I’m awake. The cat has been sitting on my chest for several minutes now, grooming himself. You wouldn’t think of cat’s paws as anything but soft, but something hard is jabbing me in the ribs. Do cats have elbows? Sharp pointy elbows?
I shift pillows and comforter from the edge of the bed and summon my dog with a pat on the mattress. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he sits in the doorway of the bedroom and scratches himself, his back foot thumping a frantic beat on the hardwood floors.
When he deigns to join me, I lift my face so his sloppy greeting licks my chin and not my face. Then -usually – he turns his back on me and plops down, waiting for his back rub, or his “booty scritch” as I call it.
His luxurious coat is so soft, I bury my face in it and work my hand up the length of his spine and back down. He leans into the pressure, and turns his eskie smile on me. A pat on his bum, and a final smooch from him ends the ritual, and he hops to the floor.
Less nimble, I roll to the edge of the bed, sit up, place my feet on the cold floor,
and climb out of my comfort zone.
Bloganuary daily prompt: Write about the last time you left your comfort zone.
Bloganuary Prompt for January 2: What is a road trip you would like to take?
I’m not much of a traveler. I find plenty of adventure right in my own back yard. Literally. Now, my definition of adventure may not match yours. Like the epitome of boredom: watching grass grow, or watching paint dry… I happen to enjoy both of those pastimes.
So when it comes to dreaming of road trips, I’ll stick to the one I took last October and will retrace next month, Washington State to Colorado.
My trusty buddy Chules and I left home on a Wednesday, two days later than planned due to an utterly random case of vertigo (me, not Chules). We dropped down from Vancouver, WA into Oregon and headed east along the Columbia River.
glimpse of the Columbia River east of Hood River, Oregon
There would have been a lot of cool stuff to see along the way. The Columbia River Gorge is always scenic, The Bonneville Dam is – well – there. The historic town of Pendleton, OR is home to one of the Pendleton Woolen Mills, and offers tours of the mill as well as outlet shopping for their way cool blankets and clothing. If I were planning to sight see, I would probably continue east from Pendleton and fit in a stay at Joseph, OR to revisit the multiple bronze sculptures around town and to tour the bronze foundry.
But, alas, we were destination focused, so we turned southeastward from Pendleton, and made it to Nampa, Idaho before I had to stop for the night. (My vision only allows for daytime driving.)
worrisome skies in Utah
The next day, we traversed Idaho, briefly dropped into Utah and then headed east into Wyoming, where we spent our second night in Rawlins, WY.
Rawlins, Wyoming
If I were going to dally in Utah, I might have visited the Great Salt Lake, and headed east from there to the Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, UT. That would have then led me through some national forests and over the Rocky Mountains before arriving at my daughter’s home in Centennial, Colorado.
Snowy mountains in Colorado that we passed through on our return trip
Instead, we took a more northern route across Wyoming to Cheyenne, WY and then down through Denver, CO to Centennial. The best thing about the trip was arriving in Centennial and getting to visit my six month old granddaughter.
And while I was there, I was able to watch grass grow while I weeded out part of their lawn. And I was able to watch lots and lots of paint dry as we repainted their living areas.
It’s January, and so begins the #Bloganuary Challenge from WordPress, where participants are given a daily prompt for blogging inspiration. Today’s prompt: What advice would you give to your teenage self? So here goes.
Dear Teenage Me:
Look at you! So young, I hardly recognize you – er, me. I know, you think it’s odd that an old fart like me is addressing you. You work so hard to stay invisible, and yet I see you. It’s not easy for me, either. I tend to avoid people, especially teenagers. You kids are very intimidating at that age. And, well, I try to stay invisible, too. Still.
You have a long row ahead of you (that’s a good thing so keep going), so here are some pointers to get you through a bit easier than I had it.
When you get your wisdom teeth pulled in your twenties, do NOT use tequila as a pain killer. The side effects are not worth it. You will wake up wishing you could get more teeth pulled just to take your mind off the hangover.
Nurture your artistic self. You don’t have to excel at art or music or writing or photography or stained glass or anything else in order to validate your interest and participation. If it feeds your soul, it’s worth doing.
