7.31.2014...

Three little boys are circling the schoolhouse, one with a walking stick, one on a little bike, and one directing the other’s traffic. They are free to roam Two Dot as I was free to roam Milton in the 1950's. There seems to be no need for supervision, for crossing guards, for planned activities, for door locks, for alarm systems, or for turn signals.  

7.30.2014...

I just finished Mack Reynolds’ Ultima Thule, a futuristic account of interplanetary exploration/occupation. In the story, groups go out with their ideals, take a planet for their own, and endeavor to live within their belief system. They are all looking for the Ultima Thule, that place beyond what is known, with a desire to attain “unattainable” goals. It is westward expansion on a different playing field. No matter what the frontier, no matter what the goal, both are bound to be altered, subverted, evolved, and ultimately unrecognizable.

7.29.2014...

Language is how we move from private silence to shared story. – Mary Clearman Blew                     The elastic of separations and reunions have become like stretching muscles making my relationship supple and strong. We each experience things , we tell each other the stories, we work to make the telling good. And thus we stay together even when we are apart. 

7.28.2014...

I drove home from the airport on two hours of freeway, highway, and dirt road. John was back in Seattle before I arrived. The schoolhouse unbelievably quiet; two plates and two coffee cups in the dish drainer made me catch my breath. Ten days before both cups are needed again. Wake up and good night phone calls will have to do… forty-two years of spark.

7.27.2014...

I am still thinking about Isbell’s lyrics. Like all country songs he writes of love and heartache, trouble and redemption… of finding a night’s peace in someone’s arms. But he also writes about personal responsibility when he sings; And the story’s only mine to live and die with / And the answer’s only mine to come across. Sometimes it takes a good country song to easily spell out the simple truth.

7.26.2014...

Waking up in the Red Ants Pants Music Festival Colony after last night’s Jason Isbell set I am still thinking about the clean cut “boy” from Alabama singing about things that are not always so innocent. Time went by and I left and I left again / Jesus loves a sinner, but the highway loves a sin / My Daddy told me I believe he told me true / That the right thing is always the hardest thing to do.

7.25.2014...

Cashen and Sabin flew home yesterday. I stood at the gate and cried even though I was ready for them to go. Sometimes tears just show up. They show up because I love my grandsons, because John is leaving for Seattle in a few days, because I am tired, because it was a long hard year at work and because in this very moment the sky is impossibly blue. I am not ashamed.