building a mystery

1) It's no mystery that I love Jennifer Finney Boylan, I've basically fangirled since I met her in 2011. I don't know though, why I waited so long to read her collab with Jodi Picoult--Mad Honey. For the last couple of days I've been waiting to finish all my million persnickety multiplying duties so I could sit down with my book. Just finished it today, and there were so many parts that brought me to tears and so many twists I didn't see coming and so many parts I just had to reread. It was so good. 

2) I was in a mad panic yesterday because I had written up a paper proposal about the Jhumpa Lahiri collection, Roman Stories, but couldn't find it in my email or the Google doc I'd been working on with some colleagues on another proposal. I finally found the huffy title I'd used ("Tell Me Where it Hurts: Ailment and Alienation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories"), by using Google History, and after over an hour of searching every doc I had opened in March, I finally found the notes I made. Back to the drawing board, I guess.

3) I got brave today and went looking for the snake I saw three weeks ago. I wore long boots, made a lot of noise, and was on high alert. But Mx. Slithers seems to have disappeared just as mysteriously as they appeared. I'd read that snakes don't like strong smells, so I took some old packets of curry powder and scattered them in that part of the garden, hoping to scare them away forever.

4) Pic: Huck, Max, Big A, and I out on our post-dinner walk... It's a mystery why our fluffy doodles think they can take on our neighbor's muscular German Shepherd, but they always do their version of trash talk as we pass. 

no stranger world

what if the the days 
called us to 
                                            speak to the strangers 
                                            seek them out
they who have much 
to share of the dark and day 
                                            whose names are conversations
                                             whose hellos are history 
when the voiceover

of memory 

                                            is the scream of a dark dagger 
                                            but sometimes lilts to tomorrow 
saying me saying me
saving me saving me
                                            for it may be as hard to get into a world 
                                            as it is to get out of it 
I too was a stranger once 
how strange that was                                
                                              let it be
                                              let me be

______

Pic: In the woods out front in the evening light. I've been thinking a lot about the way refugees are being described in this moment--partly because we used to live in Yellow Springs (Big A's old hometown), which is close to Springfield, OH... in fact, Big A was born in a Springfield hospital! Also, Haiti itself is both inspiring as the first country to win independence from slavery, but tragic for the way France has tethered it to poverty in retaliation. And I love the stoics and more recently, Martha Nussbaum's interpretation of cosmopolitanism as "bringing the stranger in." I would find it wonderful to live in a world where there were no "strangers."

a proper Friday the thirteenth

Pic: My friend PJ sent this photo of the wildfires (one of four!) raging around her home in Redlands, CA. People two blocks north of them have been evacuated, but PJ and her partner and their menagerie of animals are still sheltering in place there... at least for the moment.

PJ's pic was both a reality check and a metaphor for today--I just had to disengage from some tasks to focus on other more pressing ones. This has been a week of missed appointments and misunderstandings but luckily the work week is at an end and I get to rest, reset, and restore my settings. 

to the left, to the left,

I recognize the stakes for women, LGBTQIA+, children, POC, etc in this election. But I'm not happy with what seems to be the obvious choice either. I don't want "the most lethal fighting force in the world." (We already have the most lethal, most overfunded, most expansive military presence in the world.) I want an end to poverty and homelessness. I want accessible and high-quality K-12 ed and free higher ed. And while we're at it, I kind of want cool, high-speed rail systems...

I feel like even just four years ago, forgiving college debt, taxing billionaires, Green energy, and expanding Medicare was a bigger part of the conversation than it is currently. And hearing the two candidates basically argue about who'll deport more immigrants and conduct more fracking is dismaying. The Overton Window* of what seems politically feasible has drifted waaaay to the right and needs to move leftward...

*I've been using the term for a few years now, but I didn't realize until I went to link to it that it is homegrown in Michigan!

heart-shaped tree

If there is a heart-shaped tree     might it have heart-shaped roots        does it live in a heart-shaped world where we too might be invited in?      Oh, I am being silly?        I guess I am being silly.     I know.   I know I've never stopped...       I never stopped looking for love everywhere after all.      Is a heart-shaped tree an address?     Does anyone live there?       Could it be a home?     Could it be a trap?    Could it be both like a spider's web?        It is here in my life         adoration stronger than addiction      One can go almost everywhere from there. 

______________________

Pic: A heart-shaped tree! I used to love finding heart-shaped things... Here's a link to Drew Barrymore's work Find It In Everything 

today's three

1) Young the Giant was opening for Cage the Elephant this evening, and I got tickets to the show as a birthday present back in March. I've loved Young the Giant for over ten years, especially "Mind Over Matter" and most recently "The Walk Home," so it was a pretty perfect present. The show was terrific! Matt Shultz, Cage's lead singer, was on a scooter with a broken foot but had SO. MUCH. ENERGY. 

2) I read yesterday's comments, and I'm so touched by the concern and... a bit freaked out that I don't seem to be responding appropriately? It's not that I'm fearless--I was a proper ninny when there was that active shooter on the MSU campus in 2023. So maybe I'm just foolish or foolhardy from not recognizing the danger I was in? For whatever reason, this closer encounter with a gun seems not to have registered in my consciousness at all. And even as it was happening, I was translating it into an absurd dinner party story.

3) And I completely missed today's presidential debate. I doubt I missed anything significant. I heard on the news that 30% of people polled said they were waiting to decide whom to vote for based on today's debate performance--I cannot fathom what they could learn that hasn't already been repeatedly demonstrated.

Pic: Young the Giant in concert at Pineknob Theater.

our strange logics

green the river, green the woods
if we don't have time, time has us

              enflamed with error, the things 

              we mutter soon become mantras 

you must try to forgive everyone  

who said things/happen/a reason 

               finding chance, choice after choice,

               and ways to fold time in your mouth 

steal your turbulent hopes from us

send it toward your own ripe pause

________________________

Further details from the "Gun Story" that surfaced after a few retellings.

1) The kids asked me what the gun looked like and I couldn't remember because I wasn't looking at it. What were you looking at, they asked. That's when I had to admit I'd been distracted by the dog in the backseat of their car and the family erupted into howls of laughter. 

2) On why I'm not afraid I'll bump into the people with the gun again. Their car had temporary Missouri tags, I imagine they were visitors here for the weekend and are no longer in town. (Also, I got a picture of their tag, so I'm not completely useless.)

3) The confused/amused look Big A and I gave each other when the young police officer repeatedly told us they were very unnerved and shaken by this incident. It was very Gen Z of them. 

___________________________

Pic: The river is so green from reflecting the trees here! The Red Cedar in the woods behind L's house.