Some Notes from the Wedge

Yes, I love the Simpsons.
Yes, this is an owl on a skateboard.

And these are, yes, the Netflix suggested genres of movies for my best friend, I'm convinced looking at those is like a litmus test of his personality.
violent dramas based on real life
cerebral foreign movies
sci-fi and fantasy
visually striking dark movies
aaaand
romantic independent comedies
Says a lot about a person.
I'm starting a housesitting gig tomorrow. 11 days further out in the middle of nowhere. I'm calling it a "Desert Retreat" and I'm not thinking about the rattle snakes that are becoming active. Or the coyotes that might get the cats if they choose to stay outside at night and won't be chased back in. Or the storm that might come up, knocking the power out. Nope. Not thinking about any of that. I'm going to post daily about hermit crab husbandry and drying wash on the line outside and how awesome it is it have access to coca cola all the time.

Don't be afraid of things because they're easy to do.

I've known how to write since I was 5. I've been communicating with words for 20 years. It's the most fluent ability anyone has and yet I am afraid to commit to it; to use it; to embrace it fully. It's as an illness you can't control. It's only when I fall into a scribe's fit like an epileptic falling into a seizure that I find myself working.

Remember those quiet evenings

When we used to sit
after the dinner hour, after the kitchen was clean.
Curled up on a lap
was a favorite cat.
The fire crackled in the winter
over the strains of the opening tunes
of our favorite show;
over the protesting mews
of that cat.

Oblique Strategies

My new goal is to write one post a day that I wring from a different card of the Oblique Strategies. It is an exercise I've needed for some time and I only wonder why it took so long to form in my mind. I may only make it to the weekdays, since I spend the weekends trailing after my momma like a baby duck.
Maybe these will all come to nothing, maybe they will all be abominations to literature. But they are one thing: words that I've achingly, blindingly, passionately wrested from mind to fingertips to keyboard.
And that's all I care about.

To wit: The card of the day then what I feel about it.

Not building a wall, but making a brick.
Adding layer to layer. Looking at a spool of thread and seeing a dress. It's taking for granted that tomorrow will be here and I have time to grow. Nothing hinders a seedling to sprout because it knows inch by inch it will become a watermelon. It doesn't take time to doubt that spending this energy will be wasted. It has one thing to do: grow. So we have one thing. Growth is remembering what we did yesterday to add to what we do tomorrow. Growth is sticking to a goal because you know in a month you'll really have something to show for it. Growth is not a destination; it is a process.

Poems

Some verbiage from my time on Bush St.

I'm so small
that I fit
within
a drop of water
or a blade of grass

I'm so angry
that you are
a field or
a storm cloud
full to the brim
~~~~~~
you ensnare me.
I hang on
the shortest phrase,
the quarter rest
in hopes of
your smallest attention.
~~~~~~
I crept around the house
selecting meals with crinklings and rustlings in mind.
To ease your slumber;
making kills that die quietly
so you sleep
and are in turn
quiet for
fucking once.