Just this side of complete incoherence

I have just been swamped with work for the last two months. I've worked until 1:30, 1:45 am for the last three nights. I can hardly even think what to say next. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, just wistful. I miss my notebook and my sewing machine and my guitar.
And I'm really, really tired.

I have to make sure to remembers how this feels when business slows down and we start worrying about the lack of work.

Humans are just never satisfied.
Back to work so I can go to bed sometime tonight.

Older than he looked

I never saw you smile
so many worries so much fear
a solemn child
a resolute child
who only dreamed of being big enough

Games

Tomorrow they will don their kilts
and speak with put-on Highland lilts
The pipes will scream a warrior's song
and swords and shields will clash along

Tonight we sleep in our soft beds
We'll likely wake with all our heads
Five thousand mile', three hundred year',
still claim revenge for every tear

Gnus

Where did they come from? The lions, I mean. The ones in yesterday's post. One minute I'm typing along, just trying to get something, anything down on screen, and an entire African afternoon pops into my head. I could almost smell the dust. I imagine it to smell something like a resin-scented afternoon in the chaparral but with more gnus.

It's almost one in the morning. My contacts are sticking to my eyeballs. This is probably not the time to muse about where ideas come from or how your mind can put together pictures of places you've never been. Does it help to have watched a lot of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom in my youth?

Pride

If you just get your fingers moving, something may flow out, pop out, something you didn't even know was in you. Was flowing through your veins. Was running through your mind. You will never know until you sit awhile and let your fingers roam, pretty much at random, across the keys.

And for a moment, I saw the end of a golden afternoon on the savannah. The dust blew among man-high shrubs and settled in the mane of the lion resting there. He sniffed the wind. Huffed and chuffed and rumbled to the lionesses who were nudging their cubs up to the protection of the rocks.

Down below, dinner was gathering for an evening drink.

New Dover

tiny skeletons
sink through murk beneath the waves
in ten million years
who will walk those chalky cliffs?

Killers

The Bene Gesserit say that fear is the mind killer.
Mind killer, soul killer.

Exhaustion is the creativity killer. The dream killer.
Also, lack of time.

Exhaustion kills ambition, desire even.

I dream of having the energy and time and alertness to reinhabit my post as subcreator. But for now, it is time to sleep. Or at least put myself in a place where sleep can find me.

I talk a lot about sleep and weather. Weather because I love it. Sleep because while I tend to think of sleep as an inconvenient necessity, when there aren't the hours in the day to get enough sleep, day after day, it starts to be the only thing I can think about.

Today started out heavily foggy, mizzly enough to need the windshield wipers, but never blinding. The trees are slightly happier than they were yesterday.

Now I feel that all my conversational bases have been touched, and I can head to...you know where.

How else, indeed

"The problem with being a responsible person,” he said, “is that you end up having to be responsible all the time. People expect things of you. All the time. You expect things of you. All the time.”

Yeah, but how else would you rather be?

Uninvited guest

Across the river

The table was set for ten

Laughter carried over the water

The meaning of life

Has a napkin in its lap

A glass of deep red wine in its hand

** ** ** ** **

Yeah, well, you had to be there. A table in a back yard across the river. Yup, I really counted the chairs. Laughing and talking and the smell of barbeque and leaves rocking on the gentlest of breezes. A special occasion: men in white shirts and women in dresses the colors of flowers. I couldn't make out the language, but it wasn't English, Spanish, German, Japanese, French, or Italian. The words blended with the water rushing over a line of rocks stacked by last summer's children to make a swimming hole. I walked on, refreshed by someone else's dinner party.

Laughing and eating. The kingdom of heaven is among you, if only you have eyes to see.

Easter, in no particular order

A small rain storm.
Cooking and cleaning up and loading the car.
Ham and eggs and chocolate.
A cup of coffee, a glass of wine.
Discussion of books and cats and movies and religion and weddings and houses.
Driving and standing and sitting and eating.
Hugs hello and kisses goodbye.
Such a beautiful sunset.

The funny thing is that the earth always casts a shadow. It just so rarely lands on anything that we can see.

Last night I woke up at 3:25 am with a splitting headache
(which I in no way earned)
And though at first I was disappointed
--a chance at a full night's sleep ruined--
I listened
and from the night a voice:
the eclipse has started!

Outside until it got too cold
the stars grew stronger
Inside to warm up
the silver faded
Then outside and inside until I lost count

And when the earthshadow overcame
and the moon was but a very slightly 
red-tinged glow


***
so we turn
and get into each other's way
and spin on
to cast our passing shadows
and to catch another's

After midnight

After midnight used to be special, something great and wild to anticipate. It's after midnight again. I am not shaking my tambourine. As if I could even find it.

If you don't know what I mean, then you really have to listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvxJ0TVvVzE

Goodnight, beloveds, goodnight.

Childish things

I was supposed to
grow out of Tchaikowski--still
I love what I loved