wideeyedfunk

Category: Life

Always so surprising.

  • Independence Day.

    Thanks to the bold minds and brave signers of the Declaration of Independence, and their willingness to see it through we are here now:  equal, free of abuses, repeated injuries,  and usurpations from Government, free of a Government which refuses to pass laws, free from the obstruction of justice, free of taxation without representation…er.

    Ok.

    Well.

    Thanks to the bold minds and etc. etc. were here now: basking in a glorious summer day of picnics and simply joys. The people of the WideEyedHousehold came of age in one of the New Jersey shore towns, working to serve the holidays of one hundred thousand city-folk. Now, we wallow in the quietude and privacy of a day of independence, without obligation.

    Sweet Tibbit the Useless-Little-Black dog waits patiently for more raspberries to ripen on the thicket in back yard. She already harvested all within reach using her front nibble teeth, stretching her neck, balancing her dainty toes on the edges of the raised beds to reach more. Hamish watches, pretty sure this is Not Allowed but not sure enough to administer chastisement.  I rescued enough for yard-raspberry French-toast for breakfast.

    SmokedThe WideEyedSpouse hovers over the bounty of his 16-hour overnight pork shoulder smoke. Ten pounds of darkly barked smoked pork await conversion into pulled pork sandwiches, tacos, omelets, pizzas, stews, Shepherd’s pies, burritos, lettuce wraps, grilled cheeses, soups, stir-frys – who knows what desperate lengths we’ll go to.

    The baby-toe cactus and the Venus-fly-trap feel it too, exploding with vegetation regeneration in mad blooms, and yes, picnicking in the case of the fly-trap. A desiccated gnat carcass is revealed as one trap slowly reopens in the morning sun.

    Plants

    I stand on the freshly scrubbed front porch, watching the flag undulate lazily over the bees tending their lavender in the garden. Main Street is quiet for once. Instead of driving here and there, bustling and hustling, the Good People of Buffalo seem to be taking the day. The park was full this morning of bikes and kids and dogs and golfers. We weaved and bobbed among them all on the park loop until my bike chain broke – creeee-clank – and then we walked with them.

    Flag

    Independence Day.

  • Matching up the eyes.

    The littlest WideEyedFunk was holding his head in his hands when I saw him in the living room. Spent, frustrated, and angry, he stared at his new bike helmet laying on the floor. It looked like a lumpy neon-green billiard ball.

    “What’s happening there?” I asked him. I felt like a giant standing over him. I was crunching on a snack and idling away an afternoon. I’m used to small beings around the WideEyedHouse, but usually they are dogs and cats of limited sentience. How interesting to be able to talk to a small one and expect a real, human-language response.

    He sighed.

    Ok, well, that was sort of Hamish-the-Corgi like in nature.

    “No really,” I persisted despite his terrible angst. “What’s wrong?”

    The small one looked up at me and ran his hands over his head. “I can’t get my bike helmet to fit.” He put it on his head. Backwards. He was correct. It did not fit. The straps dangled in the wrong place, his ears were being pushed awkwardly, and it came down over his eyes.

    I crunched my snack for moment, having a good look at the situation. He waggled his head around and the helmet plopped into his lap. I saw that there were two air vents in the front and four in the back.

    “How many eyes do you have on the front of your head?” I asked him. He was intrigued and put his hands over them. “Two,” he giggled about my obvious lackwittedness.

    “Uh huh. How many eyes do you have on the back of your head?” Now the small WideEyedFunk was totally focused. He put his hands on the back of his head and looked at me, all wide-eyed with his two front ones.

    “Four, right?” I said it like it was an obvious fact. He nodded, yep, he could feel them back there for the first time.

    “Match the holes in your helmet to the eyes in your head – two in the front, four in the back.”

    I watched the small one inspect his helmet and count the vent holes. He held it up over his head, double checked the eyes to vents match up and plonked it down. He smiled. Problem solved.

    Helmet 1

  • Blink.

    Blink.

