Michigan

A specific kind of green. 

Beans and garlic and a curious deer.

Trying to grow a kiwi for 30 years.

A swing on every tree branch. 

An empty water bowl. 

1-2-3-4 who ya gonna root for?

The boys in the bus are State Champs.

Honk honk a yellow blur past.

I am only one person. I am only one person.

Way up high 

Heat lightning sky on a still night 

Later, rain

Out of the window

A crack open for the cats 

Dodging familiar faces in common places.

I just lack the capacity for being this needed.

Candid photos. Humility.

She'll sell you vibrations in a patio chair.

Wind storm collapsed the barn.

Blew the roof right into the air.

Uh-oh

Arms reaching

What's so amazing that keeps us star gazing?

Let's walk one more block

To honor the grief of what will never be.

I am only one person. 

Slow drives past the places we've lived and the places we've worked and the places that once contained our hours and years. 

A turtle on the trail.

slow down slow down

Find my eyes. Pierce my ears. 

A familiar heavy. Misplaced fear. A quiet moment. Quick bursts of soul crushing love. Tender. A lack of solid sleep & melancholy. 

A tough age. 

A true concern.

Some things do get easier. 

Remind myself of what I've learned.

Sometimes we leave and never go back. 

Sometimes we return.

shadow stains

Right at the crescendo

The part with the bells

I was thinking of Act 3 Emily 

Trying to really realize it

Forty years later and the place smells exactly the same. I wondered how often I'd stared up at that same stained glass. Taken refuge there during recess. Been embarrassed by my growling stomach during morning mass. Flipped in the hymn to those same tired songs, lead by the same proud, warbling voices.

The unchanging feels more like something arrested than something eternal, noble or true

All eyes on the middle aisle during communion parade. Everyone watching each other sideways. Is there a true prayer lifted in that entire hour? It's hard for me to imagine what even goes on in these minds. 

Any more "You must increase, I must decrease" would have had me an agitated dust speck, forever lifted to a light beam and then forced to rest again on those same worn pews. A dark ancient cave. Shadows on the wall. 

But I've seen too much. Grown too tall. 

The world got bigger, the church got small. 

the future is tech / the future is wrecked

Already

a small homogenous group 

convinced of their own importance

race to the top of an anthill

have we ever worked less like a colony?

have we ever been less like a hive?

what I wouldn't give for a queen

a softer energy

footsteps becoming leaps

I hope when they arrive

they are able to see in us

a quality 

we no longer 

seem willing 

or able to

see in ourselves

sweet

One of my tutor students gives me updates about her hamster.  She told me she'd given him an apple for a treat after school.  Knowing they're nocturnal, I asked if she'd woken him up to give him the apple.

And then we just laughed and laughed at how it would feel if someone woke us up at 2 a.m. and put an ice cream cone in our hand and was like, "here, have a treat."

5 hour flight

prospects

If the strangeness of the future world requires any amount of running, I will not be among the survivors. Even a healthy jog, I fear, will be too much to ask. 

I saw plenty today though, on my walk. The future survivors. All shapes and sizes too. Some with weighted vests. Preteens with ill fitting shoes clomping along in front of their mother. Some impressively fast, some holding whole conversations through earbuds while they blur by. Others just an A for effort. 

All of it makes me parched. I sit down to watch it all move by me for a minute. The sun came out after a morning of rain and it's like the first color scene in the Wizard of Oz. Come out, come out.

A belligerent man stands further down the path, blasting music from his phone and screaming "you can do it, put your ass into it," to every runner who passes by. Bopping and sputtering, on a journey of his own. He'll probably survive too, I think, a little annoyed. 

Somewhere in between, I sit with the masses. Neither scrappy nor strong. Sullen. In my head. Achy legs after just a few days of walks. Requiring hydration and at least 9 hours of sleep. Goners in a million future scenarios. Here for now. 

Wonder what it's like to be able run past it all without stopping. Wonder what it's like to have the world run past you, ignoring you intentionally no matter how loud you shout. 

all systems

was going to

meditate .  finish citizenship application .  reach out . start strength training . budget better . put effort into marketing . meal prep. write a letter . edit those photos . consider other sources of income . read those saved articles . plan future trips . touch base . commit really commit to a regular art habit . save for retirement . start a book club . clean the blinds . learn a language . start putting care into my aesthetic . 

but

head cold . someone else needed something . rain . dishes and laundry . trade war . delayed flight . the irreversibility of time . dental emergency . it is calm and cozy and known here in this small apartment . repulsed by what social media has done and is doing to us . cats . lack of space . screens . aging . weather events . lack of funds . needed a nap . surveillance capitalism . a likely recession . out of social energy . trash tv . the possibility of WWIII . why

...............................................

Falling asleep to Joscha Bach telling me to stare at my face in a mirror until it disappears.  A few weeks ago I saw my name spelled out so many times it became utterly strange that it had anything to do with me. The letters all lined up together like they'd been my whole life, but fell over at the slightest nudge, attached to nothing.  

