Spring walk around the neighborhood

A little brunette girl stops at the corner across the street to stare at me and says "hello" at the moment she realizes I know she is staring. I meet up with an acquaintance who I know from all sorts of different things. She tells me about her graduate degree studies. She finally reveals her age, something I've kind of wondered about for a few years now. A young teacher and a young girl smile as they walk down the center of the street, not quite together, but not apart either. They both say hello. The man in the teal Ford pick up smiles and waves. He wears sunglasses and I have no idea who he is, but I wave back. Dora the explorer action figure lies fading on the sidewalk as she has for the last several weeks when I've walked by this corner. At the library a man sits on the bench with the Mark Twain statue, his young toddling daughter banging the literary genius in the head with a toy. The man sitting on his porch nods at me as I walk by. The jogger breathes out "hi" as he sweats past me and I wonder who he might be.

Why not love the Wind?

It is a memory.
It lifts what we’ve left behind.
It shows us what we’ve discarded.
It belittles our attempts at physical perfection.
It reminds us that we are naked underneath our clothes.
It reminds us of why we have eyelashes.
It makes us gritty.
It forces the earth into our hair and our teeth.
It gives the earth back to us in whatever state we’ve left it.
It makes me love scarves.
It reminds us that everything is in motion.
It reminds us not to stand still.
It makes us thankful for our own girth.
It’s a little like an atmospheric embrace.
It’s a little like an airy kiss.
It gives us reasons to laugh at others.
It gives us reasons to laugh at ourselves.
It reminds truckers that they don’t own the road.
It reminds cars that they don’t own the earth.
It reminds us to spit. It moves the world one granule at time.
It unearths secrets.
It carries scents.
It carries seeds.
It makes its own song.
It taught us to whistle.

Guest Blogger

Kitten Dreams

I told the small-footed dreamer,
Your hopes are kittens.
Do not pussyfoot around.
They grow into strays
clawing at each other,
begging the small-footed
maven for sour milk.

--Eleanor Abernathy

Elanor Abernathy holds an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a J.D. from Yale Law School. Ms. Abernathy juggled the trials and travails of two careers for years until alcohol and pain medication forced her to reexamine her priorities. After losing both her licenses, she turned to therapy and discovered her niche as a cat lover. When she is not writing, she collects stray cats. She is founder and editor of the periodical Alley Cat Voyeur which intimately and respectfully examines the lives of stray cats.

I was cleaning house when suddenly the day outside was perfect

I hope this one doesn't offend you. I saw millions of grasshoppers today. I wish it were an exaggeration. It was a beautiful day regardless of your species.

I need to return to this spot for better pictures. The bus is abandoned much like the swing set, much like many places along the rural roads anywhere on the plains. Something about the openness and the exposure that is familiar. It's so quiet, but in the stillness is the searching for lost laughter.

Camp Kinney or Finney County Game Refuge. I thought you might like to see the place with a little bit of water collected below the dam.

I can't help it. Calves are adorable. There was a lot of mooing associated with this stop.

Cleaning

Betsy helped me organize my spare room, which is a task that I never did. Not when I moved into my house, not ever. So you can imagine what becomes of a room neglected like that.

During this task I ended up with several random sheets of things that I had written, not for public consumption, but because I try to get things out of me by writing, but I tend to be a pack rat.

I had a couple of untitled lists which after I write this blog entry will likely be shredded. The lists had no explanation or title, which makes one wonder what united the items, 24 on the first list and 7 on another. I figured out what the list of 24 was and I thought I would share a few of them. This one has to do with things that I had learned that year:

9. Things that I considered risky aren't really all that risky.
12. Friends of friends are awesome.
15. Babies are a good way to mark time.
17. I really am a pretty girl.
19. Most people will never realize that I am not telling what I think.
20. Hope requires more work than despair.
24. My personality can be overwhelmed.

The list of 7 for which I have not figured out a uniting theme:

1. I really like the taste of breadfruit.
3. When I bought my purple couch, I was looking for a red one.
4. I pretend to be less paranoid than I am for fear of being accused of being paranoid.
6. The most fun I've ever had dancing was with a cowboy who spoke no English.

I've heard some requests that I blog more regularly, but I haven't really had much to say. I may cheat for some blog entries this way. Sharing what I found on little scraps of paper so that it feels acceptable to pitch that scraps of paper. (Thank God for my new Molskine.)

Pictures from my summer vacation

Jedidiah Smith Redwood Forest. August, 2009. That's me at the end of the Boy Scout Trail.

This is what I feel like inside when I'm worrying about things. These trees are old. Some are over a thousand years old. Despite the vast age difference, this tree and I found that we had a lot in common. I gave the tree my email address and he said he would find me on facebook.

I waited an hour for this creature to quit hogging the trail and I finally just went around him like all of the rude Californians were doing. I asked him if he needed any help and he acted like he didn't hear me. Anyway, I hadn't met too many snails in my life and this guy made me glad. He was pretty, but he could have at least acknowledged me.

This picture is a little bit dark, but I'm sure you see the face in the tree too. Every time I tried to get someone else to look he would go back to being just a regular tree. He laughed at me for a long time, but I snapped a picture without him knowing. Ha, ha Stick-Boy. Everyone knows about your face.

So if you didn't know, Jedediah Smith died in Kansas near the Cimarron River. There's a marker at Wagon Bed Springs near Ulysses. The historical kiosk at the Jedidiah Smith Forest said that he died near Fargo Springs, Kansas. I had never heard of Fargo Springs, but I found it through the ridiculousness of the internet.

Hello? May I ask who's calling?

I stopped to take pictures of the phone in the highway. I left it there because I felt it was a sign, but that it wasn't my sign because I hadn't asked for any sort of sign. I was not contemplating something important when I came upon the phone receiver. I imagine someone in the future coming upon the telephone in the road and changing the course of his life. It is possible.
Should I call her back? Should I answer the phone next time he calls? Should I call about that kitten? If God exists, shouldn't he leave phone receivers around when you need to talk to him?

Limitless possibilities of what it might mean, really. And maybe it was my sign, but I won't recognize its meaning for a long, long time.