    Six months I ran before the storm, eyes-wide, mind-revved, fingertips-atingle. Grim winter in my rust-belt city disappeared during a week hiking high Oahu ridges. Useless hounds, beloved corgis, and ancient cats snoozed on my tense feet during long hours at the desk. Spring came and went: the cherry blossoms, the tiny green perennial shoots, the new gardens. Summer sneaks replaced Joan of Arctic pack boots.

    Amid the lightening and squalls and winds of change in the WideEyedProfessional life, everything life passed as moments in time, each separated from the next by nearly unachievable work-burdens.

    The Spouse, he was there through this long storm. This catastrophic professo-ecological  shift. He’s still there – I’m looking at his head nod, eyelids heavy sitting at his own desk in the WideEyedOffice this evening. HeavyEyedOffice more like.

    Then, not long ago, I blinked.

    I blinked against the shocking glare of desert sunlight at Elder Brother’s house in Arizona. I blinked and my heart thumped hard twice. Like tiny bio-eAZ cactusarthquakes in my soul. The howling in my mind eased and I heard again. I blinked and saw again. Birds sang from the walls of the WideEyedFunk-West compound and strange flowers were erupting like sores on the tips of saguaro cacti. The air itself stank of otherness. I wondered, what it will be like the first time a human smells the raw stink of another planet? What will Mars smell like? The Moon? Airline air now probably but someday?

    The storm is over. I can do more than survive now. I’m so pleased to be WideEyed again.

    AZ WEF

    AZ chicken

  • Voting feet.

    So…the WideEyedHousehold had to leave our archery league.

    Not because of my broken wrist: the little bones in there are cemented back together after several months. I get an exciting zing every time I release the bow string, adds to the thrill of the moment. And, not because the Spouse’s reconstructed clavicles feel like marbles rolling around in his shoulders – although apparently they do. Lesson: don’t fall down when riding a bike. Twice.

    We’ll still probably stick arrows in the archery butt in the dining room. Maybe. We’ll see.

    The thing is, we had a choice to make. A family-level ethics choice. The choice centered on the issue of tolerance. The WideEyedHousehold runs on tolerance. People have their own ways and it is not my business to re-educate the Spouse when he makes the bed wrong (I do not like it when the sheet pattern is in the wrong direction) and it is not his to help me be a crumb-less eater in his car (he can’t help but watch, fretful and worried, when I have nibbles on road trips).

    A member of our former archery league is a self-proclaimed universal hater. He invents new words and glories in the use of antiquated terms for people who are not like him. After particularly vituperative language bursts, the Spouse would say “Hey now, that’s not necessary.” I would say nothing because I didn’t know what to say. I’m a member of two, maybe three different hated groups . Instead I turned my back and disassociated, trying to be tolerant of this other way of life.

    I don’t get to tell people how to behave in a free society. Do I?

    Last week the Spouse and I realized at the same time but not together – simultaneous private musings fueled by kindred ethics I suppose – that we could not tolerate this any longer. Other members of the league have made their peace with this person’s perspective – or they agree with it. The Spouse and I cannot. We do not.

    It happened for me after the hater used offensive terms to describe women, people of color, indigenous people, and gay people in one long sentence and no one, including me, said anything. I’m not cool enough to say “Oh hey now, that’s not necessary.” If I had opened my mouth I would have attempted to tell this person how to behave. I would have stripped him of his dignity to defend someone else’s.

    I don’t get to tell people how to think and speak in a free society.

    I do get to vote with my feet. The people in the group are good and nice with families and well-paid taxes and caring attitudes. But. I can’t be a part of a group that tolerates open hatred. I can’t tolerate it myself. I am ashamed it took me two years to recognize that staying was tacit approval. Thanks feet, for voting.

  • Abeyance

    Yep, this is the summer of abeyance.

    The house isn’t quite painted. Decisions about staying or going are waiting until the green is replaced by blue on ALL FOUR sides. “And on the garage,” the Spouse says.

