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

~*~

1. Time to start checking on the ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Maine, courtesy of the NOAA buoys reported on the website. I no longer bother to venture into real surf until the readings hit 60 Fahrenheit. Below that it’s blue-toe water.
2. There’s an irony in performing sun-salutation postures but none, say, for the new moon or full moon. Om, my. Inhale and exhale, with incense.
3. On our apron by the back door, a small snake, whip motion, ever so slowly.
4. Here I’d been intending to write leaner, tighter, shorter, clearer – a lacework of Light. Wind up with dense blocks of prose-poems instead.
5. It’s hard to imagine my native Buckeye State was created, in essence, by eleven Connecticut veterans of the American Revolution who met at the Bunch of Grapes Tavern in Boston on March 1, 1786, to form the Ohio Company. The tavern was a gathering place for wealthy merchants sympathetic to the patriot cause. At least it wasn’t Manhattan. Who knows what we would have wound up with.
6. Sometimes you feel a new beginning – not just renewal but turning a corner.
7. My own pathway unfolds as its own guide.
8. Sometimes I read this place as CLOVER NH. Better, of course, than the unintentionally comic EFFINGHAM.
9. I’ve resolved to spend more time in the mountains to our north this summer. In recent years, even getting to the beaches nearby has been elusive.
10. So that’s it! Blah-blah-blah.

~*~

 

 

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

~*~

1. This matter of scale – and balance – in a life that has an appearance of randomness. All these items collected throughout the house and barn. Somehow, order reasserts itself, if you look.
2. Remembering the volcano 37 years ago. Just look at the skulls I collected in that country.
3. Four years later, the move to Baltimore for the one I thought embodied that moment full of promise to take my life upward into a fairy-tale existence of class and repose, a much different direction from where I’ve landed. Alas, she’d already bolted. And mine has become much more organic.
4. Common Meter, 8.6.8.6, as in “Amazing Grace,” is simply the syllable count. A great way to swap words and music.
5. Am not having profound or imaginative dreams. But at least the flow’s beginning again, like looking at a secret movie or computer screen.
6. When taking portraits outdoors, how often the eyeglasses turn into sunglasses in the bright light – and how often people in party mode turn wooden.
7. Looking at a book of glass houses reminds me how deeply that Bauhaus aesthetic is embedded in my sensibility. Not that I’d aspire to live in one now. Who washes all those windows, anyway? And what about fingerprints or noses? These days I’ve chosen a different style, one based in Yankee houses that just keep growing, as needed. As for curtains, she and I will argue.
8. To ease back into Hatha – Ha-ha!
9. “The things that are not seen are eternal” – II Corinthians 4:18.
10. Still feeling so tentative rather than forceful.

~*~

I chanced upon this scultpture at 15 Beach Place while wandering from Chinatown to Faneuil Hall. It’s about a block from the old Boston Music Hall, where Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto got its world premiere. Maybe this site is where he stayed while visiting? Anyone got a clue?

The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?

~*~

1. The return of warm weather allows more leisurely use of the top of the barn again, before high summer makes the space too oppressive. Eight years ago we made major renovations that made the loft more fully accessible and usable, gaining 500 square feet of storage and retreat space – my three-season retreat, as it were. The elbow room has been quite liberating. I love to sit at the hall door, reading and sipping a drink while overlooking my domain. How good, tranquil, it feels. How much I love listening to rain fall on its roof, too.
2. The rush of spring now brings on fresh lettuce and spinach in our garden. Turning the compost, I’m delighted to see so many red wigglers already active – my little buddies in restoring the earth where we live.
3. I’ve thought about The Daily Vulture as a title. Seeing them now reminds me of my bird watching on my daily commute, back when I was driving daily. Gee, would the name befit a newspaper?
4. Thinking, too, of all the near misses on those drives. A few seconds this way or that and I would have been road kill. A feast for the vultures. Far more times than I’d care to recount.
5. Nice poets are a dime a dozen and largely ignored. Makes me wonder about assuming a hidden identity as a Quaker Agitator, waiting to be claimed. As for amateur theologians? Time to emulate Swami?
6. There are far more writers than I could ever read. Even in any of my fields of interest. And far more advice.
7. After living here, in a richly pedestrian-friendly small city in New England, or on historic Bolton Hill in Baltimore, or even the inner city of Binghamton, how sterile I find so many other neighborhoods where I’ve lived or wandered.
8. How essential and uplifting that sense that says I’M HERE!
9. As he said of himself, “I go to extremes.” Still, there wasn’t a sweeter human. And he still had his beard in the end. As for our demons and passions?
10. Hebrew “to know” is yada. Another rich word.

~*~

 

 

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

~*~

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.

~*~

 

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

~*~

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?)

~*~

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.

~*~

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.

~*~

The mind dances here and there, rarely in a linear fashion. So what’s on my mind these days? How about counting on these fingers?

