We built a cob oven in our back yard in the shape of a Vampire Squid from Hell. And now my squid-shaped neurons are emitting salty flashes in whirling clouds. I would like to be a squid, free of this stiff spine and these crunchy bones. These are collections. Dangerous information. Mysteries.

Fires. Light one and folks gather around it. Close. Like the moths I watched flit into the campfire, last night, and emolate themselves into indistinguishable floating ash.

When the flames died and the coal faded from gold, to red, to gray, I went to bed. Climbing in the bus, I bumped my head on the candle lantern and had to relight it. I unscrewed the candle to find at least ten pair of singed wings stuck to wax and hot metal.

Look into a fire and watch faces rise from the embers. Let your mind blur and refocus what it's trained to see from the beginning: faces in shadows. Lines of familiar features. Your mother's eyes; your father's nose; your own teeth grinning up at you between licks of flame.

Since Prometheus shot down with it from Olympus; since cave people crouched around it and made the first casserole; since the First Americans threw corn into it to catch popped kernels; and the girl scout when she invented s'mores; all this time and we still gather around and stare at fire.

Isn't it more than Warmth why we sit, transfixed on flame and coal? Comfort? Company? Why?

Could it be that we are drawn from genetic memory, ancestral echoes woven into each of our DNA? When we see in the coals the faces of our mothers, or our uncles, or our fourth-grade teachers, or of those we can't remember meeting; are we seeing ripples of humanity, our line, our selves?

We pack up cars with appliances and supplies and head out to the mountains. We take great lengths in building our fires and great pride in our fire-tending abilities. Then we pull our knees to the circle of flame and lean forward to feel the clove-pinks bloom on our cheeks, and feel the fire's warm hands on our foreheads. And we see our our Selves, layered through time.

Your brain is in that state where anything is possible again. And the tiny dot of what you know shrinks and disappears against the fantastic landscape of what you don't. The occasional cloud of smoke stings your eyes and makes you cough. "Smoke Follows Beauty," they chorus; "White Rabbit, White Rabbit," you chant.

Everyone knows that.

And we all go back to staring into the living coals, staring into a beating present which has brought all of its steps through the past with it. To Here And Now, whatever that means.

I was.

That's all I have.

It's my last Wednesday of summer.
Yesterday was my last Tuesday.
I just smoked my last cigarette,
I know I said I'd quit.
I had.
It's my last week to lull around the house,
Making Brownies and
Cherry Chicken Pies and
Freezer Jam
In my pajamas.
The spiders are getting
Very Fat and
The thick August breeze is warm,
But it bites,
Like a cloud of tiny yellow jackets,
Sleepy and afraid.
I'm already planning the Winter Play,
Homecoming Activities,
Banquets, Field-trips,
Graduation.
Again.
Tomorrow is my last Thursday...
And it cascades from there
Into a new Now,
A fresh year.
But now, Now, this Now,
Pajamas comfortably slung low on my hips,
And a blue, flour besmudged T-shirt,
Brownies cooling in the kitchen,
As the shadows of leaves
Dance across my hands
A short waltz with
Sunlight.

I've got something to say about this:

I worked in customer service for many years. There is nothing like a job in this field, in these days of Starbucks ("The Cosmo-demonic Coffee Company of North America") and The Olive Garden ("McItaly") to make one just HATE "people".

I almost enjoy it now when I see customer service people taking small revenge on their "opressors". :) I have never spit in food, or served food from the floor, or the toilet or from inside of anyone's clothing. But, at Starbucks, I used to "Decaf" the rude people. It was the only power I felt I had.

A funny customer service story:

It is Christmas. We have just landed in San Diego. Our luggage is lost. Most everyone's luggage did not make it from wherever they were flying to San Diego. The place is a zoo. They had to cart away a man who got drunk on the plane and then was freaking out, loudly and rudely about his luggage. I was beginning to feel a bond with this man. Everyone else was giving him dirty looks. Then he started being racist and I was happy to see him go. Anyway...

We wait in a very long line to talk to an airline representative. We chat irritibly with people in line. The woman behind the counter is calm, but there's nothing she's offering that's making anyone in front of us any happier. Tension builds.

Finally, her manager comes in and she breathes a sigh of relief. We get to the front of the line. I say,

"Wow. What a mess. This is really stressful."
I know I'm stating the obvious. I know this. But I've waited and it was my way of announcing my turn, I guess. The manager, still clutching her morning coffee, throws a tired and exasperated look my direction.

"Well, how do you think I feel? I got to work to THIS this morning. Every one else is having a hard time, too. Not just you."

"I know. But I'm your customer. I've waited in line and now it's my turn. I'm telling you how this is as your customer. That's all." I wave my hand in dismissal and look back at the woman ready to help us. She smiles. She is interrupted. The manager comes sweeping up to lean over the counter,

"Look around! It's not JUST YOU!"

