Breath Of Breeze

Somewhere in a day there can be heard small voices clinging to the breath of Breeze that are trying to tell a secret in your ear.

Sometimes it seems that they may be radio waves that are channeling through the fan and being transmitted through the metal in your teeth.

Other times it can be hoped that fairies are having conference among the leaves of waving trees and are very busy sharing ideas about impartial and loving service — each clamoring as loudly as a fairy can to be heard.

They can almost never be interpreted and must simply just be trusted.

It’s probably true the streaming is worthy of mention.

Ting, ting…what is that you said? Perhaps the least, stop what you are doing and listen.

Header image credit: Robin Wright artist of fairy sculptures

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Bits And Pieces

She wanted to believe it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t turned out special, perfect
He’d remember their time and love her anyway  — again, still
But they were both so different,
All those years ago when they were young and fresh.
She remembered his arms feeling big and strong around her as they caressed, so softly all the rolling curves of her body.
He would hop and skip as they walked almost as if in a state of delight.
Arm over her shoulder – she just a little bit shy of tucking comfortably under his arm.
Very often they would pull each other close and turn slightly in to kiss and hug –
hardly able to stand the space there was between them.
They floated up steep inclines at Laguna Beach for the few days that they stayed there
The adrenaline of love flowing so freely that no effort caused any struggle.
“Our honeymoon“, they’d recall it later as.
Eating at wonderful restaurants
Starring into each other’s faces
Yakking and yakking about everything, nothing under the sun.

Here he was again knocking on her door –
So to speak –
Asking if he could come in again –
There was no knowing for how long –
He was telling her all about his life and Kay, now Kate he called her
And all their children together — the ones that came before them.
Life had gone on –
They all continued to know him –
To have him –
She had had to let go.
She hadn’t wanted to.
All things work out as they should –
It seems.
It can seem altogether too hard then suddenly make perfect sense and all the pain melt into an explanation of why it had to have been as it was.

Purple shocks
He mocked them
Purple socks
They were her purple socks, but they went with his new, slightly purple slacks and he was trying to become more attuned to fashion
And be adventurous
Be free to be

She hemmed his new pants as they talked, and yakked in the room at the Surf and Sand Motel
Waves relentlessly rushing in amid their sentences

Going to dinner, they were getting dressed up so they could feel the essence of their specialness
Wearing their new things, hemming their new things, together, for each other.
Learning to temper infatuation with reality, trying to fathom the possibility of this new passion lasting,
Becoming,
Staying…

It would take fourteen years for her to get on with anything like a semblance of life
Fourteen years of trying to find herself without him somewhere in the margins.

They would only manage to fight for three or four years and then drag the thread of their narrative out to span the time of six or seven years thereafter.
First it would be six weeks.
Then two months.
A year would go by,
A call in the night.
The familiar gruffness of his voice would lure her into his spell for another year to pass again with just a night together in between…
Then two years..
Then three…
Then she lost track
of when he came again.

Because she had met a new man,
a tall, dark, curly-haired devil.
She was trying to find the essence of herself again now without thinking it would be better with the devil —
But in between the curly hair and another fifteen years
The gruff voice called and wondered if they might be able to spend a day or two remembering.

And then there he was at her door. She saw him as he got out of his rented car.
She said to herself, “oh no, that is not him” and wondered if she could get through a whole two days.

It can seem altogether too hard then suddenly make perfect sense and all the pain melt into an explanation of why it had to have been as it was.

She had been in love with the life, the style of life, the solitude they’d had living in a trailer at the top of the hill at his motorcycle park.
She loved sweeping the floors while he ran the tractor and of looking out the window to see his dog following up the steep hill chasing a rabbit while he took the moguls out of the dirt or put them in.
She loved the sound of the train in the far off distance and the plans she would make in her head of a vegetable garden.
And the sound of the rain tapping the tin roof and of making love,
his soft blue eyes
Looking at her as if she was a princess.

They spent two days and it seemed that he had as much trouble getting through it as she did.
Then they said goodbye.
It was a very sad goodby. It was goodbye to a dream. She thinks it was sadder for her. She thinks he likely never felt the same about it as she had.
It was gone. It was finally over.

Now she found a picture of the newer man in among the things that she was trying to organize, get rid of or put in their proper places.
She put it in a plastic cover and hung it with a paper clip over the label holder of her file cabinet.
It was staring at her regularly now so she could turn and look at it and dream of a new
vegetable garden.
All the knowing of him had been the same — a few wonderful moments between the counting of years.
She guesses she might just be that way, only able to see someone in little bits and pieces.