~*~

1. I’m still impressed by all the latent energy stored above the waterfalls in the streams around us.
2. The water’s flashing. Rivers and ponds spark – shoot away – fire away – in rippling sheen.
3. Another of my spring tasks involves bringing the garden hoses down from the loft, connecting them to the faucets, and going to the cellar to reopen the valves.
4. It’s time to pencil in a trip to the Garden in the Woods in Framingham, Massachusetts. The site, headquarters to the New England Wildflower Society, is especially popular through May into mid-June, for good reason. The organization goes to great lengths to enhance nature, though you have to look close to detect their careful irrigation units and similar touches.
5. Even when the material for a blog is mostly already done, this act of posting takes up more time than anticipated. Where do the hours go?
6. A fine time to hike in Maine woods: no black flies and no skeeters. The only sounds in some places: wind in the trees or water sounding like highway traffic.
7. It’s one of those years when the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western dates for Easter coincide.
8. Time to be on the lookout for tender young dandelions for our diet. They’re surprisingly good with eggs over easy, a drizzle of bacon fat, or homemade vinaigrette. Gotta pick ’em, though, before they bloom and turn bitter.
9. A favorite minitrip: Head up to Portland, Maine (just an hour northeast). Hit the Standard Bakery near the docks and then the 10 o’clock mail-run ferry around Casco Bay. Six stops on five islands. Reminds me at times of Puget Sound, so many years back.
10. And, as they say, introduce yourself. These days, could use something catchy, humorous. Something, for that matter, like a good pickup line, not that I ever had any. Feel free to share your examples.

~*~

 

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

~*~

1. On the highway north, somewhere just before Tamworth, comes that first big view of Mount Washington. This time of year the crest is an eagle span of ghostly white spreading atop powder-blue ranges below. Sometimes another band of clouds resembling mountains stretches above, and all three sit below a blue band of real sky. Knowing what’s coming up simply heightens the anticipation.
2. Back home, my rounds of outdoor spring tasks soon lead to the Smoking Garden. The bags of leaves stacked beside the barn as windbreakers will need to be moved to the big compost bin, which needs to be emptied first (though it’s usually frozen tight this time of year). Then there’s the hammock to reassemble, after being stored in the loft. Strings of twinkle lights will go up overhead, too. I’ll often take lunch here, though my wife finds the air too chilly. Not too chilly, though, to prevent us from grilling on charcoal.
3. Yes, warm enough to grill a beer-can chicken (insert open can into bird, which you cook upright). Excellent, despite the stiff wind.
4. Seapoint in Maine (town-resident sticker required for parking, May 15 to September 30, where the road ends at the ocean): trek out to the spit between beaches, hunker down in clefts between rock and sunshine for needed respite against wind. The restless blue ocean opens before me. A tease, awaiting summer.
5. Woodpecker still has a splitting headache.
6. Income tax time runs up against my professional life as a journalist. How much I hate waiting till deadline to finish something. Get it off, quickly, if you can.
7. Need to find ways to keep my lair from becoming a chamber of static energy. Ditto, the loft of the barn.
8. The leadership we’re seeing is a bunch of cowardly brutes.
9. Once again, the moral issue of civil disobedience comes to the fore. For the record, regarding the Transcendentalist Henry David, it’s THOR-oh, not Thor-OH. And Nixon lawyer Charles Colson came to advocate some powerful moral guidelines for civil disobedience, after he’d repented – that is, “turned” – while imprisoned.
10. What turns you WILD? (As in dreams and passions, secrets and fetishes. Am I really so orderly or repressed at this point? I’m clueless, apart from anger.)

 ~*~

 

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

~*~

1. The amount of sunlight these days is equivalent to September. That equinox thing. But with snow and no foliage or even plain gray, the sensation’s quite different from autumn green turning golden and hazy.
2. Spring rainfall turns our side yard into a glade. Are ‘gators next?
3. So who do they resemble, these women in my life? Which movie stars? Which protagonists in fiction? Even before we get to the guys.
4. On a walk about town, I stop at a bakery and pick up a selection pastries as a surprise for later in the morning. As my wife and elder daughter view me strolling up our street, they notice the box wrapped in ribbon and the way I speak with other pedestrians, and quip, “What a perfect picture of a guy a woman would want to have coming home.”
5. How delightful, too, walking three miles on a leg of the Community Trail beside rapids and sparkling waters. No need to drive several hours to the mountains for a similar experience. Reminds me of my hidden retreat at Lake Massabesic, back when I was residing on Wellington Hill in Manchester.
6. When I enter a house of worship, I close my eyes and feel the vibrations. Too often, the air feels leaden or dead, rather than welcoming, warm, filled with deep calm. Maybe I’m spoiled by so many Quaker meetinghouses and other sanctuaries of quiet heart-centered devotion.
7. Suppose I’d wound up back in Dayton or Cincinnati, rather than moving on? The very thought has me feeling emotionally constrained.
8. A reminder. Be authentic to your dreams, even in the face of the Greek chorus intoning, “Yay,” “Boo,” Ahh,” even “Mmm,” throughout. Much less Job’s friends in those periods of siege.
9. What do we do with the superrich freeloaders?
10. Internally, I’m still on Standard Time. How can it be so late already?

~*~