed through my nose to save my lungs from working too hard, but I was not afraid anymore.

Stepping out of the bank I hear a great rustling of a thousand taffeta skirts from long ago, like a ballroom full of dancers waltzing furiously and colliding. Happily laughing and rustling and jangling their bracelets and diamond tiaras and necklaces. I looked up and saw a flock of starlings suddenly appear from nowhere, descending on an old tree full of brown crinkled leaves– so many trees keep their leaves a very long time. The birds were eating tiny wrinkled black berries and some were eating the leaves. A mass of speckled starlings on this tree on this icy windy day and me overhead startled, and then thrilled at their unexpected presence. Oh my darling starlings, thank you for waking me up again!

I walked, almost danced to the post office and home again. Getting colder and icier and my mouth breathing more and more air and wind, but it felt good
it felt delicious, it felt like icy thrashing rivers and I did not want to go home, I did not want to enter the house, I wanted to wander and wander and wander and breathe ice and cold and it felt like all the rivers of the world and all the icy clean breath of the world. It felt prehistoric, it felt clean, it felt purifying, it felt like a cold and starry sky, like ice queens in the moon and I breathe and breathe and breathe and am exhilarated with my own icy breath, rushing down my throat like ghost daggers, the ice cold keys in my hands opening the front door, and now the Christmas tree burning with red, amber and gold light and dark ornaments in red and gold and claret and burgundy and ox blood and ruby and the night is mine and the breath is mine and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Shall I Fly North or South?

Posted on December 15, 2014 by O

I ran out without a hat this morning. Usually in the winter, once I put the hat on, it doesn’t come off until April. No hat, no gloves, jacket flying open. It was that warm this December, and I was that late out the door.

Moist and heavy air like spring just before or after a storm. Standing alone at the bus stop enveloped by a sea of cars going north, south, east and west. I am heading west, but not into the sun, but into the deep dark netherlands of a rich fat suburb where all the land is being eaten up by huge monster houses, some being built literally to the curb, facing busy streets. But someone will pay a million plus for it.

The street is clogged with cars. So much metal and chrome and rubber and bad smells. Sometimes you barely see the trees or shrubs or grass or even feel the sky anymore, everything is so littered with clattering things. A bird flying by, a squirrel scurrying across the street, startle, they seem so unreal, unnatural. Do not look like they are made of flesh, blood and bone. Perhaps they too are only metal and rust.

Suddenly a large flock of birds appeared, flying very high up in the sky. They were so high I couldn’t tell if they were geese or not. But they looked and flew like geese. So late flying north over the cemetery. Just like they do in spring, but they were not honking, that weird circus sound that is both funny and sad. It’s so warm for December, maybe they think it’s spring already and perhaps were halfway south, when something turned around inside and told them to come home again, to the north country. Something warm, carefree and fragrant calling them back. They cris cross the skies in a silent ballet that is a thrill to watch.

Another flock of twelve or fifteen birds appeared (I always count them, as though that means something), far up in the sky. They were small slender and fast like swifts over chimney tops. I watch them and suddenly they are gone, vanished like magic. They disappeared much too soon, and then I realized they flew into a huge magnificent evergreen, about thirty feet fall, maybe more. They flew onto the branches and then perched on the very edges, like Christmas bird ornaments.

They were perfectly still, their profiles outlined like a fine ink drawing, and I stood watching and then the bus came and I had to leave. Like sentinels they sat watching over the graves in the cemetery.

I do not want to go north, south, east or west anymore, but straight up to those birds and perch there with them in the green pine branches. High, and higher still, I want to go straight up vertical into the sky, break the sound barrier, shatter speed records, pass the sun and the moon and climb higher and higher still, taking the trees and birds with me, and wander about in that breathless matter, until we find our very own star.

Posted in Bus Stop Stories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Birds, Black Car Texting, Exhaust

Posted on December 13, 2014 by O

Woke up late. Too tired to start things in a hurry, like Saturdays of long ago. Sitting here with coffee, black as hell and bitter. But it tastes good.

A grey fine day like someone’s antique silk dress fraying slightly at the edge. Warm, misty skies wet with coming rain or snow.

Dull and confused like teflon, a chemical taste in my mouth, the worry of the week like mold on everything. Why so dull now in happy December?

Suddenly they come again, the birds flying in and out of the bushes, they cris cross outside again doing a new dance. Like little black shadows but in and out they flit over and over again, so how can I be sad when they dance? I watch the almost grainy black and white movie nature directs here just for me. I can smell the outside, the damp, the moist earth opening up slightly now thinking perhaps it is spring.

The shrubs in front of the windows cover a good half of the light coming in. But I still see those birds and almost feel their little hearts bursting with joy as they fly, chatter, and sing.

Swoop! Sitting here I am transfixed again because there are so many birds flying in and out as though they are coming for me, to take me somewhere far away. Few people out. A great silence next door, the looming, monstrous house finally sold and waiting for the next family coming in.

I run to the window and the birds are circling my house near the roof, the gutters, in front of the dining and living room windows and they fly in and out of the large wide yew on the parkway. Looking closer I see that there are perhaps two dozen in that shrub, many underneath, picking at something in the grass.

There is a black car parked right in front of the shrubs and I see some woman sitting there texting. Bent over and tapping her finger over and over again sending messages to someone. The car is running and I realize that there are clouds of exhaust billowing from the back end.

I am annoyed at the woman, at her car, her exhaust, her texting. The birds are just a couple of feet away from her poison. Go away go away I mouth to her silently while looking out my window. I can almost smell the exhaust. I think about running out in my robe and shooing her away and then she taps a few more times and in a cloud of smoke leaves.

The birds peck happily away, chirping, eating, singing, caring not a thing for me or the black texter.

But, I am happy again. I wait because somewhere in my little demented mind I think to myself, the birds may come back, a whole mass of them, carrying something like a wide magic carpet, and one day, maybe, take me far away with them.

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