Circle

It recently occurs to me,
as I sit among friends in the long, sweet grass,
that I have returned to something essential of my youth
just as I embark upon the middle phase of life.
what bliss! to move forward and come home.

This morning I:

walked the dog a mile on Augusta road, getting wind-blown by long distance trucks, counting caterpillars (6), capturing farm-field-blue sky vistas with my camera mind.

began Swann's Way. again. found an old passage I underlined but don't remember reading. Actually liked and related to the language and sentiments.

unfurled my favorite old tapestry to stretch and read and watch the dog under the ambivalent trees between me and the sky. The wind rustled leaves and I almost slept. remembrance.

cooked and ate the lunch of a 75 year old Italian grandmother: spinach, egg, tomatoes, cheese, bread in garlic and olive oil.

filled out therapy paperwork with thoughtful, honest answers. no easy task.

made the bed. I love those crazy birds!

organized silverware into three pleasing containers.

now I have gone to work.

made the bed.

Companionables

Reading The Year of Magical Thinking and Just Kids simultaneously, by accident. Two couples, both alike in artistry, in New York or California, where we lay our scene. The women are writing for the men, who are dead. Remembering and making an elegy.

The Disease of Addiction

is the most boring, cliched phrase I have read to date. And that says quite a bit now that every nincompoop with fingers can contribute to the ongoing human dialog. I am sad that Amy Winehouse is dead because I enjoyed looking at, and listening to her. The article in NYmag by N. Abebe about fetishizing fatalism for art and artifice sake is the best thing I have seen on her life and death. "There's no point in fighting the sadness..." he writes of the worldview she shared with Billie Holiday and others; but you have to fight the sadness. It is possible. Compelling, even. I believe I have that heroic capacity. And that there's value in it. For some reason I may never know, I have faith. I look forward to seeing the other side, even only in glimpses. RIP Amy and Artex.

The Trouble with Baby Books

is that they are written for people who don't otherwise read.

Son of a Fabulist

everything he told me turned out to be true.

Sunday mid May

Invisible airplanes defect from the sky.
I don't mind the steady Sunday morning mist,
so long as there's an Escher canopy of green -
Spring green! - the gravestones turn themselves over in their field,
seeding new life in the bone yard.
walking up the western promenade with Olivia, and.
The sound all around isn't deafening
but confusing if I didn't know an airport
was just over south bridge from here.
Portland, fortunately, looks fine in the rain,
built of snug brick, empirically,
by robber barrons, presumably, on vacation.