Don’t dance like nobody’s watching. Dance like you don’t give a flying leap whether they’re watching or not. That will come in handy when your second grader pulls you out on the floor during the school music program to dance the macarena with her.
You’ll be a better parent than you think you can be. Listen to your kids. They’ll let you know how you’re doing. But maybe don’t let your children write their own absentee excuse notes for school. When you actually write one yourself, the school will think it’s fake because the signatures don’t match.
Don’t despair. When you think you’ve hit rock bottom, there’s only one way to go: up.
Well, that’s about the extent of my garnered wisdom. Check back in another twenty years, and I can advise you on how to get through your midlife crises. By then, however, you’ll realize that you don’t need other people’s voices in your head, you just need to trust your own.
Today’s prompt: “write a poem in the form of a review. But not a review of a book or a movie of a restaurant. Instead, I challenge you to write a poetic review of something that isn’t normally reviewed. For example, your mother-in-law, the moon, or the year 2020 (I think many of us have some thoughts on that one!)”
Herewith,
Chez Maggie
“Do you have reservations, Madam?”
Oh, I have so, so many.
And calling me “madam” didn’t help one bit.
“Yes. Maggie… Quarantine for one.”
“Ah, of course! Right this way.”
Doesn’t look too bad on the outside.
Basic ranch style, minimal landscaping.
Is that the gardener digging in the flower bed?
Wearing a tuxedo?
Oh, I guess not. It’s the resident cat.
Inside, the vibe is very industrial.
Squirrel cage light fixtures;
original 1950s oak floors throughout,
pocked by staple marks, blackened with water stains.
Perhaps a tad too industrial:
an orange extension cord snakes down the hallway;
a Stanley toolbox claims half the floor space in the bathroom.
Sleeping accommodations are comfy.
pink sheets in a lilac room.
I question how long it’s been since the bedding was changed.
The gardener has come inside, and is now
curled up on a sunny patch of living room carpet.
The bathroom is small and appears to be under renovation.
It’s cute, though, despite the measuring tape left on the vanity top
and the caulk gun tucked hazardously beneath the rug.
As to cleanliness… well, let’s just say the industrial style
needs to include some industrial cleaning soon.
On to the kitchen. Oh, my.
I think I will be ordering delivery for the duration of my stay.
That’s okay. I can’t cook anyway.
It’s almost as if the keepers of this establishment knew that already.
A sliding glass door leads to an enclosed back yard, which –
curiously – continues the industrial theme.
A pair of saw horses stand at the ready.
A second pair have collapsed and lay in a heap where they fell.
Old splintered baseboards poke out from a stack of two by sixes
that had a former life as part of the now diminished deck.
On the lawn, a white dog has passed out in the shade.
Or so it appears; I can tell he is watching me through half-veiled eyes.
He must be the other tenant I was warned about,
but I was told he is an excellent self-distancer.
So this is where I’ll be spending the sum of my
indeterminate quarantine.
No five-star rating here, but the accommodations will suffice.
The tuxedo cat makes a sweet gardener.
The lawn ornament dog will keep me occupied;
he seems to have an acute sense of meal times.
I give this place a three “S” rating:
Stay home;
Stay safe;
Stay alive.
For today’s prompt, we were asked to fill out an “Almanac Questionnaire” that you can find here, then use our responses as the basis for a poem. And so I came up with this depiction of where I live.
The Simple Life
I live in Washington.
State, not DC.
In the city of Vancouver.
United States, not British Columbia.
Across the river from Portland.
Oregon, not Maine.
Oh, never mind. It’s complicated.
Explorers Lewis and Clark wandered through here
on their way to the Pacific Ocean.
Lewis wrote that the area was
“the only desired situation for settlement
west of the Rocky Mountains.”
Then he moved on and settled in Oregon instead.
When asked why, it is said he was said
to have said, “It’s complicated.”
Captain U.S. Grant was stationed here,
at Columbia Barracks. Then he resigned from the army
and became president. Eventually.
A very uncivil war intervened in that General timeline.
We’re still hashing that war out.
