I Swam With America!

On the 4th of July, the usual 6:30 a.m. time for Early Bird Lap Swim was pushed back to 9:00 a.m. for a general holiday celebration for the community. I managed to get my laps in side by side with America before being gently ousted by a girl who apologized for bumping into me. Yep, that seems like America in a nutshell! It was a glorious day, weatherwise, though it got quite hot later, also emblematic of America, and our extreme weather trends. It was a joy to see all those children and families there together, and I'm sure a number of them returned for fireworks at night! I actually fell asleep during the (illegal) annual neighbors-across-the-street fireworks display out my open window.

I am aware of the great gulf between Americans today. We are so divided in our views of what is good for the country. I hope we are not really so divided in our hopes for each other as human beings. I certainly want the same good things for others that I want for myself and my family and my children's families, and so on. But I do sense that many are operating from fear, not love, and from a feeling there is not enough for all, so from a place of self-interest or greed. Self-interest and greed are modeled for us in the current government and in the general oligarchical orientation of the USA today. When my colleagues and I are too saddened or anxious about the state of things today, we have a coded safe phrase to signal we just had too much of it all. "Gulf of America." Sigh... To signal my love for my country, and my willingness to breach the gulf, I put up my American flag to celebrate our country's birthday. And I took it down at sunset, as I am supposed to. Right before the (illegal) annual neighbors-across-the-street fireworks display. And to make it feel like a real mini-vacation, I read a good (beach) book: Typewriter Beach, by Meg Waite Clayton, set it the very recent past and the McCarthy era. Beach reading makes it a Slattern Day in the blog.

Spring Cleaning

I can feel that spring cleaning urge bubbling up inside me, and when it reaches full boil, I will clean, or, if the weather cooperates, get back out in the garden, but it's also possible I will just hunker down and read. Reading has been my comfort and my downtime for a long time, but is lately a bit like water, something I need to live. So it might be a Slattern Day for me, a Saturday of reading and writing poetry, chores only as they arise, and keeping an eye on my husband, who had the back of our Ford Escort fall on his head yesterday. It's a 1991 wagon, and we have to prop open the back loading door as the appropriate replacement parts...no longer exist? But yesterday was so windy, the box he was unloading was whipped against the prop, dislodging it. "That'll leave a mark," said the hubby. A dent.

The car pictured looks like our car, if it was newer, shinier, and lived in the mountains. And had all its parts.

For National Poetry Month, I am, as usual, writing a poem a day and providing prompts for such in an online workshop, where I commune with a bunch a lovely people, most of whom I have never met. For many years now, we have gathered in April. It's a joy. I am also celebrating by reading and reviewing poetry books by EIL poets over at Escape Into Life, most recently a selected works gathering by Keith Taylor, whose bird poems have delighted me in the past. This is a life's work! 

The title of this one comforts the slattern that I am, re: spring cleaning vs reading: All the Time You Want!

And, a delightful surprise, a cento I wrote recently for an art exhibit and artmaking workshop--a local gallery/library collaboration--also appeared in a column by Sarah Carson in Bold Cafe. She had asked for centos to use as a poetry prompt, and used mine! A lot of my poems are about my mom these days, and "Grief Cento" and its sources helped me process and depict aspects of my grief for her, and how that's somehow everywhere in the world around me...

Submitting

This morning I sent out my first poetry submission since October. It's hard to keep up, to catch up, since all the big family events. Lately I've felt like three people instead of one, keeping track of everyone's personal health details and doctor's appointments. A juggling* act and an identity challenge. (I have to put initials on my calendar,** so I know whose appointment it is.) Since my mother died, I'm down to two people,*** but even that's hard. Anyway, while I'm behind in many poetry-related things (submissions, reviews, new poetry features at EIL), at least I got this done, and the October submission is forthcoming this spring, so there's progress.

Meanwhile, I am participating in a solstice-to-solstice poetry-postcard writing project, and it is delightful to get postcards in the mail with such marvelous creativity on them. I love snail mail!