And that outside something calls.  That floating.  That knowing.  That going.  

everything else:

programming

the sum of it

Some comfort in talking to someone who is also following it closely. 

Some relief in talking to someone who is not following it closely. 

Some horror in talking to someone who is also following closely it but is coming to an entirely different conclusion.

Tuesday

A third seems inevitable, I think.  

I contemplate this in the sandbox, decorating cakes.  

Hard to imagine what it might look like. The first floats vaguely in the mind. The second more clearly, of course. I've been to the museum. Read those books, always imagining it was quite a long time before when really, grandma was 16 years old when it started. 

(How many of us can name all eight great-grandparents, let alone name a single thing about them?)

So this is what it feels like.

I remember hearing how even in the second, it wasn't as clear-cut as you might assume with the privilege of hindsight.  There may have been people, even in your own family, that thought what would now seem unthinkable things. 

A breeze catches my face in its hands and I think this must be one of the things the astronauts miss.  What must it be like to see it all from a distance, small and vulnerable and precious and almost nothing?

Will it start on a day?  Is it happening already? It is Tuesday and it is hard to know. What will Tuesdays be like when words are weaponized but also hollowed of all meaning? When faith begins to more boldly conflate virtue with violence?  The pen has dropped and no one knows who will write the next chapter.

Small bird on a bare branch.  I wonder if, months from now, I will be able to look at even a small bird with such polite wonder.  Will everything change?

I imagine this time the fear will be more to do with numbers.  Energy.  No, not crystals.  A more literal power.  So how do you really prepare to live with the lights off? How do you get ready to do without that tie that web that net that grid that unavoidable convenience that at some point began to bind us all?

Sign out.  Look around.  Write it down. 

what it will be like

The days will start to get lighter, little by little. 

You will start to feel the winter 

wait 

below your layers. 

You will feel the tension of near spring as something starts to stir beneath the ground. 

You will notice sparkles in the frost. 

You will make eye contact with people you pass on the sidewalk. 

Seeking.

You will plan a little but mostly continue on in the little habits and rhythms that eventually become a day. A week. Your life. Your one life! 

You've got roots in the cold, cold ground. 

There is another place that is nowhere 

where folks will be checking out for good. 

Won't blink for eight whole days. Even years!

There is a constant wailing and gnashing of keys.

Blue sky replaced by the blue glow of tragedy and a choir of rage singing, incessantly, on

loss loss loss

fear fear fear

Don't look 

awaystayherestayhere

Hard to believe that you share the same planet:

peace of mind &

piece of mind.

There really won't be 

room for you both. 

facts

Cats do not know it is Christmas. 

They don't know about the little baby or the endless exchange of currency. No hopes dashed.  No busy stores and no need to reach out and no invitations to accept or decline and no special clothes. 

Cats do not bother with any of that.

divinity

a quiet day to see what might be

events on the horizon

a garbled changing frame from before

but here in this soft evening light

I am somewhere outside of time and need

expecting nothing

noticing more

this strange, true beating human heart

bright, enormous

divine 

as seen

Something happened today.

Right after I heard, 

I fumbled with the remote

And paced around the room

And felt a strange bodily shock

Even as my mind was stirring doubt.

Is that blood even real? 

Why is it so red? 

Why isn't there more of it? 

When he popped right back up and said

"Wait wait wait" 

And then pumped his first and mouthed the words

"Fight fight fight"

I shuddered at the suggestion

And wondered why

He'd only mouthed

The loudest part.

The world did not stop,

Not really.

Not like it did before 

There were so many ways

To see.

We moved along our day,

Redirected our hours to 

Our own private joys and tragedies

And watched something else on TV. 

what is happening

What is happening is Matthew in China is telling me about how his science class experiment got cancelled because a bunch of kids got sick from the fertilizer.

And the trees are just blossoming pink outside- last year it seemed to only last a week before summer arrived full-on, or at least the blooms were gone. 

Yesterday, Scream Queen classics were mentioned in a book I'm reading. Last night I dreamt I was being stalked by a killer. I've never even seen those films. 

And across the world there are unspeakable atrocities occurring that I am too gutless or boundaried to expose myself to,

But plenty are.

And there's an ALL CAPS multiple-posts-a-day frenzied number who are mad at me for caring so little and for carrying on so blythely and how dare I take a walk or piddle away hours on trash tv and how dare I NOT USE MY VOICE.

