Being mindful of what’s right in front of us can always be a challenge. Here are 10 new items from my end.

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1. Once again, Saturday mornings mean yard sales – an alternative economy that runs into October around here. I’m putting requests in to my two favorite, very savvy, shoppers. Last time they picked up a nifty pair of speakers for my stereo — five bucks, at that — and two fine Spanish diccionarios. See if they can come up with those CD opera collections I’d enjoy.
2. The first daytime sounds of spring – lawnmowers and motorcycles – are in the air. Peepers, long in play, have been filling nights around vernal ponds.
3. The first smells of spring for the American male: the charcoal or gas grill and igniting, plus the roasting food – countered by lawnmower gasoline.
4. In my research for my newest novel, I come across the affectionate Greek word koukla … doll, girlfriend, pretty, pumpkin. Never connected it to one of my favorite children’s television sereis in my dim past, Koukla, Fran, and Ollie, which I’d always thought was one word. Those puppets still look better than anything on the so-called Reality Shows. Their dialogue was no doubt better.
5. Sometimes, slipping into visual artist mode, I see other humans as cartoon figures. Usually it’s on the street.
6. So much of my life has been out of balance. Quaker worship, at least, keeps restoring the equipoise.
7. One shaman, who stayed briefly with us, goes drumming and singing for whales to return after a long absence. Much of his lore comes from comes from weekends spent with his grandmother in a nursing home. I’m grateful to those who’ve stayed faithful.
8. From what I’ve observed, those who speak most stridently of liberty have tyranny at heart. They’re contemptuous of others, mean-spirited, and misery.
9. The first week of May is gaudy. Trees of big clumps of bright yellow-green, for starters. Somehow autumn comes to mind first when we mention gaudy.
10. The month of fresh asparagus stirs memories of Yakima, where the spears grow wild as “local ‘grass” throughout the valley. We’d glut ourselves to the bitter end of each season.

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Just a taste of what’s popping up. In case you were looking for a prompt.

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1. The anticipation mounts when we espy our first asparagus shoots. At this point they express their kindred alignment with ferns, but we know how incredible the spears will be cut minutes before cooking. Forget what you buy in the stores or restaurants.
2. “Twas ever thus,” as my Mr. Natural tee-shirt still proclaims.
3. With a sticker covering part of the box, what I read was “Rock Pot, the Original Slow Cooker.” You know, like back in the Stone Age.
4. It wasn’t in the plan when we decided to dine in Manchester, but I wound up leading a tour through the city’s West Side, plus the millyard and overlook of the Amoskeag falls and dam. “That was as satisfying as having a destination,” she proclaimed.
5. Pondering the Holy Spirit as Shekinah. Why not a female as holy lover? The Kabbalist perceiving sparks (holy Light) everywhere! Consort of God as feminine action. As for Lillith? Ah, yes, what of her?
6. Trying to translate from one era or culture to another presents a host of challenges. The term “kingdom of God,” for instance, can convey both patriarchy and monarchy at odds with contemporary American outlooks. I like the “commonwealth of God” instead, though there’s nothing common about it.
7. How I’ve come to enjoy any stay-in-my-sweats day, one where I drive nowhere. Soon it may turn into slip into shorts and sandals, but the effect’s the same.
8. How does that big city newspaper get the partygoers to look so good in its weekly charity events page?
9. I hate “small talk” – or at least struggle with it in many social settings. Any suggestions?
10. What do I crave? Lust for? (As for you?)

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For my slideshow of Amtrak’s Downeaster in town, click here.

Why wait for the dust to settle? Here are 10 bullets from my end.

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1. Daffodils and rising scrolls of ferns are two of my favorite proclamations of spring. Last year a sharp drop in temperature cut the daffodils down just as they were starting to bloom. We were so disappointed. (The same snap also wiped out peaches across New England.) How quickly, too, can a vibrant patch go scraggly if you don’t divide the bulbs every few years. As for our ferns, I now feel vindicated for all the ones I transplanted in futile efforts that first decade before they took hold here.
2. Likewise, hold true to a vision of progress, of a more just and loving society, a realm of selflessness over selfishness.
3. Hard for me to believe I composed Village of Gargoyles while living in an apartment complex atop the highest hill in the biggest city in the state – before moving to the smaller city where I now reside – a place more befitting the village of these poems.
4. Need to get new Tibetan prayer flags. The old ones are totally frayed.
5. Has anyone else read Ned Rorem’s Paris Diary or its New York sequel? Saturated in the self-centeredness and self-indulgence of youth, they’re deliciously juicy and fun reading, though I could never be snide like that. Besides, if I did it here at the Barn, you wouldn’t know anyone in my circles. They’re not even celebrities, even of the minor sort. So much for the gossip on my end.
6. While assembling the hammock, I heard a squirrel overhead scolding one of the neighborhood cats, likely the one we call Spooky. “Get it,” I urged the cat. Whereupon an empty Nutella jar landed on the table, barely missing me, its lid neatly chewed around. Something the squirrel had pilfered from what one of the kids had likely hidden in the barn sometime over the winter. I looked around but saw nobody to confirm was had just transpired. Trust me.
7. My emotional wall just may be a shell, too.
8. In my first moves, all my goods fit in my car.
9. During the American Revolution, the village center that served as Rhode Island’s capital changed its name from King’s Town to Little Rest, with its delicious double meaning.
10. Yearning for a renewed feeling of bliss – the holy ecstasy – something I wish she, too, would experience, however foreign it might seem now.

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