She has two cats and no children. She has a few close friends and lots of books to read. She digs in dirt and tries to grow thing like she always wanted. It all keeps her pretty happy for the most part.
She only gets dressed up to go for groceries and sometimes to get some movies to watch.

She wishes it were different.
She wishes she were in love and that one loved her too.
She wishes she had a man who made her feel like she was a princess just because he was so happy to be with her and that he would put up with the little things
Like how much she still loves purple and that she still has those purple shocks
Like how she analyzes everything and wants to talk and the cats sleep on the bed at night
And her hair is gray when not a bottle blonde.
Love is blind. Holding hands the electricity creates a static that keeps them together.

Now comes the call she can hear his smile and they talk and talk about nothing and everything.
He is writing a story about Salvichi the Coyote.
And he wants to know if she thinks he should just call it Salvichi or Salvichi the Coyote.
She says “Salvichi” but thinks the smile has lost its charm.

It is important to keep the dream.
The vegetable garden
Purple shocks
Tin roofs
Rain
Making Love
Hugs and Kisses
A nice phone smile.

The things that dreams are made of. But those were dress rehearsals and there’s something more in store she’s sure.

It can seem altogether too hard then suddenly make perfect sense and all the pain melt into an explanation of why it had to have been as it was.

Should love come again, it should be forever and one day — there isn’t much more time to play or pay.

Enough to get it right, just barely.

Thinking About Leaving

As unusual as it is for anyone to reach old age without ever having been married or had children, it’s not necessarily an unhappy event. Contrary to the popular advice that one needs them to be cared for at the ripe and rotting stage, it also isn’t unusual to be abandoned by them —  more often than not.
Of course it could be nice but for some reason, the value of hanging around just for the accrued wisdom is received like advice, painfully, by the recipient and most younger samples want their freedom more. Hanging around to help is another thing altogether.
Maybe it’s a delivery issue. If old people could just speak meme, who knows, but they seem to want to tell whole stories and no one seems to have that kind of time — therein may lie the trouble — time. Wisdom and stories aside, helping them get out of the tub is too much like a job they didn’t want and who signed them up for that?
Seems rather more like congestion than speed though. There’s so much clutter and Kondo says to get rid of all of that — throw the baby pictures out with the old folks’ dirty bathwater. No time for reminiscing or heavy lifting — only time to post perfection on insta-whatever — minimalism the current rave with snippets of their wonderful lives trimmed of any fat and oxidation.
Time travels so fast when you’re 90, if you get that far — by and large, lucky are those who do. It travels fast enough when 60 hits. Life is wonderful after all and only ones who have found the margins can know if there is another world that leaving this one is improved by.
There are plenty of options while living in this margin for comings and goings within it that the mind can easily be cluttered with thinking about leaving or staying in a place or situation.
“George Bailey, I’ll love you till the day I die” can be true if you come or go. “Love is eternal” it is claimed.
Imbibed by what ifs can render a stupor of helpless thinking with possible stumbling, falling and fractures that might lead to something akin to death by chocolate. What if that love is even better?”

“…obviously the odds are long that things, even as they’ve developed, will ever get off the ground”

Oh yes, but what if?

Alas, maybe best to stay where things are safe, comfortable and not prone to be about trying to fix a festering failure or quench an as yet unmet thirst where things can turn turbulent and unpredictable or into another “same old story” kind of additive thing left by unhealed childhood wounds.
Good enough is good enough and 20 years is a long time to quit a comfortable, even happy thing even though people have been known to do it even after more than 40 — albeit possibly, could be happier, largely uncomfortable, even miserable ones.

“I don’t know one damn thing, but I know this — the only things in this life that you really regret are the risks you didn’t take. Mel, if you see a chance to be happy you grab it with both hands and the hell with the consequences.” ~ John Gustafson/ Grumpy Old Men

Ariel said it first. He was copying her. Ariel knew. She wasn’t afraid. Certainly not afraid of being left alone by the kids she didn’t have in the movie. She simply was more interested in really living than of watching life go by outside her window like the grumpy old men in the movie were, at that stage, prone to do. John was upset because she was upsetting his apple cart.

Lucky are the ones who can look out a window at the end of life with their fur kids by their side, and maybe each other, and be happy that they took the road where venture gained.

Full Of Sugar

Henny Penny the sky is falling!
Bad news at every corner. Floors need mopping, that’s enough bad news today and on top of that, peanut butter’s gone missing from the cupboard again — whatever can one do.