And right now I am telling Matthew he's a vocabulary superstar and great focus and do you want to use our last few minutes for vocabulary pictionary and it's ok, you can be the artist. I will just keep guessing. 

what you do

Looking at my own tooth in my own hand 

-A thing where it should not be-

On a night when I happen to be home alone

With no one to scream the shock to

Means whispering oh my god oh my god

Quietly

Staring at the small piece of glass

Then rushing to see the gaping hole where it used to be

Wondering when, exactly,

It stopped being me.

at the end of a tough year

I absorb sadness

(the soaking kind)

Like a sponge

Too full to wring

What is a little more

To add to the end of

An unfixed dripping

Tidal

Swing

Unanchored

Stream of months

Porous and poor

Another year

more comfort than courage

When it starts getting darker early

Layers and thicker socks

And by 7pm I'm ready to give in

Those liminal minutes

That feel like an actual pull

And my body feels heavy and far away

My mind deliciously blank

In those moments I am fearless

I am most ready

For nothing

years of it

Everyone got wider and a bunch of people got divorced and no one is really saying it in so many words but wow this has been a challenging decade and it's been awhile since anyone's felt especially hopeful and there's no real end in sight but we're too tired, now, to manage anxiety spirals so this mild depression can almost be mistaken for calm. 

bike camp

I went away to bike camp for the weekend where most everyone was either ten years older or ten years younger than me.

The older folks wanted to talk about bikes. The younger ones wanted to talk about AI and revolution. 

turn turn turn

first infection

while I was infected for the first time,

the world mostly kept on

while I mostly slept for hundreds of hours 

and took three days to finish a movie.

I read nothing meaningful and thought nothing important

and had no energy to care or worry about health or wellness at all

(except for a few anxiety spirals that sent me right to sleep).

a bunch of people got shot in America and 

artificial intelligence continued to advance at a rapid rate

and no one cared much or knew what to do if they did.

that's all.

more or less.

nostalgia

What a thing to crave- 

catastrophe.

When days shrink to surviving and little else. 

Congratulations due for getting through.

The simplicity was an odd, unexpected comfort. 

Whereas now, 

in some quiet in between or after,

the questions announce themselves again.

Regrets and wondering at purpose.

Looking in the mirror for the first time, maybe, in years.

Wasn't it somehow easier, then?

In surprising ways?

In 2020 when I saw no one and sang the Cranberries

Empty

in a hot shower twice a day.

Took two hour walks to get to a mailbox and 

swept up rollypollies, 

heaps of them dead at the door,

every morning.

I didn't feel old or complacent and

it wasn't a question of having settled 

or having lost my spark 

or much of anything related to a self at all.

I was nervous about the world,

alive in it,

and little else.

oh, to be

the panic, twice

It's been, what, a week or so now and it seems distant again-

unless I check the news.

Twice in the span of a few weeks,

looking down to see the words ACTIVE SHOOTER

alive on my phone.

Once was the first thing I saw in the morning,

and I stumbled out of the room mumbling about it in a hushed, incomprehensible tone, doom-scrolled for ten minutes before the picture became clear, and then promptly fell back asleep.

"What were you saying about his school?" he texted later.

"OMG" he replied.

Hoax.  

It had been a hoax phone call.  But the kids had been locked down and dismissed and they parents remained actively rattled.

The panic came back to me in strange ways throughout the day.  

Needing to pause to catch my breath at odd times.  Muscles tightened for no reason.

All that, and I was steps removed and an entire country away.

Imagine.

The second I was attempting to make my first carrot tartare,

carrots cooked and ready to be diced

chives and capers-

(the way I'd been craving capers-

just the thought could elicit a physical response)

and it was all coming together.  

But this time it was not a phone call

and there were real bodies emptied

and no followup outcome article

because the shooter was still at large

and people were hiding in their apartment showers

and new information was not being shared 

but conspiracies were all over screens

and in between dicing carrots I was 

refreshing my phone

and reaching out to a friend who worked at the site.

She was not at work, but home,

grinding egg shells for her worm compost

and exchanging frantic texts with me about

the strange disconnect of this

very domestic moment

in a terrifying world.

xmas

gosh the holidays hurt with expectation

hopes wrapped too tightly

santa is not real

not in the way we talk now

and no one has any idea what they are doing

and everyone's too busy to ask

wouldn't the magic

come more honestly

if it had less to do with

this

stuff

actual

People were here that aren't now. 

Celeste. 

Theresa.

Who knows the names to come. 

I remember a cacophony of gentle and unkind things I thought and said at times- thinking we would go on being people together forever I suppose.  The beauty I witnessed in them.  The things I judged.  The weight of that now.  How heavy the petty can be. 

It's just not time yet.

What is any of this, actually?

done

I need to tell you something in a hushed tone

about the man in the wheelchair

with only one shoe

hunched over 

openly weeping in the rain

and how I walked by him.  

What do we do?  What can we do? 

How is it that a whole crowd of us can stand and wait for the light to change and pretend not to notice a human being openly weeping only ten feet away?

What must it feel like to be the person in that chair- invisible.  Worse than invisible. 

And at the same time- 

What can be done?  What could I possibly do?  And if I started doing something, would it ever end?