Reprise, rewritten, updated

From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things

Unchained bits, released from the bonds of eternity, flailing and burning their way through the universe, past our eyes, but visible if we but keep eyes wide open, staring outward, staring upward. Sometimes staring slightly off-center of what we want to see.  Looking at stars is like that - sometimes you cannot look directly at a star to really see it.  Will we see a death of elements, or a burgeoning of life encompassed in light, a changing of matter into energy? Will we see the souls that stars become, the souls of people long gone, long passed from here, now there, so far up there?

I have a nicely aged six foot cedar fence that runs across the back of my house. The backyard extends around 25 feet from the back of the house to the fence; the fence’s length along the back of the lot is close to 100 feet. The back fence, it keeps things out and keeps my dogs in. The north side connector fence is a cyclone fence, see-through and lacking in privacy.

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out, And to whom I was like to give offence. Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, That wants it down.

So I flew into Austin Wednesday night from Seattle. The air lifted me as I took off. And as I landed here, I found I haven't yet touched the ground. You think I’m describing that seriously fine feeling of power, force, and speed on takeoff? Or that thud, squeal, brake, screech, ping, you can unfasten your seatbelts, we have arrived adrenaline rush on landing, MD-80 style, Texas-style? Nah. I’m talking about the rarified atmosphere surrounding the person who can afford to fly. One who flies. I’m not referring to the departure from the airport, or the release of the plane from earth as it catapults into the sky. I’m remarking on buoyance of spirit. I just realized I have set anchor too long.

Who we are, what we are, and the way we step into each day can be buffered by an insulation we replenish from our own pasts. I talk of that outside emotional coating formed around the soul, molded from ancestral stories and the exploits of relatives, or compacted by individuals and friends who’ve made a personal impact. It’s curious how one’s own small anecdotal history can formatively clothe an ego against hardship or against stress, or the occasional failure. At the toughest times, if one can develop that ancestral equity, the past plays as an inadvertent melody; a faint, quaint little tune whistling in your head that soothes when things go rough. The tune of the past can be heard during those moments when it might seem no one else is there to hear, or help.

Just listen awhile.

Style—go ahead talking about style.   You can tell where a man gets his style just as you can tell where Pavlowa got her legs or Ty Cobb his batting eye. Carl Sandburg – Chicago Poems

A lotta style. A sexy Soviet secret agent dancer, an old-time movie-gangster glamour moll, the thousand years Scottish-glen mystery woman. An over-the-top beauty with enormous sex appeal and the best legs evahhhh in the business has left the stage.

Here I go. Hot button item. Why am I repeating myself?  

Why open up wounds and unanswered questions and misunderstandings and anger, to throw it all into the arena again for debate? Women’s rights are human rights everywhere.

There is one thing that should be perfectly clear. If you understand that women’s bodies are their own, do not vote for John McCain.

It goes like this
the fourth the fifth,
the minor fall and the major lift...

(Normally, I don’t like to retrace old ground. But the topic of human rights, women’s rights, pro-choice, pro-life, whatever your favorite tagline – is such a godd**m muddle for so many voters who don’t have the time, the backstory on the candidate, or the inclination to understand who it is they are voting for. So I’m throwing up an issue I’ve written about before, just a hair over two years ago to this day, revised it and dusted it off a bit, and added some newly relevant links.)

(crossposted at Docudharma)

I'm not so careful with second chances. I've had a few and I've made a mess of most of 'em. And I've lost things over the years; lost ideas from memory, faces and names of people I should recall, relationships with friends I should have maintained. I've let go of objects I've created and loved, or things I took a special hand in designing. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes through negligence, sometimes through a perverse need to purge while initially denying the emotional investment in the loss.

Two hawks flying
Above the highway
They play so much like  us.

One always runs away...

I've had this song sleeping in my head over thirty years, and I've lost the title and the artist's name.

(crossposted on Docudharma)

I picked up my old barn jacket this morning to put it on as I dashed out the door to work.  Wide-wale corduroy, a faded dark blue, no wales left in the rear of the elbows or the lower back, pearled and flattened sheepskin lining. I realized as I attempted to button it, that two of the buttons were missing. It's far too ratty and worn for me to be wearing or to even repair, but I can't seem to find a new one that fits like it fits, or keeps me warm and somehow safe. That safe sentiment is an erroneous one, because a jacket alone cannot make a body safe and this one has not really not done its job over the past two years I've had it. I've gone from near penury to bankruptcy, brown hair to starting to silver, a margin of victory to margins of defeat as measured by a parent's successes with a child, and I've approached death again with the rapid decline and death of my remaining sister. The old jacket has seen a lot.

To the series' new readers and to those who are familiar with the usual timeslot of this series, I'm posting a redirect to an early morning Grieving Room diary, published in the quietest hush before dawn.

The Grieving Room: Just a Couple of Kids
by bigjacbigjacbigjac.

