Gravity readjusts

Let the work and the healing begin.

 

Pickled

I was looking for a little story I wrote about pickles. Just a memory that seemed a good thing to wander through today, but while meandering through my folders I found this poem. I think it pairs well with the Mr. Connery post, because it contradicts and heightens it. Enough said. Have a safe day. (Have we ever thought this much about Georgia and Pennsylvania and Nevada and North Carolina? Have we ever thought so much about the 235,000 plus who don’t get to ponder these numbers? Sorry, this was just a pickle post.)

         Comfort food

Every once in a while, I just want sweet pickles, buttered
crackers, potato soup. I long to fall asleep
in my grandfather’s old rocker. Slowly
pushing my foot on the ottoman as voices drift from the kitchen
mixed with baking bread and pie and the near saddle sweetness
of the leather chair. There I am small enough to slide
most of my body over the seat, pipe smoke has marinated
the afghan, my head rolls back and forth and the voices
grow more and more distant and then what I really want
happens, and my dad says Hey Turkey Lurkey,
the sky has fallen, wake up. Wake up.

Only take as directed

Today, to stop the noise and worry, I cleaned the raised beds, untangled vines, turned the soil, a little light maintenance on the frames, and put the hog wire back in place. Safe from the freeze, deep inside the jungle of the plants, I found ten or so tomatoes that should ripen. I also cleaned my sunflower bed, pulled up all the marigolds (sigh), moved birdfeeders, trimmed some shrubs. I could have spent hours in the backyard raking and trimming but I need to pace myself; when I came in there was still no election results. So, I had Jerry go with me to the commissary to get away from the news. I threatened him last night with a dose of NyQuil if he was up at all hours. He doesn’t have my superpower, stress sleeping, and so was up most of Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. NyQuil, or anything like it, would knock him out for a good ten hours but anxiety and exhaustion did the trick last night. I think the five-mile walk helped too. Now we’re in a holding pattern like so many others. Nothing new. I do notice that most of the Trump signs are off peoples’ lawns. Most of the Biden signs, mine included, are still up.

On top of all the waiting for election results (and listening to the (new) lies spewing from this administration) in local news, over in Missouri, a poll worker who had COVID-19, (who had tested positive on October 30 and was told to quarantine) still chose to go to the polls, still worked closely with nine people, and maybe helped some voters, has died. The county has to notify the 1800 plus people who came to vote at that location. It’s just beyond the pale.

Here’s a little video I shot this morning, yelling at the plane “Get out of the air space over my lawn!” The Air Force never listens. I didn’t watch this until hours after I shot it and then it just felt so appropriate for today.

 Be safe.

The bear offers metaphor

       Make of it what you will.

I want to say the hundred blackbirds landing
on the golden tree and the too bright half-moon
hung over the pine and the breeze that feels
new and fresh over the world are positive signs.
 
I would be lying.
 
The air is still filled with disease and hate,
hopelessness twitches in my left eye

and dread is the shadow fluttering in my heart. 

 

Hold onto your butts

Election Day. I have a pot of end-of-the-world chili cooking. The apocalypse shopping is done. Every Tuesday the tornado alarm is tested at 10 AM, quite fitting for the dread hovering about right now. Contrast that with the weather. It is bright and sunny and will be warm today after yesterday's killing frost. Sunday, I brought in every tomato that seemed it might ripen. I also got the final two green peppers (about the size of the end of my thumb) and with the first, which was the size of my thumb, used them in eggs for breakfast. Today the bed that held the garden is a tangle of black vines. I have now dubbed it Trump’s heart.

I want to rerun something I wrote in October, right before I started this blog. Something sent to a couple of people but it hasn’t seen the light of day since. I think it feels right to revisit it today of all days. So, I’ll post it and a photo of my last harvest and a quick meme from Jurassic Park.

Be safe.

Just this. It's Monday. Be safe, be kind, wear your mask. 

 

That will be Mr. Connery to you

There are a number of meanders that I’ve been on since yesterday. The first started when I heard that Sean Connery had died. I’m not a James Bond fan, and don’t think that 007, as embodied by Connery, was interesting, but as he aged and took other roles, I became interested. One of my favorite memories from the Navy was the day my colleague and friend, Darla, and I led “The Hunt for Sean Connery”. It was during the filming of The Hunt for Red October bits and pieces which were being filmed on Sub Base San Diego where I was then stationed. There were men in our command, submariners, who were helping with consultation and as extras in the film. One of the officers, Lieutenant Mark Draxton, actually had a speaking role (showing up in the pivotal scene where the Dallas has to draw off the Russian sub) and was sent on temporary duty to LA while the filming was going on. He was already a blond, blue-eyed, cleft in the chin surfer dude who drove a Porsche; he looked like he had stepped out of a recruiting poster; I teased him terribly after he came back. But the day of the hunt, because it was secret as to where the crew might be, we were calling in favors, stopping known over-sharers and generally having a good time. We never found the crew, or Mr. Connery, and what would we have done anyway? No one had a cell phone to take that selfie; would it have really happened?

I realized, yesterday, that I had a greater (emotional) connection to Mr. (Thomas) Sean Connery who died at 90 than Mr. Keith Wortman, my father, who died at 90 July 4, 2019. One man I’d never met, but thought a lot about these past thirty years, and the other had shut me out of his life thirty-five years prior. Alright. There you go.

And then, I was thinking about parents and how in Jerry’s family the mind goes but the body stays strong and on my side the body goes and the mind is clear (for the most part, we both will add).  So that I am hoping we will be able to continue together and make one being, a Fankenberry or some such hybrid. I say this as both our fathers passed in 2019, months apart, his father didn’t know anyone and my father didn’t know his body. Both deceived.

And then I was wondering if we could teach our bodies to sleep in the cold like hummingbirds in the Andes. One species has been reported to go into caves during very cold weather and not come out for days. Of course, that’s a short hibernation, something I do on a weekly basis. I’d still like to get to the 12 on, 12 off sleep schedule just to kill time. Working toward the ‘see you in the Spring’.

And, then finally, I was back to Sean Connery and The Hunt for Red October. Sam Neill was also in this movie and as far as actors go, I have had an ongoing appreciation of him since 1979’s My Brilliant Career where he had his heart broken. I loved the movie, the character played by Judy Davis, Sybylla: “A young independent woman who lives with her grandmother and aunt in the countryside rebels against being pressured into marriage and chooses to solely focus on having a career as a writer.” I was twenty when I saw it on Masterpiece Theatre. So, there’s that.

                      

And then finally, today, I wanted to sit beside Seven Hills Road where it goes along the corn fields and film the blackbirds murmuring, back and forth, landing on the electric wires and then dancing back to the fields. Or just sit and listen to their wings and songs. Or just imagine my own arms allowing flight.