**Speaking of calendars, I need a hard copy calendar. Everyone tells me Google calendar is so easy, etc., but I know what I can handle (and I have a Google calendar for work). I use a slim, portable, free (from the Nature Conservancy) calendar I can slip in the side pocket of my black-and-white polk-dotted handmade (Sugar Creek Arts Festival) purse, and fill out in pencil (because my life contains many erasures). I also have a large, spiral-bound 2022-2024 weekly-monthly planner for my theatre life. It's all working, but it keeps me 1) split 2) hopping.

*Speaking of juggling, a college friend just reminded me on Facebook that I know/knew how to juggle. I juggled 3 oranges as Elvira in a college production of Blithe Spirit. My face was sort of mauve and lavender for that play, a directorial/make-up designer choice. Elvira is a ghost. I believe I must have been shocking to look it. I shocked my dad, who criticized the choice, to me, personally, as if I had made it, but that's another story (an ongoing story...we're still in it! Sigh...) I don't think I even put on that make-up. The designer did it every night.

***I'm one of them, but I'm fine. Routine exams, dentist, optometrist. Sort of slacking on that last. So it's a Slattern Day in the blog.

P.S. I don't have the 5-year butterly planner pictured above. I just like it.

My Nasturtiums

Sometime in the middle of the summer I planted nasturtiums and marigolds from seed along the fence, and they have been gloriously blooming all September, and now it's October! There's a tiny nasturtium patch blooming under the Little Free Library for Iris Harley, who would be 5 now--next year to be joined by white anemone. Almost everything in my yard is native or perennial or I harvest seeds from one year to plant the next. Chicory and Queen Anne's Lace come on their own.

My friend Ken Kashian, photographer, asked if he could have some leaves and blooms for a photo project. Yes, come over! He did. These are his photos. This one, which reminds me of a ballet dancer, is my new Facebook profile picture. The delicacy and light in these photographs are helping me, sustaining me. September has been a hard month, emotionally. My mother was in the hospital for a week and has now been released to memory care, where we are gradually adorning her room with comfortable, familiar, and beautiful things. Visits are brief. She's doing OK.

My brother and his wife have been here, visiting family and helping me clear out the family home. Heavy lifting! Husband helping, too, and yesterday he transported about a dozen boxes to Books to Benefit. Books, paintings, clothing, kitchen things, pretty things, music, and eventually furniture will all be finding new homes. (Let me know if you need anything! We might have it!) Dusty sorting, nostalgia, family photos...

My father is coping, grieving, raging, and, perhaps, relaxing a bit. Maybe some stress will fall off. Maybe he can make new social patterns. The university archivist took 26 boxes of his papers--teaching materials, publications, plays, drafts, authored books... There is so much more left to sort in the house. I am exhausted in all the ways. But imagine him--his whole life gone, the marriage torn, two frail loving people, near but apart.

Friends, as well as family, are helping in supportive and practical ways. I am so grateful. And a special joy this weekend was our houseguest, fiber artist Pat Kroth, here for the Sugar Creek Arts Festival--and, a nice surprise for her, a double award winner! One of the awards is for art that uses recycled materials. I am happy to say that some of her future art will include a watercolor silk dress from my mom, and some of her skinny jeans!

For the first time in a long time, I reached for my poetry drafting notebook, to capture two lines that came to me suddenly: "Remember the knife / and the tiny spoon." These are a cake knife and a salt spoon, brought home from the farmhouse--the spoon because it is so tiny and charming, the knife in case I bake a cake. But who knows what they will be in the eventual poem? It is assembling itself in fragments. "Will there be a piano?" I don't know where it will go next.

Mother Tree

I guess this is what I am doing in the way of poetry lately: a Mother Tree. Visual, 3D poetry--a small branch anchored in a vase with glass pebbles, hung with ornaments from her life: earrings, baby bracelets, a nostalgic love pin nestling in the tree as if K-I-S-S-I-N-G. There are two tiny skulls to represent her parents, who lived with my parents for a time in their old age. So did my dad's grandfather, at one point. My folks were very generous people, also taking in a high school student, whose parents moved his senior year, and a young man from Mali. They are living now in a retirement community, in independent living but with lots of home health care, and I am slowly but surely clearing out the family home while it is for sale. Lots of laundering, donating, recycling, redistributing, and rearranging. I feel like my mom! 

