All posts filed under: Life

Always so surprising.

Independence Day.

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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 …

Matching up the eyes.

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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 …

Blink.

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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-earthquakes in my soul. The howling in my mind eased and I …

Voting feet.

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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 …

Abeyance

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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 …

Ludwig’s No. 9 on a Spring Evening

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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 …

I’m a (naked) farmer.

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Written on the beach: Happy Bay, St Martin. 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. 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.

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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 …

Snow shovel is worried.

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

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

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I’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 …