Sept. 29, 2010: Thoughts of an Angel

Sept. 29, 2010
Two years since mom died.  For those who have lost mothers, you know what it means.
For those who have yet to lose her, you will know one day.  It must be the DNA.
It gets better with time, but never leaves you.
You are never old enough to not need mom.
Some days you wake up with tears in your eyes.
At least it is no longer every day.
I love her and miss her. Every day.
This year I took the day off of work and did lots of things around the house.
I worked hard, because I didn't want to think.
I felt her around me all day.  I sometimes feel her hold me.
Am I crazy, or am I special?
Neither.  I have imagination, but I can also feel things that many people don't.
When you talked to someone every day for 10 years, and then they are gone, you tend to miss those conversations.  I love to tell her about all the critter encounters, I point out interesting things when I'm walking through the woods.  I tell her I miss her, I love her, I wish she was here -- but I could never ask anyone to go through what she went through even once, much less again.
I feel selfish.  I feel cheated.  I know she is happy wherever she goes.
I cry when I hear the stories of women with breast cancer.
I thank the universe when it is caught early.
I wish that Breast Cancer Awareness Month did not follow My Mother was in the Hospital Month.
And I wish that My Mother did not have Breast Cancer.
I wanted to grow old with her.  I wanted to tell her.  So many wishes and wants and tears and thoughts....
And through it all there have been so many who have listened, shared, hugged, cried, laughed, and held me.
I am Blessed by You All.
Though Blessings come when you need them, not when you want them.
I love you, Mom.

A Hard Day to Forget

i watch you dying
surrounded by faces who love you - ohana
embarrassed that we may be intruding
on your private moment with God

no, we are here
here nothing else matters
He will have you forever

goodbye
i miss you mom.


sept 29, 2008

accidents with large metal things

...generally don't turn out well. "how did you manage to do that?" is usually the first response. i've tired of the answer, given too many times -- i hit myself with a car. my knee may never be the same. i played a gig i wasn't scheduled to an hour and some time later.

"i hope you can still play good. our friends are here," my mother says. i'm on my second margarita.

"so really, how did you manage to do that?" i hear you want to ask.

i have two chows, one black, one white, i call them my tao dogs. the black one's hair was six, eight inches plus, it was 100 degrees in may, and i had him shaved. bald. i was stunned.

i pulled into the drive, it slants at a good angle towards the house, i forgot to put the car in park, engaged the emergency brake, and as most emergency brakes are wont to do, it failed. in the meantime i had opened the garage door, noticed a hornet on a hornet's nest, and moved up a foot or so to examine the hornet. when i felt something brush against my knee, i brushed back; it was after all unusually hot and buggy, even for here. turns out it was the car: i remember my body curved like a comma, i remember the dog motionless, staring. "uh, now we going in the car. uh, now we hitting the mama." i remember little else.

actually i remember playing, standing and playing. mypace has a picture of it, a pretty good picture in fact. i remember crawling into bed and the agonizing pain of a strained groin and a strained medial collateral ligament. i remember calling my mother and asking if i should go to the emergency room. "no, it didn't seem to be that bad." endorphins are the wonder drug. she dreamed that night of my pain, and called to check on me the next day.

i don't remember jumping into the car and stopping it before it (a) rolled over me or (b) rolled into the hot water heater. i saw the hand print in car dust, two days later, coming out of the doctor's office in the bright, hot sun. i don't remember swinging around to grab the car and jumping out of the way, though at times i almost can. these are known unknowns. they matter none. i may remember my fut hitting the brak, could be a false memory, alin all i managed to go with life with less vicodin than one might imagine.

now i deal with pain in my knee, off and on. i can tell when rain is on the way, or cold rain is lurking. if i overdo it by far, the pain creeps up to my abdomen, appears there is a tendon that attaches there from the knee. if i had taken more than a couple of days to heal, well, i possibly wouldn't be dealing with it -- still -- i feel exceptionally fortunate for the protection around me and the body i was born with.

i often forget to mention: the hornet stung me too.

black is the sole

i will not allow my place of healing to become a place of anger.
le, 10/2/07

you want a wildflower area, great.
you want a cricket field, so be it.
you want paved parking and port-o-lets,
your sole is blacker than i thought.

pink is the harvest moon

moon hung lo


moon hung low
sticky black
sticky black
sticky night
black night


cradle rock slow
cry soft
cry soft
cry rain
soft rain

cricket song hush
cradle rock slow
rain cry soft say
moon hung low



1984 le

passion

to define passion: you go to sleep thinking about it and you wake up thinking about it. but whether you are passionate about what you love or what you fear -- is that the key to the little black box? i wonder if you open it by simply choosing what to think. have i been hearing that for thousands of years? too many question marks, or suffering from overuse?

random acts of violence leave a scar deceptively deep; great kindness is all too rare, small kindness all but extinct. you come to expect what you know best, and it follows. daily i try to emulate what i believe is normal, daily i find i feel normal not at all. it has become my passion, what i have been passionate about, not what i love.

and so here i am, thinking my way into oblivion: wondering at the wisdom of the broken spoke's success and the bravery of monks dying to light the way to liberation.

a slathering maw

"There's nothing I like better than staring down the slathering maw of nature."
--tony bordain from the travel channel

I found myself carefully trying to extract myself from the thorny vine filled woods I generally avoid. Yet one dog had found a critter hole, large enough to be fit only for a racoon, and well protected by the aforementioned thorny vines. He put his head halfway down the hole, stepped back and barked. He would not leave until the critter emerged. And so I find myself in this predicament: creeping under barbed wire fencing left over from the old homestead, fallen cedar branches, poison ivy, intrepid vines, all tearing skin and clothing, to retrieve the obsessed canine. Pulling both dogs, neither of whom seemed impressed with my skills, I crept back through the slathering maw of woods gone wild.