There is a silver chain with an apple on it, from when my mom retired from teaching, and a silver gavel, probably from her years with the local teachers' union. My brother's blue baby bracelet hangs near the latter.

My sister and I have pink baby bracelets, and near them I have hung one of my own earrings, a favorite, the mate lost, pink stones, one in the shape of a heart.

There is a found earring (like a found poem!), a sort of mask, chosen for the Mother Tree because of her work in the theatre. Her mother's hospital bracelet, or her own (?), hangs around the vase itself.

I loved making my Mother Tree. I did it instead of church last Sunday morning. It was a way to relieve stress, honor my mom, and felt spiritual, to be sure. It was a way to rest, after all the cleaning. It was a way to take things from tiny boxes and let them live again. I thank Connie Shannon for the inspiration. She made a "tiny beautiful things" tree this past spring when Heartland Theatre was doing the play Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the Cheryl Strayed book. It became part of a library display for the production, and then library workers loved it so much it became part of ongoing displays all through the summer!

Here is my Mother Tree where it lives now, on a stand at the top of the stairs, with a stack of books, under a painting by my husband. He knocked it over this morning, coming out of the bedroom, but I was able to restore it (and slightly reposition it, to avoid this in the future!). It's fragile but able to be rehung or added to, as needed. There might be more mateless earrings to come....

My Midge

My Midge doll is not pregnant. She is simply Barbie's best friend, and my case is a (pink) Barbie & Midge case. She has freckles and brown hair. Here she is with a book hedgehog in the background, wearing fairly sensible yellow heels (sturdy squarish, not spike heels; and they are also square-toed. The kind I myself might wear, if there were a yellow opportunity!) Yes, we saw the Barbie movie last night. Went with my sister, visiting from Nebraska, and my husband, who enjoyed it a lot. It was not what he was expecting. Thank you, Greta Gerwig!

It turns out my sister had no Barbies of her own, just played happily with my handmedowns. I sort of remember being asked about that and saying yes, of course, and of giving her Skipper outright at some point. Where is Skipper? My daughter had Barbies of various sorts; some were sold, some may still be in the house, but she/we did a lot of responsible cleaning out, so maybe not.

My sister was here to help with some responsible cleaning out of the family home, and progress was made, and good things happened this week--medically and with home health care, etc. Joy and relief! But care and stress continue. All shall be well. 

And today shall be a Slattern Day....

Nudge

I had to nudge myself into another poetry submission and discovered it was a full two months since the last. Sigh... Busy, stressful times continue, but with beauty, joy, and moments of sweet downtime, plus, alas, dangerous heat. But the heat has lifted, and I am soon to volunteer at two tables for our annual downtown Pridefest, itself delayed by a full month but now fully supported by the city. I've got my Pride hat, my Pride flags, and two shirts--one for each organization, plus a water bottle, travel tissue, a cell phone for a ride home, and a Walt Whitman tote bag. I feel strangely well prepared! I hope I am coherent, as I had a little anesthesia yesterday. Nasturtiums I planted from seed, and the above marigold, are blooming! There was welcome rain and, sadly, some unwelcome damage from recent storms. Let's hope we all repair.

Soon

Soon I'll move back outdoors on this lovely Sunday afternoon. The garden is wild and leaping now, since the generous rains. I planted nasturtium late, by seed, and it is leafy with at least one tiny bloom budding. I hope there will be more. Prairie Blue Eyes continue to open, lasting for a day. My Rose of Sharon is always late compared to others in the neighborhood, but I see buds there, too. 

My parents came to church, a nice surprise, and I also went to visit them afterwards, having lunch and a walk together, with more flower gazing. I did the daily wound dressing for my mom, seeing good progress. Soon, I hope, she will be fully healed.

