5 stars

Sometimes you can tell the question is coming:  Will you hold please after the call for a brief survey to tell is how we did?

at which point I like to head it off at the pass and say, if moved to do so, "hey, thanks a lot for your help. I won't hold, but I want to tell you directly, in person, so you know how much you've meant to me. Thanks so much. I appreciate it." I'll do anything to avoid that false, fishing for validation exchange for a little customer service that does nothing for anyone's integrity. It's hard enough to weed through the phone tree,  take the time and energy to call in the first place, set aside an age to do, let alone earn my right to customer information without having to reflect on the experience and take a post call quiz.

Of course sometimes I am indifferent and other times I'm quite appalled at just how poor customer phone service can be, often leaving me wondering if I misdialed or woke someone up, ultimately feeling guilty for my reasonable questions.

But sometimes relief can take you aback. Today was the day you took the after call survey. Maybe it was her accent reminding you of happier times in far away places. Maybe it was her telling you to stay safe. Maybe it was just the great information. But she earned her five out of five. I would told of her so ditectly, but I didn't see it coming.

Out Front (on all the lawn I never knew I had)

And that last Friday after class, Amber came by bearing very Amberesque quality, homemade gifts of plantain leaf salve for those pesky no-seeums and other such bug bites and Writing Nature Nearby handmade journal and we sat crosslegged on towels 8 feet apart or more on the moss-lawn out front. We had planned to sit in the back, but there was no shade to be found, which I didn't know since I'm not much for sitting outside at 2 PM.

We used to stand by the door after class and talk for a while. There was always something. For more than 8 years, we stood by the door and talked, first at The Loft, then at the Xerxes Beach, and now here. About a month into the pandemic, we talked about getting together at a distance, so much missing our in-person ritual after class, but we both became immediately tearful at the thought of not hugging so we pushed it under, set it aside. Why add more to more? But then on a whim, she and her son dropped by after painting a mural in Uptown and, you know, you remember, it wasn't so bad after all. It wasn't so hard. And the next day she dropped off 4 tomato plants, which are going crazy in that backyard that gets no shade. And after that we said, you know, we can do this. We can get together and not suffer. And we did.

I've never sat on our front lawn before, but I've been thinking about it lately, ever since we sat on a friend's sloped lawn back Xerxes way on the 4th and had such a great time distantly clustered on a hill, wondering why we'd never done this before. We've been seeing fewer people out front these days, fewer neighbors tucked into their driveways screaming at each other requisite feet apart. It seems like it's back to abandoned Adirondacks poised perfectly on candy green lawns, waiting for a photo shoot, advertising, "Someone was here!  "Back when it's over."

I'm not sure if I ever would have sat on my front lawn, given how vast it is, akin to being on the moon, had Covid not happened. Well, actually, had Amber not happened, happened into my life. And I'm grateful every day for countless reasons that she did. Remember how she hugged that tree?

how green it was

you will want to remember
the tiny green inchworm, 
the same one your same son prayed over,
pressed to his third eye in Grand Marais 
maybe 4 or 5 July's ago over those roaring falls

And you will know it is the same one,
the same caterpillar remembering his phantom wings
when your son rescues him camouflaged between
greens form the garden in your metal mixing bowl
full of sunflower seeds, tomatoes, and freshly 
picked arugula, romaine, and some
other kind of growing green you planted and can't remember
like every summer you can never remember
like so many things you cannot remember
so you want to remember this inchworm, this boy
and the moment he was returned again and again back to his emeralds 

Sheet Music

||The boy is teaching me to read music

||                                    me                music

||I thought it       help     me   with 

||                    might      the                  pain

You know, balance the brain

You know, balance the brain:

||All that                    right      left

                    left                                  right p.

||but I can't seem to get the hang of it

||esuaceb woh era uoy dessoppus ot gnikcuf

||MAKE any SENSE OF C# f. (      )p. ●b

|| make any       nse             f   《》 P.  B

& play ThIS & this & ThAt at the same Thyme

Sa siht  and siht  and that  p. ta eht emas emit

I'                           ra                           r

    D                         ath                    brrrrrrrrrr

play by ear because I play very well like that  and it all makes perfect flowing sense, not having to harness intuition with math

And have it again

and that for my 50th, the boys
got me a tall white cake with sparkling white almond cream frosting that said happy birthday Rox in flamingo pink vintage icing that was so strong it tasted like liquore and we had platefuls for 3 days straight and got so dizzy and dependent, blindingly obedient and under spell because during pandemic the receptors for something disguised as love are truly round and open
and when the party was over and the crumbs were gone, we sulked around for a day or two getting by on Bomb Pops and Fage until it occurred to me we might have some almond extract in the cake drawer and lo and behold we did, along with a packet of Bob's Gluten Free white cake mix due to expire July 17, 2020, so wouldn't you know it, the boy and I got to work and even found enough powdered sugar for the grand finale and in no time we had ourselves a second birthday cake. It'll be hell to pay when we run out again; it might be a while before we can come by those ingredients again, but for all the spilled powdered sugar and standing around in the kitchen licking the cages of frosting fresh out of the mixing bowl, it was worth it, it was normalcy, even so

Thought of posting every day

There's always something to tell you
always something to say, to admit, to ask for, to share, to rant, to remember, to call
always some babbling brook at the dam

     but the truth is I don't know if you're listening. I don't know if you're there. I don't know if you've ever been there. Deep down, I know this. And most of the time it really doesn't matter. I mean, it does and it doesn't.  It really doesn't because the words echo back in this empty room on this cork floor where the acoustic guitar sounds wide and traveled when you pull away the wool rug and see the damage

and the whole point is to remember one thing, whatever you could come up with, that you wanted to tell me, so many years later even so