Shall I tell a tale or tale a tell? A wisp of wine and wandering. Somewhere in between lies bothering.

Delved deep I am and wondering where I am to begin again. No use to start again, It's a story worth continuing but with so much depth between.

Ho Hum.
Can I skip an epoch? Can I just jump over 52 hours and then two years? No, it's the in-between when the mind rewires, it's the hem and haw between the glances, it's the stop space-back for punctuation. Isn't it.

I feel like I've been Rip van Winkle. I feel like after I hit the Publish Post button, I will be slumbering again. And part of me wants to just be done with it, to smirk and then go pee and go to bed, and another part wants to brush my teeth and finish reading The Night in Lisbon. And a third part of me wants to keep writing, forever and ever, never stop, never give it up, keep that art of me alive and awake and breathing. CPR for the writer's soul.

I don't know where we're going. I don't know what's out there. But I am so sick of stagnation and criticisms, so utterly bored with what it has become.

Breathe, me, is all I can think.

It has been a while. Emphasize every word and maybe you'll feel it. The world has changed, and spring threw her glorious robes over everything, blinding with flowers and the fecund fertility of full moons. I've never seen so exuberant or plentiful a spring, in this Year of the Golden Pig.

Venus in the low Western sky is the only light I can see in the night's black curtain, aside from the blue-green electronic glow of the screen. Except, of course, for the pale orbs of white Fair Bianca roses just outside the window, breathing the fragrance of exciting sweaty sweet dreams in their thousand fine petals.

The trains in the yard are moving back and forth, hundreds of miles of track, a giant Chinese puzzle of lumber and freight, I can hear the bellows rumbles and screams of machines in the switchyard.

The whole world is in motion, and there is evil and there is good, there is injustice and there is grace, and the fever pitch cannot maintain itself. When machines reach their limits and parts fail bolts sheer springs break they simply cease to work, and there is no hope and no use for expectation that a mechanical thing might have a heart which can withstand, through courage, even beyond the point of breaking.


There is something coming, a great and increasing weight which will change the world, and I feel my eyes moving inward, my ears and nerves focused to center core, the blood gathering and tissues growing, to create.

I'll be back, but less than frequently, and I make no apologies, for I prefer my dreams untainted by false visions, and I prefer my eyes filled with the light of the sky.

To the headland, nothing but the sound of wind and water. We hiked the winding muddy trail the last weekend of March.

After respite of unexpected bright winter sunshine, everyone is stating the obvious. It’s raining. The statement is void of inflection and as flat as the grey cloud ceiling, no far horizon, no gradations, no edges or rips in the fabric of this gauzy heaven. It’s just the inside of massive clouds, a calm vaporous ocean, and the rain is more mist than rain, saturating, not exactly falling. At dusk the sunlight will shine across the face of the earth, and with any luck or by the grace of God the conditions of moist air and prismatic effects of light may conspire in a rainbow.

Been sick and busy too, and last night after teaching dance I went with S to a birthday party. We drank red wine and ate decent pizza, and a full ensemble --complete with guitars and drums and saxophone and bongos and tambourine and flute too-- rock and roll band played cover songs, and I danced with my best girl. She was happy because they played the Doors, and any cover band whose one-good-eye steel-grey-hair lead singer doesn’t screw around when he’s singing Jim Morrison is a good band.

They played honky tonk, they played rockabilly and blues, they played upbeat and raucous and wake the neighbors. They even played a song dedicated to their neighbor, who always calls the cops when they practice in the garage. But it was a weeknight so we headed home after cake, and were in bed by eleven.

Today is the day of expectations, often exaggerated, rarely met. S & I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day. Our first Valentine’s Day together was spent washing skunk spray off the dog, and then a 4am trip to the emergency room because I had a kidney infection. I also tend to be thankful for his love every day.

Just on Sunday the radio played My Luv is Like a Red Red Rose and we stood hugging by the kitchen sink, arms curled around each other holding tight, and I know we both felt the best feeling in the world. It’s the tickle of joyous laughter from the center of the soul.

We don’t and haven’t ever had a plan for action, we just hang on to this magic carpet and hope we remember to spell magic correctly I guess. Where are we going now? What whim, what fancy, where are we blowing, was that me?

Hmmm, except if we’re not careful I think we’ve been caught in some traces, by some great machination, made to walk around and around in a circle like a horse in a mill, a dog on a track. But I can tell by the toss of your head it’s all going to bust loose. Don’t forget to let me grab ahold of you to hang on, because I love the way you race with your head down and ears back, short piston legs a blur, and you don’t stop until you feel the changes.

I can’t wait to get there.

Serenity filled the world this morning, ice sparkling like shattered topaz, even the tar patches filling and seaming the cracks in the decrepit streets glimmered like gold in the early sun. Facing east the light was as bright as a theater stage, shadows like black or burgundy velvet, all sounds lost in the dimensions and spatial differentials. I could have danced this morning on the river bank to the sound of the rushing water, and been happy to have been seen as a crazy fool.

There resides a craft inherent in working words. A whistle, a wink. Akin to stringing pearls, or working gemstones, care to enhance the natural beauty, what do the words intend? Each so individual, turned this way and that beneath a jeweler's lamp. Such is the running course of poetry, droplets on a spider's web.

Sometimes word craft is like farrier work on a racehorse's hooves, don't cut too deep, but make the edge clean and sharp and intended for speed.

Sometimes it's a stranger proposition, finding words to indicate the intangible, similar to the shadow and motion that blur the distinction between rock and water, or the thick white steam escaping from the black slick streets that pave the connections between dream and hope, similar to the hushing sound of falling snow.

It snowed last night and at 3am the whole world was brilliant with reflected moonlight, silent and muffled but the stars danced madly. I didn't stay outside long in my bare feet but long enough to breathe long plumes in the damp air and think about the connections between things, made much more apparent with a blanket of snow. It comes unbidden like a dream of joy or desire dressed in white, unearthly and blessed. Our house stayed warm because he made a fire and let the oak logs burn into the night, and crisp buried coals still burned this morning, ready to be rekindled.