1/21/2011

wander

Perhaps a little wilderness
is what’s called for.
Wailing muscle the heart of the trail.
Web hems stretch, cling,
dry limbs' claws waylay bare legs.Altitude gained,
oxygen lost.
Trudging rhythm. Breaths of dust.

Grasp for barren treasure, the
hard outline against bright space.
Promise me
a difficult beauty.

1/14/2011

"cousin" and the car

My speedometer's gone wonky. I think its problem is somehow connected with wet weather, but I don't know. First time I noticed, I was doing 55 as I drove sedately toward Prairie Road. Next time, it read 90 on Maxwell. Gave me a little thrill, but somehow the buildings weren't spinning past like they should have been.

The 1991 Dodge Dynasty is fine for me. I think it has plenty of power, though Tim says its engine's got nothing on his '66 Falcon in its glory days (I think his speedometer showed high numbers for real a couple times on Illinois back roads). The Dynasty runs and is paid for, however there is the speedometer problem. There is also an occasional right turn signal glitch, in that its light comes on, but without the click, click. It shines steady and makes no sound. Is this legal? I'm not sure. Today a sheriff's car followed me briefly, and I turned to the right in from of him. He didn't come after me, so if I'm in the wrong it's at least not a big enough infraction to warrant immediate action by law enforcement.

Something happened last weekend, though, that brought the authorities to our doorstep.

Tim and I were alone most of Saturday, so of course we were highly stimulated to clean the kitchen counter. Then Tim, in typical fashion, made his way to the garage while I went online and tinkered with my blog. After an hour spent cajoling HTML widgets and thingies to do what I wanted I took a break and wandered through our living room, past the front window, where outside the green trunk of a sheriff's car showed, its front obscured by Tim's work truck. The sheriff, his back to me, was jotting things on his clipboard and talking to a man who had his hands behind his back.

I stepped quickly past the window. "Tim," I called to the garage door. "You should look out front. A sheriff's arresting someone on our driveway."

I felt rather like Mrs. Kravitz from the old TV show, Bewitched. I kept peeking to see what might happen next. Amused, Tim offered to go out and ask the arrestee (a middle-aged guy we didn't recognize) what he'd been handcuffed for. "I can tell him my wife wants to know," Tim said. "My wife, Deanna, who frequents the jail to visit her cousin."

I rolled my eyes. "Thanks, anyway." Still, it was hard not to check the scene every few minutes.

It was Tim who noticed when a couple of city police cars parked near the sheriff. Things were serious, yet also quite familiar. The guy being arrested had the dazed look of the usual Cops felon. Tim has watched that show for years, and we could guess the sort of dialog transpiring. Criminal: "Why'd you stop me? I wasn't doing anything." Policeman: "What did you toss out when you saw us behind you?" Criminal: "Nothin'. This is my friend's car. I don't know what you're talking about." And so it tends to go.

Why we had this particular episode out front was a puzzler. Our house sits in the middle of the block on a quiet street. Such drama doesn't transpire here. Had this man fled to our home for some reason? Conceivably, my cousin in prison could have given him our address.

I sure hoped not.

At last I made it back to my computer, just before the doorbell rang. Uh, oh. I skittered toward the front door, glad to see Tim there first. I peered over his shoulder at two state patrolmen.

"Do you recognize Ken out here?" one of them asked.

"No," Tim said. "We checked, and he isn't a neighbor or anything."

"He told us his cousin lives here," the officer said.

"Hm, Ken..." I think Tim was smiling by now. "Cousin Ken...I could go look up the family tree."

The officers' laughs relieved me, but I tensed again as Tim started making more comments, mentioning kissing cousins and the like. The first officer said they would get his truck out of our driveway, and the two of them moved away, while Tim swung the screen door wider and made to say more. I motioned quickly for him to get back inside. "Enough," I whispered. I love my funny guy, but the troopers might have stuff to do.

A big tow truck pulled up in front. That's when I saw the newish truck "cousin" Ken had been driving being backed out of the slot my Dynasty normally occupies. I'd all but forgotten Victoria had taken the car to work, and Tim's truck had been hiding Ken's vehicle. Now the situation made better sense. Ken had been fleeing the troopers and had turned down our street and found what he thought might be a hiding place on the other side of the large-wheeled Dodge Ram Tim drives up to transmitters. If the troopers had been snoozing, perhaps Ken's plan might have worked. Instead, a crime was foiled, for which I'm definitely grateful.

I'm pretty sure he wasn't in trouble for a faulty blinker. But next week mine's getting checked at the garage, along with the crazy speedometer.

1/06/2011

light

I drove home from Junction City under a cloud-bowl sky. Grayness ceased just before the panorama of encircling hills. Sunset had turned the background powderish pink. Each landscape rise stood darkly defined, tallest ones patched with snow.

In the middle of highway 99 I stopped, pulled out my wide angle lens camera, and carried on in click heaven, traffic piling up behind me.

Well, no.

I only wished I could have. Wished I had the equipment, spot, and time. Never mind, though -- dazzle me it did, in the gifting way that life accessorizes.

It is a dark existence, this. Maybe my melancholy makes it seem so, but as I've been reminded lately by friends who can't believe in a personal God who would allow horrors and tragedies, there's a cloud of historical witness to the awful. It continues all around us, a present reminder. The more I learn, the worse it gets. Even such beauty beneath the gray bowl can't make up for it, can't make it not so.

I used to try and look at a contrary scene -- everything's really all right, I'm just peering in the wrong places, this is happening so I'll be that much more happy next time, next year. I think I strove against reality. Some days the pink was nowhere. Long times passed between light and glimmer. They still do. And there's a big perhaps that I'll reach a point where gloom settles completely.

Here I am, old, and thinking these things. Yet
I remain captivated by the tiniest pinprick.

As if it were on purpose.

As if darkness has its place.

I keep longing for more of the journey and the promise and the next bright bits of surprise.

1/04/2011

new, old, simple

I dozed a little during writing time this morning.

Life has been wood on the fire (sore neck),
dishes in the dishwasher (bend, straighten, groan),
husband on the sofa (getting his own soup from a can; I don't cook much).

There was Christmas.
Son almost well, husband with a fever, daughter almost sick.
There was New Year's. A party.
We left at 10:00.
Shiverish, tired, yet happy still.

There is laundry to catch up on,
back to work -- make a lunch beforehand,
remember what got left for 2011.

I jotted ideas during the holidays. Then I started something new, almost random, and I like it. Enough to return after adding to the fire, after dozing, and before leaving for work.

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