Complicated, indeed.
Sasquatch roams the forests in these parts.
Kinda shy, though; we don’t see him much.
Olympic figure skater Tonya Harding roamed the ice rinks here.
Then her competitor was cut off at the knees —
so to speak – and Tonya took the fall. So to speak.
It’s complicated.
We don’t carry umbrellas when it rains here.
For the most part we don’t jaywalk.
We wear dark clothes on dark days.
Maybe that’s why we forego jaywalking.
On sunny weekends we go hiking in the Gorge.
On rainy weekends we hike faster.
Simple pleasures.
You can wander down most any alley here and find
a micro-brewery or a coffee shop. Or both.
The local newspaper, The Columbian,
(named for the river, not the country)
sported this headline yesterday:
“There’s no reason to struggle to get your coffee fix —
even in the middle of a pandemic.”
We have our priorities, after all.
They are pretty straightforward.
Come visit us sometime, if you can find us.
It’s kind of complicated.
Today, “The prompt, which you can find in its entirety here, was developed by the poet and teacher Hoa Nguyen, asks you to use a long poem by James Schuyler as a guidepost for your poem.” The original prompt asks for a twenty minute free write, “a writing prompt toward the present tense, a meditation in everyday language, that makes room for small noticing and our most spacious perceptions.”
I managed to do a lot of small noticing, but not a whole lot of spacious perceiving. Oh, well. Here ’tis:
Senselessness for the Senses
I wake up this morning to the sound of rain water,
gargling its way through the downspout outside my
bedroom window. I am reminded that I meant to
dig up the concrete block where the downspout ends.
I need to change the grade to send the water outward,
more toward the lawn. I fear it is drowning my foundation,
and someday I will awaken to find myself pouring through
a flooded wall, slipping through the storm drain out on the street,
my bedclothes encasing me like a scuba suit. Would that happen?
This afternoon it is sunny. A cool breeze. The gutter effervescence
is replaced by some neighbor’s gas engine pistoning down the street.
I don’t like noisy gas-powered tools. I like to dig in the dirt. Bare hands.
That’s how you gain the minerals, through the skin.
Brown dirt on brown hands. White fingernails that never manage to be white.
And lots of purple flowers. “Why so many purple flowers?“
It’s my favorite color. But that’s not really why.
The grape hyacinths just multiply every year.
They grow through the crack between my concrete porch and side walk.
So hardy; it would be a shame to remove them.
What else? Spanish bluebells, lilacs, lavender, rosemary… all purple. But later,
the bright orange California poppies will come. And the yellow St. Johns wort.
And dandelions. Always dandelions. The bees like them, so I leave them be.
We coexist. We wild together, in our own weedy way.
The weeds like the freedom of my yard. They can do as they please;
grow, blossom, meditate, and ultimately self-actualize… if they so desire.
Clouds are forming now, and the breeze is picking up.
If I could smell, I might notice someone getting their barbecue ready to burn dinner.
Or someone smoking weed behind the fence. I can’t smell much, though,
so neighbors are free to barbecue their weeds undisturbed by me.
I was to listen to James Schuyler reading his poem, “Hymn to Life” today.
A recording of 34 minutes. I made it to ten. He doesn’t’ sound like a poet.
Not like I imagined he would. Or should. Not that there’s a poet sound.
I seldom read my poetry aloud; it never sounds like I think it should.
Maybe my poetry stinks, but I just can’t smell it. I should listen, I suppose.
I listen. I hear the weeds growing. The dandelion seed heads shimmy in the breeze.
They want to catch the wind and be blown away.
I want to write poetry that blows the reader away.
If I read this writing aloud, will I sound like a poet? Or just like a weed,
self-actualized or otherwise?
An airplane flies over my house in the partly cloudy sky. It smells distant.
I will go inside now and make dinner.
“Today’s prompt is to write a hay(na)ku). Created by the poet Eileen Tabios and named by Vince Gotera , the hay(na)ku is a variant on the haiku. A hay(na)ku consists of a three-line stanza, where the first line has one word, the second line has two words, and the third line has three words.”
What Rhymes with Stanza? 