Wealth and greed, greed and wealth stroll hand in hand wherever they are strolling and everyone’s trying to grab the hand of the last one going by.

How much sugar is in peanut butter? How much in the muffin it’s on?
If sugar is like cocaine, is there cocaine in the muffin?

Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.

There were five of them in a little copper-colored Beetle Bug, driving to see a movie. Three little girls around nine years old, were sitting in the back. The girls in the front were nine years older and chatting away about boys — they had candy and cans of soda in their giant grown-up purses and, of course, one of the older girls was driving. They had pullover sweaters and pageboy hairdos and pants with permanent, stitched-in creases that had straps to stretch the pants to hold them at their feet. They were so pretty decked out in the latest style and seemed to have all the answers — boys fixed everything.

Or was it a spoon full of sugar, one or the other or both?

It was just a year or two before the movie that their Chicken Little mothers had all been pulling out their hair, running around in circles and screaming, the sky was about to fall. Everyone was ducking for cover just in case it did.

A crisis with some missiles. Didn’t a boy fix that?

A few hundred days after that boy fixed that crisis, the sky stopped falling and Mary Poppins fell from it. Everything was better now — it was time to laugh and sing.

La la la la la la!

Hundreds and hundreds of days would go by, the sky would fall up and the sky would fall down and then Mary would fall again, after newer Beetle Bugs.

And the three little girls grew up.

Down every highway in the world where money can be made, Beetle Bugs and Mary go round and round in circles working to sell the gas that fuels the greed. Greed and wealth, wealth and greed. They are linked together always with lots of people hanging on or ducking for cover.

Whatever can be sold. Truth but mostly lies and mostly cars and gas and guns and metal things.

Who cares about Donald Duck Lips, Nigel or whether or who should exit? Who cares if the sky is falling? It’s always better to dance — the sky will always fall and boys and girls hold hands.

Trying to fix anything with voting, mopping or candy only ever works as long as until you are holding hands with someone special. Then everything’s alright.
Holding hands with greed, wealth or cocaine — they are kin to mopping floors — dirty again in no time.

Sugar, spice and all things nice, is what girls of the 60s were made of and boys weren’t the only ones driving copper-colored Beetles.

We Tell Ourselves

Quiet and horrifyingly loud.
Not knowing at all but completely.
Touching but too far away to feel it.

I would have if you’d have been there.
You wanted to but you didn’t. I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d let you.
Someday it wouldn’t be different, no matter how much we would want it.

It wasn’t right without being wrong.
There were far too many others
who would always have been unhappy.

We tried the best we were able to be what we never could be. It was wonderful while it lasted. I’ll miss it like never knowing.
It was all it could be without being.

I loved our time in your kitchen or wherever you keep your coffee and the bug who would have starved to death if it hadn’t have been for your caring.

I wanted to be something different. A friend if that was all that it should be.

Did the best I could to step up to the edge without falling
but stumbled and fell a little. I thought you might try to catch me, was a little bit wrong in assuming.

Goodbye darling dear. I’ll miss you.
I believe that I thought I loved you. I was pretty sure that you wished you could love me too.
It is what it always will be and all that it ever could be.

We tell ourselves what we want to hear. I wanted to hear what you had to say but for that to be what I wanted. And pretty much it exactly was and why it is so hard to let it go.

I think I’m beginning to see that I’m good at imagining.

 

 

Ten Times Ten

It isn’t writer’s block because there are no end of stories swirling in the brain. It’s possibly because of heat made worse by humidity  — Monsoons tormenting off in the distance — and a little bit of sleepless night.

Ten times ten — one hundred things were written today but none could find itself.

There was one about dogs and boys and another about dogs and boys but in completely unrelated ways — even this won’t come out right. One was that dogs seem like boys and cats like girls and the other was about a boy who hid some puppies and liked to pull wings off flying things and likely became a serial killer. Lots of dogs and cats and puppies and pigs, but none were willing to fulfill their end of the bargain. I especially liked the tales about Sambo and her puppies.

So that’s it for today. The writer is exhausted and wondering if anyone cares anyway — not that it matters one iota because, as it is, someone who likes to write must write whether anyone wants to hear or not.

Ten times ten is still one hundred. Thank God for maths at least.

Just so you know, yesterday was edited to death and might be fun to read again?? Seems much improved to the writer.

Through The Canyon

Eucalyptus was made into a thoroughfare eventually, but in the 50s and 60s, it was the last, or first depending on direction, of a series of rough rural streets on a grid that had been named in alphabetical order — ending or beginning with Alessandro –five streets altogether to make the little burb.