Please click the above diary link to find this week's TGR post and  comment, if you'd like, on bigjac's diary. Please no comments, tips or recs for this redirecting diary.

Make sure to volunteer for a week in the future if you'd like to offer a tale, or tell of a life, or reminisce - we like it all, here, and we welcome you.

(Updated title...just didn't like the first one, I guess.)

"Blank document". I recall older Word versions and I seem to think it used to be "New Document". New is so much more positive than Blank.

I had an English teacher in high school, Teresa Brandon, who'd say "Go for the guts." She was a rebel teacher who brought Dunkin Donuts to our early morning English Lit/Shakespeare class each Wednesday, in defiance of the "No food in class" rules. Beyond her exemplary teaching, she also had an extraordinary talent – she could neatly shove a billiard ball in her mouth without locking her jaw. These are skills that impress a high school junior.

You are forewarned: if you are not up for reading ramblings of a reminiscent, tangential and seemingly unrelated nature, please move to the next diary...;).

In honor of Ms. Brandon (though against her desire of clean, concise length), I'll unashamedly go for the gut and dammit, I won't apologize. And this is not purely a candidate diary.

That said...

(crossposted at Docudharma)

A couple of weeks ago, I spent a hour or so stopping by gravesites in the cemetery where most of my family is buried. Death comes to all of us, of course, but it’s a curious thing when we go to visit Death.

Paesi che non ho mai Veduto e vissuto con te Adesso si li vivro. Con te partiro Su navi per mari Che io lo so No no non esistono piu

Time to say goodbye. Places that I've never seen or experienced with you. Now I shall, I'll sail with you upon ships across the seas, seas that exist no more, It's time to say goodbye.

Subtitle: When is a pocket veto not a pocket veto?

Article 1, Section 7, Clause 2 If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law

There have been so many Bush crimes, so many little ones and big ones.  This is my first 2008 personal "V-8" moment.

Bush's "pocket veto" of the Defense Authorization Bill on December 29, 2007.  Yeah, so I'm a bit slow - give me a break. I've been on vacation.

But Congress hasn't been on vacation.

(also on Docudharma)

What is this thing that builds our dreams yet slips away from us Who wants to live forever Who wants to live forever?

I started writing occasionally for The Grieving Room series in April 2007, a handful of days before my sister Sharon's death on April 27th. (Bear with me if you can - I've slipped in a final (truly!) tribute to my sis at the bottom of this post, along with a sappy but memorable video that features a song my sister loved.)

Dem in the Heart of Texas lost her mother a few short weeks before Sharon died. There are others who started the Grieving Room in April – Dem, if you are reading, help me out with the genesis of this series.

Driving home from work overwhelms me if I let it. I see the hundreds of drivers in their solitary cars, some passengers, few passengers. I realize I, too, am alone in my car on a drive that could be achieved with far less stress and daily environmental angst if a decent light rail or a well-planned bus system existed in the Northwest metropolis I live in. It takes an hour and a half one way and three buses to attempt to public transit it to work from where I live, and a mere fifteen to twenty minutes by car. I have a car to drive, which is either a hybrid or a beater Nissan Sentra, both of which cost way too much of my income in insurance and gas costs with two teenagers at home.

You - you said - what'd you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they're so old and broken down that they... Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars?

I stepped out on the porch a few weeks ago and saw a Mexican wedding cookie moon, sliced gently in half and laid on the silent cool black table of the night sky. Gauzy high clouds formed a foggy backdrop scrim against an inky proscenium.

The straight-edge half of the moon was dialed down to east-nor'east, as a quarter hour of midnight drained away on the clock of the galaxy.

(crossposted at Docudharma)

Last week, Dem in the Heart of Texas discussed the permanence of grief and some of the curious ways such permanence manifests itself in the way forward. I didn’t have a chance to read or comment on her diary until this morning and the cannonball shot that came at me was that a residual of that permanence can be the trace of betrayal you feel when a loved one or friend has died.

The wind of death that softly blows   The last warm petal from the rose,   The last dry leaf from off the tree,   To-night has come to breathe on me.

My memories were stirred recently because I became curious as to how Seattle's most recent wind and rainstorm in December 2006 compared to The Big Blow.  The National Weather Service has now named the storm of last year the Hanukkah Eve Storm.

Photo courtesy National Weather Service Portland (Public Domain)

Me, I like rain, the sound and the smell. The sound of rain is not just one sound, but a muted, noisy concert featuring such natural percussionists. The pum pum of water on the overhang; the steady tingtingting of drops landing on the skin of earth; beatbeatbeats heading through a gutter. Maybe the first drummer mimicked sounds he heard in his own beating heart. But I'm convinced he heard rain.

(crossposted in modified form at Docudharma)

That box in the corner of the closet. The figurine gathering dust on the bookshelf. The file folders of papers from years past, receipts, canceled checks, correspondence, records, old bills, notes to self, figures scribbled on margins indicating paths to decisions made by loved ones long dead.