no one to witness and adjust

This stupid poem came into my head unbidden when I was running tonight and has lingered. To Elsie, by Williams: the middle part. An old poem, old to me, and older still. This part:


while the imagination strains
after deer
going by fields of goldenrod in

the stifling heat of September
Somehow
it seems to destroy us

It is only in isolate flecks that
something
is given off

Moving weekend: feel tired, used up, practical, a little down, cynical, hopeful, sunburnt. I thought I was going to die at one point. At another, I fell asleep. I got groceries, and flowers for the house. I need more shower curtains and dish washing tablets.

More updates to come.

time has a way of throwing it all in your face

I looked at cards tonight for the first time in a few months, and to my surprise, drew action cards for the first time in years.

I think people who love you take the best pictures of you. Not that this is the best picture of me, but my mom took it on the Bull Run River (the best river don't let the unspectacular stretch of muddy water fool you) and I like it. I like that my legs look strong, and even though my strap is about to fall off my shoulder and I'm slouched toward the branch I'm leaning on a weird angle, I look happy and I recognize myself.

I love the Bull Run; I used to play in it when I was little. During a particular unsupervised adventure, I was with my friend (the first girl who ever kissed me, much to my confusion at the time) whose house backed up to the river. We were probably 9 or 10. There was this little... I want to call it an island, which is the word we used for it then, but it was more likely just the sandy opposite bank. Well, the alluring "island" was covered in bluebells, and it was gorgeous, and mysterious, and us being bad little kids, we got this desperate notion that we really wanted to get over there, that some good adventure was waiting on the other side. We were all worked up. We spent ages looking for a log or something to cross on, but it was no good, soon it became apparent that the only thing that would do would be to ford the river.

 I started across, my shorter friend traveling in my wake. The water was fairly shallow, but there was this deeper channel that came about up to my chest which was scary, and cold, and thrilling. I remember being surprised by the strength of the current, but also my body's ability to bear it and maintain my path through to the end. I was really struck by the experience--that one could merely decide to wade determinedly through a frightening experience and come out on the other side to bluebells and uncharted horse trails. This matter of will and body.

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about when I was looking at the water.

on the unexpected death of someone I knew once

I'm sitting around upstairs thinking about a newly-dead old man I hadn't thought about in two years. Isn't it funny how remote tragedy makes one wring out the dregs of significance and personal connection? You want to justify something: that confusing lurch, the slight readjustment on your life's address book. Far removed grief feels almost indulgent. For example, I am remembering this one thing in particular my late former teacher said (to me, about me, of course: my favorite subject.) I had written a weird essay about my blood phobia, and embarrassed at a certain piece of it, within the narrative I'd bounced away from the topic and made a few self-deprecating jokes. He called me out in the middle of class. He said that it's a cheap trick to try to make people laugh at you to cover the exceptionally real parts.

well I own this field and I wrote this sky

I kind of like my often front-part of the week posting schedule. Not that I don't post on the latter half of the week, but I do notice a pattern of my doing it more now.

Good weekend: wild coreopsis, civil war trails, deer, bald-faced hornets, nice wine, bullets, picnics, and frittata. I went to bed filthy and sticky and smelling like earth and tomatoes, and I slept well. You know you're home in Manassas when a stranger makes polite small talk at you in Spanish and you respond in Spanish without even realizing it, having not spoken it for almost ten years, and then you go see a Confederate war memorial. But it was good to get back on the battlefields that I spent so much of my childhood and adolescence.

 Apparently while I was gone from my house in Staunton, a bolt of lightning struck the ground inches from my dining room window. It's raining softly now and I'm sitting at the kitchen table thinking.

 

 

Bright hot 11 pm. This whole night feels like friction and scrapes. I'm really past ready to be running again. My muscle does an excellent job of being really chill right up until the point where I'm ready to jump into things again, and then waking me up in the middle of the night. Race in 5 weeks--I guess everyone loves a comeback story, or a trainwreck. I feel restless and dirty and hungry.

I'm so glad to be heading north tomorrow, even just for an unpractical short period. I want to jog with my mom and pick tomatoes and see my dumb deer and drink wine and go four-wheeling with Skippy and Chels.

What are we without this?
Whirling in the dark universe,
alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—

What do we have really?
Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,
tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring
attempts to build character.
What do we have to appease the great forces?

And I think in the end this was the question
that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach,
the Greek ships at the ready, the sea
invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future
lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking
it could be controlled. He should have said
I have nothing, I am at your mercy.

from "The Empty Glass"  by Louise Gluck

you'll never never never never get to heaven when you die, little girl