Alessandro was the thoroughfare at the time and eventually, going west, changed into Central where it continued to lace through their nearby big little city turning into Chicago by Downtown. It was hard giving out directions.

The bus didn’t go that way though because at that point, there wasn’t yet a mall. The old Main Street, where the only shopping was, had been paved over in concrete and the shops on either side were linked for walking freely without traffic. Before that it was for parades, getting through by car and parking.

By the 60s, it was becoming fashionable to get somewhere and hang out — if you didn’t have a car you couldn’t cruise Magnolia but you could walk around on Main. Pic N Save was there with Bargain Fare — lots of good cheap stuff that was the start of the China syndrome — and Woolworth’s still had a counter for getting a soda and some fries.

It might have been that a bus went the other way but for a teenager, if life was making you lonely you could always go Downtown. That’s where all the fun stuff seemed to be, even if you had to go alone.

She almost always had to go alone because by then what few friends she had were tangled up with boys or getting As. She liked getting As too, and boys, but she was very good at putting things off. She might have just been lonely. Her mother worked and her sisters were busy getting into trouble, which she didn’t like at all.

The bus stopped at the end of her street and it wasn’t too far to walk to catch it. It was a brave thing to do and she loved doing things that made her feel brave. It wasn’t anything to post about because posting hadn’t been invented yet, but it was enough that she knew that at least she thought she was being brave. It wouldn’t be long before others would say “You went ALONE?!” They couldn’t imagine it but would ask if they could go with her the next time that she went.

Eucalyptus had houses on both sides by then, but the ones on the north were newer and after them was nothing but potato fields all the way to the little string of hills that they called mountains. She liked to sit on the side of the bus that would let her watch the potato fields fade away.

The highway the bus was on was windy as it made its way to town. It went through a section of a canyon that had been carved out just for it. The top of that canyon was already starting to fill up with high-end houses and those poor rich kids still had to be bused to the school in the suburbs and mix with the poor poor kids.

She loved going through that canyon until her little burb was turned into the place to buy a new cheap house within commutable distance and before it was carved away completely for McMansions. By the time of total carving, she had a car and wasn’t on the bus – she had to pay attention to the bumper to bumper congestion and a road no longer so commutable.

Riding the bus to town in the 60s, you could make it almost all the way without seeing another car.

The first street the bus got to for getting Downtown was University Ave. Right for people to study, left for people to shop or play. It wasn’t long before University crossed Chicago and if you turned left on it, eventually Chicago turned into Central and then to Alessandro and back to where she had started — but she went as far as Market or Main because the bus didn’t take that loop anyway and she had come to stay. She was there for Pic N Save, 50 cent silk undies, Woolworth’s, French fries and for feeling like a brave girl. She might even be brave enough to pick up the bus again and go east on Market to Fairmount Park. The park had a giant pond with paddle boats. Riding the boats alone was really a brave thing and especially the paddle ones because without a partner, it was conceivable to get exhausted right in the middle of the pond and not know how to get help.

Maybe that could be saved for another day.

She got her silky panties, two layers of sheer, one black and one red that turned them into burgundy. She fondled figurines at Pic N Save because she loved anything made of ceramic. She mooched through Bargain Fare that seemed to just have bins and bins of useless stuff and then traveled on for French fries and a soda. By then she was low on money – she’d come with just enough — just enough to have a brave-girl day and she loved those brave-girl days.

The ride home went through the canyon again. This time the bus let out on the far side of the four-lane highway and there were no traffic lights. The scariest challenge of the day, and the least fun, was crossing those four lanes. Even though traffic was light there in the 60s, any car coming was a fright and it seemed so far across.

That night on the top bunk in a room with two sisters, she would admire the burgundy panties and think proudly of her thirteen year old self. It really was quite something to do all of that alone.

Those potato fields would eventually be filled up with industrial buildings. Her little burg would remain but be outlined with thoroughfares and newer homes that shadowed it. The bus might still go through but she had gone on to braver things and wouldn’t know. The last time that she saw it, the canyon was a blur of profit sharing — not anywhere near the value of a bus ride through it in the 60s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Would He Interfere

Stories spin throughout the day, weaving this and that together into life.

“Cows should not be bred — cows that exist, sanctioned for wholesome living on their own.”

“Boy that man is handsome. Is he available, he’s too young, what is he doing with that cow?”

“Dogs are boys and cats are girls.”

