City Mouse, Country House
Grace and I just returned to the city. For six days we sat on the screened-in porch of A’s house and watched May explode. Oh, I thrifted and wrote and she chased bugs and sunspots. Definitely I tromped through meadows, woodland paths in so many shades of green that some appeared gold and some appeared indigo.
But mostly we sat still and drank it all in.
When I stayed in Hudson before, I never ventured off the paths of A’s land. But since Truro’s mermaid woods I’ve gotten much bolder about venturing into uncharted territory. I’m less afraid of getting lost, and trust the sun even in the middle of the forest. Continue Reading →
Tesseracts and Tree Nymphs
Up before the sun so I can properly greet her when she arrives. Settled on a screened-in country porch with coffee, permakitten and I sniffing that sweet, sweet air. Grateful, so grateful. The birds singing a song so true I don’t want to interrupt but am feeling Joni strongly today. (Is she close to slipping away entirely? is she simply the goddess of early morning melody?) Ladies of the Canyon is added to their symphony and then–
Grace doing her yoga mistress poses–she’s got those down–me reaching toward that peach and pink horizon, hands in the air, toes in the wet grass.
It’s still Taurus season, and I’m upstate at A’s as of yesterday. I needed to be put in my place by wood nymphs, birds, big blue sky.
It got hot so fast this week in New York. In general, my favorite city has never been keen on interstices. Fur hats one day, bare shoulders the next–tempers rising, horns honking. So it was that the glorious kerfuffle of a NYC summer boiled over in the course of one day. Continue Reading →
While You Were Snooping
Once when I had been dating a man for a few months and it was going really, really well– flowers at my door and long kisses at subway entrances and those unmistakable rosy cheeks–he read my journal when I wasn’t home.
I actually understood the impulse. When I’d been younger, I’d been the type to ransack everyone’s drawers. I never took anything; I just liked to know the whole playing field. Being intuitive meant I could fill in most gaps myself, but I preferred access to all information. Then one day I read a letter to a boyfriend’s roommate. It was from a guy with whom I’d enjoyed a heavy, unconsummated flirtation during college. He was a Marlboro Man sort from Montana with long legs and a craggy uneven smile that was just rare enough that you felt it in your toes when he beamed it at you. This was back in the early 90s, when people still hand-lettered long missives to each other. (I still do; it’s so private and sexy.) This cowboy had written to my boyfriend’s roommate about a woman he had just begun dating. She’s tall, she’s blonde, she’s funny, he’d written. She’s just like Lisa Rosman except she’s not a crazy bitch. Continue Reading →