Month: September 2006

This Morning

08-08-2006 15.JPG (Outsider art from Asahikawa Public library)

This Morning

I dreamt my man held my hand against his warm green sweater
The man in jean shorts I share a bus stop with finally mouthed good morning
The brick storefront I stand in front of just had a silver spiral door knob installed
Fog covered the fields, enough to cover the tops of the heads of humans
Our bus flew over the foothills of the Isle of Skye
And, finally, a man I voted for grinned from the frontpage, fist in the air,
And the loser who played dirty games was nowhere to be found
A grey squirrel raced past with a hawk feather in its mouth,
scuttered up an oak and twirled it in his paws.
A bumper sticker proclaimed ‘I Was Born to Bowhunt’
A young man whistled so well people stopped to take pictures
The Hare Krishna rang their bells and beat their drums,
Hare Bol Hare Hare Hare Bol Hare Hare.
Here is Minneapolis, then, with late summer days that make life sing.
From the east through the pines the morning sun blesses
with its occasional bands of light and mist
whoever glances up from the sidewalk.
I am at the edge, a witness to the beautiful bazaar.

Lovely Luv Ordinary Muse

Hero of the laugh and the now

Post author By rebecca
Post date September 21, 2006
No Comments on Hero of the laugh and the now

Well, as the world around me begins to speed up and populate the minutes with complexity, I need to slow down and remind myself in a mantra that ‘stress around me doesn’t have to equal stress inside me,’ and if I can maintain a sense of humor about this chaotic and eclectic circus called life, I will not only find a path toward fulfillment but also toward lightness and wonder.

Since I don’t always do this well, as a human sieve who pours others’ energies swirling about me into my being until they turn into my own, I thank goodness for my husband and his sense of humor. If we are all superheroes for one thing or another, then he is the hero of the laugh and the now.

Ordinary Muse Respite

Being at the edges

I love graveyards, though maybe many people find that odd. I like walking where I feel the bones and spirits are resting, reading the headstones and imagining the singular life of its occupant.

I once did a research project about an early turn-of-the-century graveyard in Alabama, how it grew into being an idealized community of the powerful people’s afterworld (basically replicating what they tried to achieve on earth) and how the poor and forgotten were relegated to the potter’s field (unmarked except for sunken squares of grass which were slightly a darker green), usually at the base of a hill.

The ‘prominent’ members (a.k.a the rich dudes) placed their plots on the hill, facing East, to be the first to see the sun smooch and glint the trumpets, and topped their bones with air-piercing grand obelisks, their wives given smaller (at times miniature versions of the men’s) headstones, and usually feminized with flowers, angels, and vines – to keep them put, I surmised. It surprised me to discover that some prominent families buried their ‘slaves’ in their family plots as well. Did these enslaved people, and later the economically-enslaved servants, get a say on that, did their families? I wondered how such a scenario played out in real life, among real people.

But it was the potter’s field and those rough simple headstones -often made illegible by time – and some made of poured cement inthe more recent years -that intrigued me the most. They were pushed to the outer, lower fringes, the western areas of the graveyard. To me their silencing meant they had the most to say and definitely the least written about them. Well, I have more stories to tell about graveyards, but for now will let it rest. But being at the edges, that is where I like to stand and think, in life as I walk toward the great long sleep.