My father has trouble breathing, with low energy as a result. Soon he will need oxygen more than overnight, but, as always, it will be hard to convince him of that. He wants, instead, to get better. So we do what we can with what we have. Yesterday, we all played a nice round of rummy golf (a card game, though he plays actual golf some Mondays!)

Usually, I find out what I am doing by staring at my daily calendar. It reminds me of when the kids were growing up--so many things to keep track of: practices, school health exams, softball, volleyball, summer baseball... 

More tasks await in emails. I do them all as they come, as there is only this moment to do them in. Just now, I put on gloves and wiggled two wheels on the little blue car, helping my husband with a car repair. That wasn't on the physical calendar, just on the calendar of our brains. The car needs new transmission fluid, and if that doesn't work, its time has come. (It's a 1991 Ford.) I have been checking out the Chilton Repair Manual for several years now, my circulation stats probably keeping it in the library!

My dreams, too, are task or trouble related. They might possibly lead to new poems...if I put that on the calendar.

Open Water Swim

It was a perfect Saturday morning for the open water swim competition this weekend in Evergreen Lake at Comlara Park. I was not swimming! I was there to support my brother-in-law, Tim, and Rob from Early Bird Lap Swim (weekdays mornings at Fairview Pool, where I do swim!), and all the fabulous swimmers of all ages, local and from afar! Hot, so we standers on shore kept seeking the shade, and I got a weensy bit of sunburn despite my sunscreen (which worked perfectly where I had smeared it correctly). Breezy.

It was also a perfect night for the opening of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival! I got to see Comedy of Errors with my sister, and we sat in the castle courtyard afterwards, chatting with each other and with actors, directors, and other theatregoers, as the breeze continued. As we chatted with Karen and Eva, who played sisters Adriana and Luciana, I got to tell Eva that I had played Luciana years and years ago in the same festival! It was a wonderful moment of time doing its weird expansive, eternal, here-and-now thing.

Boy, do we need rain. I'm glad it didn't rain yesterday morning (last year's open water swim was canceled due to a downpour, also needed during a time of drought), nor at night during the play (I saw those Colorado concert rain-and-hail videos on the news!), but I wished for overnight rain (only a 30% chance here, reduced to 0% by reality). There were severe storms to the west of us, but nothing here.

It's lovely to have family in town visiting, and they got to see the final matinee of The Waiting Room--the 10-Minute Play Festival at Heartland Theatre Company! (I had seen it 3 times before, so I stayed home to water my flowers and otherwise be a slattern.) Today my sister, who is writing a play about Abraham and Mary Lincoln, will take her daughter to Springfield to see a new musical about Abraham and Mary Lincoln. And that makes it a Random Coinciday in the blog!

Rain, Finally

These lovely, almost-summer days have gone on and on, and I have been outside whenever I can be, reading on a wooden glider draped with an ivy-patterned comforter. Meanwhile, the ground was parched and the creek has twice gone dry. Until today! Sprinkle, then steady light rain, episodic, but enough to make all the plants stand up happy and straight, with some of them appearing to grow an inch in a day. The first day lilies have opened, making it seem to be true summer! 

Swimming started this week--oh, how wonderful! That, too, makes summer seem here to stay...though it doesn't stay, and already I am aware how swiftly it will go by. I lap swim early, wash the chlorine out of my hair, and walk to work. Sometimes at work, during our 15-minute breaks, we take walks around town. Friday, we walked to the university library and saw a ceramics display, 100 pieces based on poems. I love my life.

In it, this lucky life, I am balancing my sorrow. And some ongoing stress. I am grateful I can do so. And glad that these clematis blooms opened on the fence, despite the weeks of drought. Some vines did not even produce buds. But seeds I planted at the re-mounted little free library did come up. More to be glad of and grateful for!

Here is a link to Milner Library's ceramic exhibit!