    The grapes aren’t quite ripe. Miss Tibbit the Useless Little Black Dog hangs around the arbor, so they must be close. I caught her using her nibble teeth on the bird netting. “You’re going to have to wait,” I told her. Unbelieving she licked her chops and glanced at the fat clumps of red grapes.

    My grant proposal MIGHT be funded but we won’t know for sure until October, when the federal budget passes or fails.  “Just hold tight,” the grant program officer told me. My heart thumped HARD twice, then pattered away a little quicker than normal. “Have you ever had a heart attack or stroke?” the Doc asked at a recent check-up…

    Amazon hasn’t shipped our package of dog poop pick-up bags yet. One thousand small black bags for one thousand offenses against the neighborhood. I’m carefully hoarding our few remaining bags. “Oh no, you are DONE,” I tell Hamish the Corgi as he thinks about marking another lawn on evening walkies.

    I might need to go to Alaska on business. I might drive to Virginia for family. We might take the Mighty Mebe on a road trip to Boston. We might be out of half and half for tomorrow’s coffee. I might need a new outfit for dinner out on our 20th wedding anniversary – “Isn’t it funny,” the Spouse helpfully stated, “how I can just put on my same old suit but you need a new outfit every time.”

    Advice givers and poets might say to live in the now. Don’t tell ME to live in the now. I live plenty in the now. Right NOW I’m working to accomplish what is DUE NOW. Right NOW I can smell the aromas (stinks?) of hot lavender, French thyme, and asphalt floating in the front window with 92 degree heat pulses. I see the late summer sun battling with enormous cloud formations piling over the lake. I hear my neighbor blasting epic sneezes in his kitchen.

    Abeyance, urgency, tranquility, reminiscence. These are the life states I balance, or usually FAIL to balance. Too much tranquil thinking leads to greater urgency. Too much abeyance removes the ability to reminisce. Urgency supersedes all.

    I’ll take a little abeyance here and there. Abeyance means hope and change and renewal. Abeyance is an ever-bloating bubble of potential big and small, a grand swelling of options – sure when all fails the swelling is like a necrotic plague bubo but let’s not linger there – SOMETIMES the swelling is gloriously buoyant like a pre-Hindenburg Zepplin…and ok  I’m not sure that analogy is going in a good direction either…

    But. Abeyance. Hold tight. Hold fast. And smell the sun warmed herbs.

  • Ludwig’s No. 9 on a Spring Evening

    Ludwig’s No. 9 on a Spring Evening

    We dug deeply into the closet for The Suit and a Dress. The WideEyedSpouse installed cufflinks. I glued a dangling sequin back onto my dress and pulled out the outrageous silk and roses wrap I made last fall, just as my world turned dark and winter.

    It is Springtime now. And, of course, Ludwig deserves the best and brightest. So last night we sparkled and gleamed the Mini over to Kleinhans Music Hall, leaving glitter and joy in our wake instead of carbon-rich exhaust. It was that kind of feeling.

    Have you spent much time with Beethoven’s Symphony Number 9? It overwhelms. It fills a person with complexities of sound and silence. There are whispered conversations between flutes and violins, there are arguments between basses and tympani drums, French Horns have opinions all over the place and eventually more than one hundred voices join the instruments, yelling in German about Joy.  More or less. The lyrics don’t actually make a lot of sense – I don’t know if it’s the translation from German or changing social contexts –  “Millions, be you embraced! For the universe, this kiss!”

    Huh?

    But I don’t have to get it. I can feel it. From across two centuries of unfathomable change, I can feel despair, contemplation, redemption, and Joy. I think about the millions of us who have listened to the Ninth and how we are all connected through the biological construct that was Beethoven’s brain. I think about cultural change and how long will our ability to hear Joy in the Ninth last?  – When will we be so different that we hear only cacophony?

