Happy November!

"Puppy," by Jeff Koons, at Guggenheim entrance Bilbao, Spain. With Mom.

HANDS DOWN

I
I hang my arm out the window for air.
Empty of paper I am a kettle of fresh steam.
The art of darkness is in my hand like a love switch, and so.
I will never choose shoes over sex.
Like my thumb over a pencil stub
a man pets my blank words, talks to my baby language.
Only three fingers are punctured, droplets in red, so.
Why disturb the night with our undressing?

II
Lost in a crush of bodies I sit next to this evening,
blow kisses to the purses piled inside a coat rack.
We are—here on a white March—only a bit more lively than
our addresses. Conversation is bourbon and lost keys.
Everyone finds a piece of themselves in bed each morning. Not one
to be alone I slept in the coat closet, counted the buttons
like daisy petals, over and over. He loves me.

Why I Went to Spain

Frank Gehry's Guggenheim museum, Bilbao Spain. There's another reason I went to Spain as well, stay tuned...

"The beauty, the beauty, I could marry it!"

For those of us born with the name "Mishel," the ocean is the happiest place in the world.

Three heavenly days in Hermosa Beach, CA with the Lovely Monsters, Taya (7) and Campbell (9). It's been too long since witnessing a sunset over the Pacific.

The ocean was warm and a glittering green with funky thick waves that gave you the thrill of being at the top of a curl thinking "uh-oh, here I go" but then the weight of it kept you bouncing on top like a joy ride. Total heaven. Above, a shot of T and C digging to China and if you look hard you can see a wave forming behind the seafoarm.

When Campbell and I were in the water he kept proclaiming "The beauty, the beauty, I could marry it!" Another time we were walking on the beach and passed a clump of kelp. He pointed to it and said, "Pulp of the ocean." I immediately stole it and slipped it in a poem--with the originator's approval.

Taya, admittedly, prefers to parade around like a slave-labor model than hit the surf. I'll give her two years to get over her fear of the "green room," which in surfer's lingo is the inside curl of a wave.

When I go out with the kids, people usually assume I'm their mom. One time I couldn't get Taya to walk to the beach with me so I picked her up and slung her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. A man nearby said, "Nice going Mom!" Taya whispered to me, "He called you Mom. You're not my Mom." To which I replied, "Just give me this."

Here's a poem Campbell and I wrote together, mainly Campbell; I just transcribed it.

The treasure chest that lies in
the ocean sparkles with loneliness.
The trays at lunchtime smash
into each other in the food assembly line.
A boy in the street has no-
where to go. The rain is filled
with silver. Wishes blow through
the town. Everything can be
done in life.

Thoughts on Happiness from the Gulag

Here's to the life of Russian writer and dramatist Alexander Solzhenitsyn who died this week. He won a Nobel prize for literature in 1990 for "The Gulag Archipelago", three volumes of work that outed the Soviet "gulag" system, which Sozhenitsyn personally experienced. With prestigious award in hand he was unceremoniously exiled from the Soviet Union.

Despite his struggles, he gives us these great words to live, struggle and strive by:

"A man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy and nothing can stop him."

--A.Solzhenitsyn (1918 - 2008)

A River, the Falls and Wallabies!

"Why did you ride 70 miles?" Liz asked me. Here's why:

There's a home a handful of miles from the falls that has a bunch of wallabies ... yes, Rats from Down Under in our back yard.

And the beautiful road home ...

Moonrise swim and the Meaning of Life

Two days shy of a full moon, Alexie, Gentry, Matt and I took dusk pre-dinner swim off my dock. I think we were in at approx. 8:18pm and the guys headed off toward Mt Rainier. Alexie and I followed but ended up doing sidestroke and talking about life and impasses and money and what matters until we had to take off our goggles to swim through the dusk glow (it vibrates a little, you know?). And Mt Rainier turned apricot-pink and then the stinkin' moon was full-like and right on the horizon, and we watched it go from white to egg-yolk orange. And, we basically sculled for about an hour.

Then we got together a huge carnivorous feast and ate our hearts out and my grill had her maiden bbq ride.

Here's a poem I referred to during our meaning-of-life Lake WA scull-session.

LATE FRAGMENT

And did you get what
you wanted form this life, even so?
I did.

And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

--Raymond Carver

Here's a great quote from Maya Angelou that is so full of meaning and wisdom that the font can only be printed in this teeny tiny size:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Don't Pity the Fool, Love It

This is from Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology.

"Declare amnesty for the part of you that you don’t love very well. Forgive that poor sucker. Hold its hand and take it out to dinner and a movie. Tactfully offer it a chance to make amends for the dumb things it has done. And then do a dramatic reading of this proclamation by the playwright Theodore Rubin: "I must learn to love the fool in me--the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool."

It's for Scorps but really--something for everyone here. And the Fool, in tarot according to a Web site I looked up, is about infinite possibilities and going out into the world and enjoying the experience. Just pay attention and don't get so lost in your dreams or you may fall over a cliff. Ouch.