Candy House

Looking ahead to the June adult reading theme at the library (music, musicians) and looking back at my candy lament, I have picked the next novel to read, The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan, right after How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig, which I picked up this morning, directly after finishing Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, by Jia Tolentino. Yes, I may get temporarily attached to Jelly Bellies, but I am permanently attached to books. Fortunately, all of these are library books, and I don't have to try to fit them into my house. (Or my jelly belly.)

I got to meet Angela Jackson, Poet Laureate of Illinois, at the library. She mesmerized our audience, and pulled in browsers, including children and their parents. A wonderful afternoon, and big thanks to Candace Summers of the McLean County Museum of History and Illinois Humanities for making the Normal Public Library the venue for this event!

My chalkboard poems alternate now between humor and sad nostalgia with images from the natural world, spring blooming all around, and a subtext of the long goodbye. Last night, a woman asked if I was still writing poems and if I had ever been in the New Yorker, which reminded me of a fairly recent personal rejection from the New Yorker asking to see more, and my inaction upon that. Uh oh. "I want to see you in print," the woman said, and I realized again how few people, even those who love me, know that I am very often in print, or in online magazines, and have several chapbooks out there in the world. But I do feel loved and appreciated, especially for the chalkboard poems, which are short and connect to people's lives. I love those people back.

I was lonely yesterday evening and texted my daughter to see if it was OK to call. It was. She had seen the May 5 poem on Instagram and understood. Everything constant is slipping away, proving it wasn't...and proving nothing at all...or only that change and the now are what we have, which I know from 1) reading and 2) living, but it is still hard to learn each time I learn it. And glorious. And sweet. We went to hear stories last night in the same arts center where my husband is showing recent paintings. Today I will attend a memorial service there for a journalist who had been slipping away for several years, and is now gone. At another event, my dad will be receiving an award for a lifetime of work in academic theatre. It's all 1) life itself 2) wonderful. Why am I sad, in this lingering, blossoms snowing down kind of way?

And next week, starting Sunday, tomorrow, is the week of three book clubs: discussing Remarkably Bright Creatures, by Shelby Van Pelt, the Tolentino book (in a wine bar!), and The Four Winds, by Kristin Hannah, a book about the Dust Bowl, our reading timed perfectly to recent dust storms here in the Midwest, causing car crashes and highway closings just down the road. As in the 1930s, the cause and cure were agricultural practices, which need to better suit the environment and climate realities. A "cover crop" between the agribusiness plantings would help.

I am very busy, ticking things off my to-do list, and still I find time to read, but not to send another submission to the New Yorker. It's not fear of rejection--I am very used to that--but it might be avoidance of a certain kind of expenditure of energy. I am meeting many deadlines, and even cleared off one of my desktops. Today, even though I proclaim it a Slattern Day in the blog, I might even do some dusting. Or wipe down the chalkboard.

Hello Beautiful

OK, I'm suddenly trendy, as I'm reading Oprah's new Book Club selection! It's Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano, and I started it soon after reading her previous book, Dear Edward, which I understand is now a tv series. My paperback edition of Dear Edward, a Read with Jenna selection, had the first chapter of Hello Beautiful in it, so I was twice dipped in its opening sadness and basketball escape.

Also, hello, Beautiful! Thanks for reading my blog. I ran into one of my blog readers last night in person at the theatre. What a joy, and I am so touched! He said he has read some books based on my blog accounts, and he also enjoys my chalkboard poems. This just warms my heart! And I needed warming up, as it's been cold and gloomy for a few days, but yesterday the sun came out, and there was a clear sky with stars and a fingernail moon last night!

It was a busy, but entertaining, Saturday. In the afternoon, I went to The Lost King, about Richard III, inviting my dad, who has written a play about the king and would be familiar with all the basic research and discrepancies! Delightful movie with Sally Hawkins, followed by a panel discussion of theatre and history experts from the university. And a young woman in the audience who had read the book the movie is based on. I remember the news of finding Richard's bones in a car park! That shouldn't be a spoiler! It was on the news! And it's history! The movie tells another story, too, her story!