“Negative thoughts will be our demise. Positive ones can change the world.”

“Would he interfere with movie watching? Cats and dogs don’t — probably neither do cows.”

“I only want a buddy (not a sweetheart).” ~ Patsy Montana, 1937

Mrs. Mitchell needed new carpeting in a condominium she and her Judge husband were moving to. The existing carpet was thick and lush and virtually new, but Mrs. Mitchell wanted peach and it was a shade of white. Judge, Mr. Mitchell traded stocks and was wealthy beyond all measure. Mrs. Mitchell played tennis and could only coordinate a house call around that favored timing.

Mrs. Mitchell kept cows for pets. She loved her cows. Where would they fit in the condo? Maybe the condo was just another investment right on the tennis court. The cows, where they were, had acreage and plenty of room to roam around the orange groves. Maybe the condition of the sale was that the cows could stay and she could visit.

Mrs. Mitchell didn’t care a hoot about what happened to the virtually new lush carpet that was being replaced with a lesser one, but peach. Even after all kinds of effort by the designer to divert it happening, off to the dump it went.

Bah humbug rich and entitled people.

Mrs. Mitchell later bought another house in Julian, CA and invited that designer to help her plan it too. The designer was excited, because that was one of her favorite places in the world and she hoped she’d get to measure things in person. The owner of the store knew Mrs. Mitchell from social circles and stole that job right out from under her without a blink of her evil eye — regardless that Mrs. Mitchell had been her client first. She hated that owner and got literally sick at the sight of her and ended up leaving for greener pastures. Mrs. Mitchell did nothing.

Bah humbug owners who feel entitled. Bah humbug to it all. Greed and wealth are partners. Greener pastures have to be made up in one’s mind.

So if she could change her world with positive thinking and seep a man out singly from the margins, movies and greener pastures would lose their value and cats and dogs nor cows would interfere.

Maybe he’d like the same movies.

Bah humbug wishful thinking.

 

 

Blasting Boom Boxes

Brittany’s blue blouse blew back before being blown beyond bread baking beside bulbous beach baskets brown-buckled by blasting boom boxes.

Brittany tried desperately to keep her blue blouse from being blown completely off by the wind, all the while anticipating eating a piece of that wonderful, nearby baking bread. The bulbous brown-buckled baskets sitting beside the beach would be perfect to put a loaf in and then onto her bike so that she could speed off back home — away from the blasting boom boxes.

It’s a shame more people don’t realize that it isn’t fair before it causes strife. What a better world it would be. It’s beyond comprehension.

As Brittany’s horn blew, she was hoping that people wouldn’t notice that she was naked now.

 

 

 

 

Color of Chocolate

Perhaps it wasn’t a matter of being unliked. The slightest slights, after all, were cause for reeling — who could put up with that.

“Your hair is the color of chocolate.” What did that mean!? The color of poop. No that isn’t what was said.

“Tetchy, touchy, sensitive.” Mothers can be so cruel. Seems like being a mother calls for far more considered thought. Some mothers use their children for projection. That can’t be good and can easily scar — a scar for life it seems. Little bodies bruise easily and contain all of the messages that formed their language from the start.

“She is cute isn’t she?” The mother said to the other daughter. What did that make her, chocolate-colored poop hair?

“You over analyze, you think too much, you’re far too serious.” So-called friends can be as cruel as mothers too.

Far easier to spool back up and away from that. Island living in a box of chocolate-covered Milk Duds. So what if it means a migraine.

So it seems that if the other mystery person is beautiful, or thought to be from words like, “beautiful ladies” even though no image is attached, it means that the one thinking can think, if they “think too much” that they are far, far less than that. That is the way that tetchy, touchy, sensitive people think. Ones that have been injured by Motherwork. Even if it is far from the truth or of no meaning or value.

Had there been an image and the image revealed that her arms weren’t as thin, or she had no butt or she was nothing like a “beautiful ladies”, all of a sudden, the tetchy person could think “I am so beautiful, why wouldn’t anyone like me!?” As if that is all that matters. Motherwork again.

By the time that she was twenty something, she was on her own and having her hair cut. And by that time, she had conquered some fears and met some men and decided that men were hardly worth the slights they bring. She was bright and blistering, not fond of taking prisoners — she could hold her own for sure with words of courage. The mother talk had faded enough and in spite of that talk she’d found her way, maybe actually because of. For certain mother was forgiven once she’d found the context.

“Your hair is the color of chocolate.” That had to be a good thing, but nice men still seem boring.