    Set aside an hour or so of your life. Play the Ninth. Let yourself be. You’ll get a little bored here and there – that’s because you are overstimulated by the music. Then you’ll be sucked back in and you’ll realize your skin is prickling. You’ll think unexpected thoughts. Last evening I spent a little time realizing that if the zombie apocalypse came during the concert, I’d be ok with this being the last thing I experienced. Then I thought about how to defend the balcony from zombies and considered which of my seat-neighbors would be a liability in the fight. Then the music changed and my brain moved on.

    If you are like me, you’ll sometimes be so full of the music that you can’t breathe. You’ll realize that you are inside of it or it is inside of you – and you should marvel that Beethoven, who doesn’t know you, can’t know you, understood so perfectly how to craft sounds that reach you across time and space.

    Celebrate Spring. Clear winter’s mush from your brain. Play the Ninth and play it loud. Joy.

  • I’m a (naked) farmer.

    Written on the beach: Happy Bay, St Martin.

    IMG_3958

    The sun competes with the wind for fierceness today. Same shockingly bright blue-green water gleaming under azure sky. Same beach filled with cows, naked people, and partially clothed people – and by filled I mean one or two people, here or there, along a kilometer or more of beach. The small herd of beef stock lounges under the palm trees and Caribbean scrub.

    IMG_3964

    Sailboats bob. Jet skis roar by once an hour, sounding like an emergency, like an air raid. A naked man shooes away the cows coming to check out the WideEyedBeachFunks. He claps energetically, “git! git on!” he tells them. They amble away, looking not too bright. He turns to me all bronze-tan and anatomical. “I’m a farmer,” he says in a Missouri twang. “Thank you,” I tell him, eyes wide behind my incognito sunglasses.

    Vacation. Final beach day.

  • Not cold in the library.

    I don’t get out much and when I am out and about my interactions with Other People are confusing. Confusing for me because these days I’m not super great at tracking communications unrelated to my work. Confusing for them because I am entirely unpredictable in my responses. For me the Other People seem like a radio station fritzing in and out. I respond to the portions I comprehend. Recipe for weirdness.

    But. Sometimes my difficulties are surpassed.

    The WideEyedSpouse and I were at the Central Library downtown on New Year’s Eve (Friends, this is how I ring in the New Year. With books.) The Central Library is a tricksy place filled with lunching corporate workers, homeless people in from the cold, retired people, people on long bus layovers, and kids. I keep my eyes to myself and my hand on my wallet – always good business in any city or university library.

    I waited for about three-fifths of my lifetime for the person ahead of me to do the self check out. He kept getting his two books and library card out of his library sack and checking out first one, then the other book. He’d pick up the sack handles and start to move away. Pause for thought. Rescan library card. Check out one, then the other. The first two times I was fooled but I’m a quick learner and I stood patiently waiting for him to work through his OCD. I gazed into the middle distance and listened to the whir of the escalator behind me.

    The OCD patron got through his cycle and I stepped up with my stack of sci-fi, romance, memoirs… I set them on the gray check out reader pad and scanned my library card. Beep. The air to my left moved in an unexpected way and I looked up swiftly but not, I assure you, like prey –  “Hi. I’m Matt,” announced a youngish male-person with a dark blue stocking cap. His voice was a little breathy, he was nervy about something. He smiled and tilted his head, maybe showing me his swirly neck tattoo. He had agreeable teeth. Not at all crystal methy. So I answered. “Hi Matt, what can I do for you?”

    “Are you cold?” he asked me. I wasn’t. In fact I was wearing a heavy wool coat, snow boots, and a scarf. Interesting, I thought to myself. “No. Not particularly. Why do you ask?”