The balance of cloudy gloom with sunshine carries on in my poetry life, too. A rejection gets balanced by a request to reprint a poem, and going over proofs of some forthcoming poems. And I just keep writing. It's all over the place: chalkboard, computer, composition notebook, notepad for grocery lists, and my shower brain, where dialogue for a script also just spouted out like water or song. Or like water up the basement drain, after saturating rain, when I'm trying to do laundry, making it a half Slattern Day in the blog. But the sun came out, and I'm happy, and the bunnies in the yard, a true rhyme, are hoppy.

Tiny...Dead Things

Well, I went to work today, not to work, but to put up a theatre-library display, due to a collaboration between institutions, library and theatre, and ended up helping patrons and talking to visitors and just hanging out! Indoors. Because it was freezing outside, still is, and now it's snowing again. Poop! Maybe March is the cruelest month.

This picture has the stage manager in it, who played a lot of bagpipes last night.

The play is Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted by Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) from the book by Cheryl Strayed. So, book and playscript are in the display, along with various versions of Wild, and a bunch of nonfiction books that relate to the topics* in the letters that people wrote to Strayed when she was Sugar for the Dear Sugar column of The Rumpus. Already, many of the young people I talk with have already read the book and are delighted and surprised to learn about the play! Tiny Beautiful Things, the tv series, drops April 7 at Hulu.

*including This Body I Wore, by Diana Goetsch, mentioned in this blog entry (where I lost my car).

When I got home, I also didn't work, meaning do any housework, making it a Slattern Day in the blog. As usual it is also a Poetry Someday, as I wrote two morning poems, one on my chalkboard, to a mouse I found dead in a trap this morning by the refrigerator (sorry, Mouse!) and one in a Lenten online workshop where lately I have been doing mostly prose, so a poem was a nice surprise. I did catch up on some computer work. Sigh... Tough week of hospital visits for my dad, so I was staying with my mom, therefore. Lost a little sleep. For escape...and because we saw the season finale of The Last of Us, I am reading World War Z. I am hoping the mouse does not reanimate.

Sound Healing

Last night my friend Kim took me out for my birthday. We lay on the floor of a local yoga studio for a sound healing. Pillows, yoga mats, gongs, maybe rain sticks, singing bowls, a thunderstorm. At some point my hands began to dance. At times I thought I might be in a science fiction movie. We had little pillowed eye masks so the sense of hearing would be enhanced. It was actually really loud, and I hope my ears survive. But I think we both got sort of healed! Feeling loose and competent today. Even got my tax organizer filled out!

I had lunch with my folks, and took them some of my poems for a mini-poetry reading afterwards. My mom has been asking about my poems, so I took a batch of recently accepted ones. (When I got home, it was time to approve a proof of one of these, making it a Random Coinciday in the blog!) They read the typescript afterwards. Mom liked them a lot. Dad fell asleep but also liked them intermittently when he woke up. "They're very spare and mature," he said. I sure hope so! This is my Route 66 year! I'm planning to get my kicks! (Well, that doesn't sound very mature.) I have the appropriate bobby pins and Route 66 earrings for it! See the tiny tires?! (You can get some, too, at Ryburn Place when it reopens in March.)

I'm reading several books simultaneously. Sometimes, it's how I sleep. (See my dad, above.) One of them is Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey, a comedian, about a divorce. Ah, and we just watched 1) the remake, via mini-series, of Scenes From a Marriage, recommended by my daughter and 2) the original Ingmar Bergman film, which, I just realized was also a television mini-series at first, then had a theatrical release as a longish film. The new one is a wonderfully close adaptation, with cool variations, and also very different, contemporary, with a meta aspect that incorporates Covid & masks. Great acting, all around.

And I am back at the chalkboard. A poem a day in February and maybe all of Lent. We'll see.

The Yoga of Laundry

I was getting along fine with my new year's routines of morning yoga, coffee, reading & writing, work, random housework, and various meetings and commitments, when I became mindful of my underwear drawer. It was looking pretty sparse! Hadn't I just laundered the bedsheets? Um, yes, but then days/weeks went by. So how mindful am I, anyway?

