New Tattoo

A lady on a book? The man getting a tattoo next to me wanted to know what it meant. What did his tattoo of a skeleton riding a pig with an apple in his mouth mean? I didn't ask, fearing the answer. Make up an explanation if you need one. I guarantee it will be more interesting than my own.

Profusion

The garden has tipped over into wildness. The spinach and arugula bolted a week or so ago. The volunteer tomatoes are bowling over the wildflowers while the sunflowers bully the tomatoes. The nasturtium flow like water from their inch of soil. The bamboo seeks the sky.

Now if only I could hide the way the cat does, nestling into a spot between the flowers that smell like Good n' Plenty and the silver-blue grass. Nobody can see me. Nobody knows I'm here. Just watching and waiting and napping.

Eagle Creek

I'm waiting out the neighborhood fireworks tonight. I thought some calm green photos from my hike up the Eagle Creek Trail a few days ago would help distract me from the explosions. Icy water to cool my tired feet, the endless rush of Punchbowl Falls and the sweet cure of dappled light. Aaah, that's better...

Mao grows bored with an article in BOMB magazine about "Nights of Horror" - the sado-masochistic cartoons made by the creator of Superman.

I love that this house is being swallowed by plants, the sidewalk barely passable. I hope that when I'm old and arthritic that my house and garden will succumb to a similar fate. Actually, I wish I could make this happen to my yard right now. I wish I could make everything in my life overflow this way, in wild beautiful bursts. One thing tangled in another. All of it sweet.

Community, Hope and Pyromania

Twice a year at every solstice my friends build and burn a wooden figure along with the wishes of the witnesses. This isn't related in any way with Burning Man (capital B, capital M) and the oddly false, strained and irritating people I generally associate with that drug pit in the desert. I prefer our low key event, one that celebrates a true sense of community, hope and pyromania. Here's to summer!

Suffering under the So What Factor

The symbols of hope have deflated back into normal politicians. The big, nearly ungraspable problems of the world have pulled free and become truly ungraspable. People are buying bread instead of books, booze instead of bread. To all this I say SO WHAT? The days speed and the gray hairs grow and the kids outside take longer and longer to GET OFF MY LAWN.

In the end, the world doesn't care if I write a good book. Even my friends, who will certainly support my efforts to keep writing, to keep striving won't love me less if I fail to do so. In the back of my head I hear half a dozen different writing teachers saying "What's at stake here?" The truth is, not much. This fact alternates between feeling liberating and terrifying depending on how well I slept the night before. The drunkards were out full force last night and I was awake for hours so I apologize if I sound too bleak.

In truth, it's too beautiful outside and my life is too sweet and easy to feel any real depression over this. I don't even know what "this" is other than a pang of existential angst. Maybe I'll head out into the yard, soak up some sun and try to shake it off. And if you have any suggestions, short of having a child or finding god, I'm all ears.