    Young Matt looked at me like I wasn’t super bright and said, “You’re wearing a skirt. You’re the only girl in here wearing a skirt today and it’s cold outside.” I looked at him while I thought about my answer. Maybe Matt was a young anthropologist from another time or place (in human disguise?) and he was interviewing to understand Downtown Buffalo (Earth?) cultures. Maybe Young Matt was often cold himself and just had to know how I could stand it. Maybe Nefarious Matt’s buddies were circling around to grab my purse or, longshot, maybe he was hitting on me. It was impossible to interpret from his open and cheery attitude. So I answered him, “It isn’t too bad today. It gets uncomfortable on super windy days, so I don’t wear a skirt then,” I smiled at him and gathered up my checked out books.  “Oh,” he started, and then was gone. I didn’t see him leave – I looked to my right to see if he had moved around the book check station and there was the WideEyedSpouse, approaching with big booted strides, looking even taller and bigger than usual in his winter boots and coat.

    The Spouse pretty clearly scared off Curious Matt. I was happy to see the Spouse, as always, but now I’ll never know what was happening in that conversation.

  • Snow shovel is worried.

    Does it have a reason to be ? I’d say so.

    20141210_161412There it is, leaning by the back stoop waiting for the new snow fall. The first big one this season was a bust in Buffalo, but Snow shovel got some snow removal action. Another snow fall is happening tonight and tomorrow. Not a big one – which is actually best for Snow shovel.  If the snow is only a couple of inches the WideEyedSpouse tends to grab the shovel instead of the snow thrower. It’s quieter. Snow shovel appreciates the action – you know it gets bored waiting around for snow.

    But.

    But snow shovel is broken. One whole side is fractured away. Too many freeze thaw cycles in Minnesota and Buffalo. Too many wet, heavy snows. Last year a whole chunk sheared off and fracture lines are visible throughout the entire scoop. Snow shovel has to know it is a matter of time.

    Today is the day.

    I was wandering through Lowe’s looking for a bin big enough to haul a dismembered axis deer carcass and moseyed past a rack of new yellow Snow shovels. Their scoops gleamed. Their blades were keen. I could hear their little bossy voices nattering at each other because they are bored, bored, bored sitting inside. They were still in China (probably) when the big storm hit a couple of weeks ago and the next one can’t come soon enough. At least that’s what I think they said – the overhead Christmas carols were a little loud.

    20141210_161301New Snow shovel is laying in the grass about 40 feet from old Snow Shovel. I didn’t want to put it too close to the old one, just in case. You know. Accidents happen.

  • Fruit flies, a nasty old chair, and 100 years of fine art.

    CoffeeshopchairI’m sitting here in an anciently ugly wingback not quite as nice as Hamish the Corgi’s chair at home and I’m paying for the privilege. Sort of. The price of the chair is probably included in the cost of my vanilla latte and slice of spiced apple cake.

    My WideEyedButt is squashing this hard used feathered cushion as a my second choice of morning activities. First choice, oh happy happy first choice, was a bust.

    I went to the museum to hang around with Anselm Keifer’s Der Morgenthau Plan. I intended to stand in front of Jackson Pollack’s Convergence. I read a biography or two about him since I was last in front of the image and I wanted to see if it felt different. Giacomo Balla’s dachshund in Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash missed me, I think, and I intended to visit.

    None of them were there.  On loan, gone, packed up. Who knows.

    Now I find myself, sitting in a cloud of fruit flies and regular flies (a real problem this coffee shop might want to attend to), thinking about school kids on field trips to art museums around the country. Right NOW some 10-year-old’s phone is slack in his grubby kid-hand because Convergence squeezed past his texting, gaming, compulsively digitally-linked consciousness. A cackling 15-year-old girl has stopped giggling, mouth hanging open, because Der Morgenthau Plan’s vastiness and deep thrumming power interrupted her ability to be young and feckless for just a moment. And Bella’s dog, that little dog and his owner walking along a sidewalk one hundred and two years ago, that little dog is charming tiny babies in carriers, changing the snapping synapses in their little brains.

    I was sad that I couldn’t be with the paintings this morning. I was ready to sulk here in my smelly coffee shop chair that is infested with public-ness. But I think I can share them. I think my day is better and my world is bigger knowing that other people’s hearts are pounding because of the paintings. Other people are going to lie in bed tonight with the memories of them floating in their dreams.