But you know what? I have already sent out two poetry submissions, and it's still the middle of January. I don't think I got going on poetry submissions until February of last year. So, poetry or clean underwear, which will it be? Happy to say, both, thank goodness! And one of these submissions contained three poems written this January!! In the new Poems 2023 folder! So that's how on top of it I am at this particular moment, which is the only moment I've got. And in responsible recycling mode, I am re-using my Submissions 2020 folder, which still had room on it for notes, for 2023 submissions. Because I am still tied to paper and pen, in addition to electronic recordkeeping, or my brain will explode/atrophy.

Speaking of mindfulness, I know I am probably not very mindful of the present moment when I start writing this blog entry in my head while Rodney Yee is guiding me through two minutes of meditation as I sit cross-legged on the floor. In clean undies. And aqua flannel jammies that match my yoga mat.

The Yoga of Housework

It's back on with me and Rodney Yee in terms of A.M. Yoga in the new year. Taking yoga class with my daughter in Portland, OR inspired me to 1) stay flexible 2) get more flexible 3) get stronger 4) also resume my arm strength exercises with little two-pound pink hand-held cushiony weights. I could not take my fabulous aqua yoga mat on the plane, but my daughter has extra mats, and told me after our heated yoga class together that I had done fine even though my mat was upside down. (Nerves.) All of us as a family also took the class she taught at another studio. Not a heated class, but right after one, so it was plenty hot, despite the door open to fresh air in the rainy alley between classes!

Anyhoo, morning yoga is going fine since then, except for two mornings, including today, when sleep disruption has left me on the couch, sleeping with a book open on my chest. Sigh...  No problem! On those days I can do "The Yoga of Housework," a focussed, meditative, vigorous activity that, like today, might involve changing and laundering the queen-sized sheets. And unfurling different quilts or comforters!

"The Yoga of Housework" might also involve taking down the minimal holiday decorations, and leaving some up. And, naturally, it re-connects me with Marie Kondo and the art of tidying up! Ah, the shoes I forgot--Navy blue Keds--in my original encounter with "the life-changing magic of tidying up" are now in Portland, OR, left behind when my suitcase got too full of hand-me-ups from my daughter (size 8P pants, always welcome!!), so they are now hers, making this a Random Coinciday in the blog! And not really a Slattern Day, though otherwise a day of rest. 

Emily & Eleanor

It's Emily Dickinson's birthday! And it's Human Rights Day, thanks to Eleanor Roosevelt, who spearheaded the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I am celebrating by resuming A.M. Yoga with Rodney Yee, something I do regularly, a little like Groundhog Day, the movie, never progressing beyond Beginner status in yoga, and never getting it right (or ending up with Andie MacDowell). I like remaining a Beginner, and found myself as limber as ever, if a little stiffer in the usual spots, not having resumed A.M. Yoga sooner. In summer, I swim. In three seasons, during good weather, I walk to work. And the rest of the time, I do yoga, or should. It feels so right, and so good. Almost as good as the fabulous head massage I got at Jenni's Salon, right before Stephanie chopped off all my hair. I feel so light and free, also good for the morning yoga!

I noticed how I focused on Rodney's voice and the background ocean and music sounds, even as my mind wandered to tasks and/or to words, and my body did all the things it was supposed to do. That sounds like a detachment of mind and body, rather than a union, but I don't care. Everything came back together well enough and as needed. Happy Birthday, Emily! Thank you, Eleanor! And, as ever, thank you, Rodney Yee, who never ages on the beach in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, I've been reading lovely and melancholy books: After Rain, a collection of short stories by William Trevor, and In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss, by Amy Bloom, which I snatched up from the new non-fiction shelf and read in two days. It's about setting up accompanied suicided with Dignitas in Switzerland for Bloom's husband with early-onset Alzheimer's. What a difficult and beautiful thing to do. It feels like preparation, as Alzheimer's runs in my family. And we are "after rain" right now, where I live.