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by Alyssa
1. Hummingbirds have discovered my hummingbird feeder, and also the red trumpet vine climbing up the pillar on my back porch. They hover and hum and buzz off like bullets.
2. Katie Gray is a my great good friend, and her visit reminded me. It’s hard to find a friend, but you keep hoping and looking because when it comes to you, it comes like the first days of spring, or the first days of fall. We’ve only been friends for a few years, but already we have grown beyond the women we were, and are now the women we are, together. I’m rich beyond words.
3. The garden is dying back, and I’ve killed Marshall’s rosemary, the one I was babysitting. Eff. But this means that the back yard is in transition, and it’s kind of exciting to think about what its life will be through the fall and winter … return of the fire-pit?
4. Jordan said we couldn’t talk about a wedding until we were engaged, but I don’t know! I want to talk about things like, where it would be, if it were to happen! And who exactly would be involved! And what kind of wine exactly we should get!
5. The little white bird chimes that Katie J. brought me from Colombia are so lovely in the breeze. Chinkling and tinging and falling in so perfectly with all the other small & thrilled sounds that are settling on the day.
6. I’m playing tennis, now, and riding bikes, and making a quilt. And fighting powerful urges to tell everyone about how awesome I am at these things. (Succumbed!)
7. Seven is the mystical number. I’m meeting the changes of the season with a lot of excitement, and a little anxiety. My older sister is getting married, a younger sister is starting college, and another younger sister is considering moving to California for a while. In an effort to get reins on the changes, I’ve written lists, hoping each bulleted entry will tie it to a more solid ground. I make goals, I check off goals, I journal and write poems and run through the days with each unremembered and unrecorded possibility flowing behind me like smoke. After a long spring and summer of false starts and aborted attempts, it feels like a bridge is unrolling before me.
8. And eight is divisible by four, which is the number of days Marshall and I will be camping out in Winfield, listening to bluegrass and Irish folk and flatpicker-virtuosos, in a few days. We got a blow-up sleeping pad for me yesterday, and with that dazzlingly luxuriant possession we are launching ourselves into the heart of camping weather, into the Smokies and the Blue Ridge Mountains and a cramped campsite in the center of the Walnut Valley Festival land-rush.
A mourning dove, walking across the triangle bed in my backyard, just stretched its tail out and then its wings, one at a time, with a little shrug. Almost like a person. The fact that I noticed this, and that it transported me, is a sign that taking today off was a great idea.
I got up, had frosted shredded mini wheats, and went out to work in the garden, thinking about how much I wanted audible words from God. I worked the soil in the long bed over, then the soil in the triangle bed, and edged the latter with some beat-up old bricks. Suddenly the dirt patches have become beds, and everything is growing so fast, so fast. Two peppers, thyme, and a row of cilantro are going into that triangle bed, all proper, now, with bricks. I kept breaking up families of bulbs and cutting worms in two, but that’s ok, because I’m bringing something new into the ground.
Marshall’s grandfather isn’t doing great, but is doing better, and while Marshall thought of death last night, I thought of it, too. How easy it would be to believe that all the losses of childhood, growing into branches and trees of loss the older we get, are the final words we have. On life. I finished HP & the Half-Blood Prince last night, which is largely why I was thinking about death. Dumbledore, the great wizard, on whom the war seems to depend, is dead, and the shock waves of that sudden and meaningless loss ricochet even in the air … something about this kind of blow, this kind of haemorrage, is familiar, and we’re so afraid (afraid afraid afraid) that we write these kinds of stories for ourselves because something in us knows that it’s true. That life will soon be forgotten by death. And of course I thought, then, of the Emmaus travelers, the “we had hoped he was the one” … and I read Jesus’ words like I was dying of thirst. Read them this morning, when I am more sure of life, that the darkness can’t overcome the light, “can’t comprehend it.”
I feel like I completely lost my blogging touch, which is why I haven’t been posting much, but I felt like I could do it today. Also a sign that taking the day off was astonishingly brilliant… and now for a beer.
it’s changing something in me, to see my garden growing outside the kitchen window. or I’m changing, enough to see the garden growing outside the kitchen window. it’s strange to have become a person who’s kind of afraid to talk to her own blog. but I will say here that I bought a “Shiner Family Reunion” at Food City last night, and I would do it again. also that God is saying psalm 139 in my ear. also that Marshall is a good one, and I’m making art, and my back porch is a place where God is and a place where God is is a place I love to be. and also, you know how my antigen count was 238.5 back in the day? well, I got the results back from the lab today and my six-month CA-125 is 7.9. just so we can all know. and be amazed, and feel like today is another day that God thought we should live in.
I’ve started to daydream again about journals, after a long drought, and you’ll never guess what. Yes, I am indeed resurrecting the Grey Goose … partly because Marshall just read A Severe Mercy for the first time and we visited the Vanauken’s church in Virginia a couple of weekends ago, and partly because I saw the category “Grey Goose Journals” in my Etsy shop so sadly empty and I realized it did not have to be sadly empty. I’ve been inspired by Chloe’s sister’s fabric pieced birds … and think I’m going to try and piece these birds, which I found on the very first page of Google images: “grey goose bird.” This will the be the first book I’ve done as art in a while … I’m so, so excited. It will have to be expensive because I’m not sure I’ll want to sell it.
The problem here is durability. If I were gluing these pieces to a canvas board, all’s well; since I have to sew them to a book, which is at least meant to be opened, closed, crammed, thrown, hit, kissed & caressed, I have to come up with some fairly practical methods which will more than likely cramp my style. You can lift your glass and toast me, here. It will be an endeavour. In fact, please lift your glasses, please call me and take me out for a glass, let’s all have a glass.