This is where I lose it: "I know. I am YOUR CUSTOMER. Your company, which you represent, lost our luggage. Now I'm telling you I'm frustrated, and THAT'S ALL. Just let me have the last word!"

"But EVERY one-"

"Shut UP!" and I press my hands to my ears.

"Don't you tell me to SHUT UP!" Her pale blue eyes flashed involuntarily.

"LET. ME. HAVE. THE. LAST. WORD." My brown eyes, held her faded gaze.

"But, you-"

"AAAAAAUUGH! I can't believe it! I can't believe it! AAAAAUUUGH!" I repeat as I throw my empty arms to the panelled ceiling, twirl on my foot and march out of line, out of the stuffy office, into the madhouse of the airport.

Later, after my friend had arrived, my partner finished negotiating with the patient woman behind the counter, after we wait in another line to get applications for reimbursement, and I am swooping my little Everett up into my arms, I back into someone. All of these people. I step on a foreign toe and turn with a pleasant apology.

Those faded blue eyes, in the middle of returning a friendly, "That's fine", take me by such surprise. I say, "Oh, nevermind. It's you and I'm not all that sorry anymore." I caught her face harden into hard lines and edges. A dried clay mask. A cob oven. Before I flew Everett on his stomach, airplane-style out of baggage claim.

Okay, of course Ms. Blue-eyes would have a completely different version to this story. I never called the airlines and complained about this woman. How could I, with clear conscience? I was completely out of control, myself.

Judging soley from my interaction with her, I would call her a bitch. But I know she cannot be defined by one, lousey, holidaytime, stressful encounter.

This is a fact: If, when I got back my receipts from Northwest Airlines, and found that she had changed my name to Bitchie McBitcherton, I would have been proud of both of us.

Worth noting:

The girl crack corn and I don't care.

I walk outside and pick ripe, delicious, noxious weeds. I bring them in with purple hands, wash them and put them in a cobbler. This is what I've been doing. I have been dying myself in shade s of blue and celebrating the distance and desires that make these colors possible.

Thank God for the Bruises and the Berries. 

:roll:
The River of Life
Is not dictated by Time,
As we all Know and
Experience.

It flows through Time.
It carves magnificent canyons
Down through collonades stripes of
Shit and Decay,
Revealing Gems, Fantastic Sapphires,
And Ancesteral Bones in Painted Caves.

The landscape already exists.
The River is unpredictable.
How we move down-stream
Is our only, precious choice.

I know a man who swims hard
Against the current,
Vainly. Muscles knotting, he strains,
Only to see his past shrink away,
And his landscape blur by backwards.

I know a woman who
Drifts along in a polished shoe.
Black and so shiny,
It reflects the sky. And she
Lives there, in that
Black-mirror World, Where
The clouds fit just so,
Perfectly.

I was a girl who made her raft
From borrowed and stolen wood,
Dangled her feet in the water and
Poked at the smooth banks
On either side;
Made up a song and sang it.

I was singing, looking at the sky,
When I hit the rapids.
Suddenly, my skin scraped along
The River's gravelly bottom,
Embedding me with
Shit and Decay,
Sharp gemstones,
And jagged bone;
Streaming my body with
Brilliant silver scars.

Deadly, Mermaid-adorned Rocks:
Impossible,
     Impassible,
Began to look like Rest Stops.
So I swallowed stones and
Stretched my fingers for
A milky hand.
     I missed, fortunately,
Pitching and Swirling, for what seemed
Eternity,
Toward calmer waters.

Now, my regathered sticks,
Glued and tied together are of
My own craft and design.
I bump along on
Moon-dappled waves.

I dangle a jewelled toe while
All the Diamonds in the World
Dance in vee-formation behind it.
The shards of bone, the sapphire scars
Adorning my skin
Glitter and Wink a
Flirty Reply.

As Ironic as a Top 40 Song.
But this is how things have been.
Balance, maybe.
The balance between
Disappointment and the Act of
Disappointing.
My face is made for such.

Every year, we make collapse feel like a ballet.
Our toes pointed severely;
Our pink satin stained blood-brown.
And every year when we jette back on stage,
Our smiles are real.
Even though there will be
No Roses or applause,
We dance for the stage hands;
We dance for each other,
Bending and sweeping in
Impossible directions.

It's almost enough.

:wink:

My own little space on the big, wide internet. There are so many of these windows to peek through. Too many to read. But I think even the most surface drivel is as precious as sapphires. As important as the glittering diamonds of wind and water, and just as elusive.

So, here I am in my cozy little space. I don't intend for anyone to read this, but I press a button that says, "Publish this post". So I add my voice to the melodic clammour.