I will always stand here holding dandelions and chocolate for you

But if you try sometimes you just might find

Finn started soccer last night. Joe and his pal Will are coaching the team. It was a night we looked forward to for a long time. Finn could not stop talking about soccer and his team and the majestic wonder of it all. I feel like he is more like me than I want him to be. Sometimes I think Finn pumps up something in his mind to such a high power that it cannot ever measure up in reality. He is like me- trying to get directly to the denouement of a situation without unraveling and experimenting with the complexity of it all- without a true catharsis.

It could have been all the sugar at the birthday party prior or the little sleep or the sharing of his dad or any number of conditions that made him weep and cry and act more like a baby than a big boy across that massive soccer field last night. It could have been anything but it really embarrassed me. It broke me down a little in front of all the other families I think.

I had told my good friend Angie as we sat on the blanket in the field prior to the practice that I thought she was type A in a good way and she replied quite quickly that she thought I was rather type A as well. I think I might have huffed for a minute but then I realized that she was most likely correct in her assumption. But I wasn't always like this.


I wish she would have known me before I lost all my invincible skin and before I had kids. I hope that all my old friends can still squint there eyes and see me unafraid and charging at life. Those days are really far away sometimes. Days when not much would shake me or get me down. Days when problems were like math- not real. Days when I knew exactly who I wasn't. Days when I would think nothing of smoking a joint or spending the whole day writing one perfect poem. Days when I really didn't care what others thought. Like at all. I keep writing affirmations on my chalkboard, but they are not working.
Is there a procedure to remove this type A lesion? Anyone? Anyone?

And when you find me there you'll search no more

Sometimes I only skim Gourmet magazine. I finger the shiny paper and lust a bit at the foods. I flip through it and then place it back on the giant pile of periodicals that live in my hallway. I do love the magazine but between a grocery budget that is more peasant than gourmet and little time I am often just saving recipes and passing the mags on to someone else. This month though is fabulous! I had time to read it from cover to cover while sitting in my parents big ass Lazy Boy chair. (Oh my god those chairs would turn me into a sloth!)

There was a simple picnic article about using layered meals in glass containers for yr picnic and I just loved it! How chic? How simple and portable? I am planning a little picnic this weekend for the boys and we are going to try and recreate Gourmet's gorgeous picnic!
One of the recipes I loved is here.


The magazine also had a terrific article on beekeeping that was beautifully written. Photo via Gourmet magazine...

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And castles are burning in my heart

So I think in an attempt to not work on my novel I have been going through old writings. I mean really old ones, the ones that live suspended in the place where I first really considered the writing life. I wrote this story below for a writing workshop at college and it has hung over my head ever since. I find it ever so often in a folder or something. I think it wants to fly and only she knows how it should have became something many years ago. I have never revised it though, bc I am just not sure if it is a novella or a poem or a short story or an essay. I know that the bones are good and timeless and could stand alone someday.

I thought I would share it. I am going to just dry read it after many years and not edit/ it will be rough as a random kid or music or doorbell might be in the background. If yr feeling blue it will probably make you laugh at some points. Ah youth.

Also- my garage band is down and I had to make an imovie for the sound- sorry bout the blank screen- but just close yr eyes. :)

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I saw the crescent/You saw the whole of the moon

Cards, originally uploaded by Ian Legge.

I was eight and sleeping over at Mindy Miller's farm. I always slept over, we were best friends and all. I guess we were on our best behavior considering the previous weekend we were all busted in Mr. Miller's small cinder block garage for playing some sort of doctor game. But it was Ryan Farely, the pervert neighbor kid who had suggested it and indeed we were curious. And if Stupid Frankie Pinnel hadn't knocked over that shelf we would have been in the clear. After the talk about the sanctity of our bodies by our mothers, we made a pact to behave and at the very least to exclude Frankie from any future excursions concerning curiosity.

It was about nine o'clock and hot still. We stood outside of Mindy's house in our white cotton nightgowns. Our small flat chests chaffing against the material as we climbed the fence that divided her property from the Farley's. We always sat on that fence. It was slipping into pure black night and in the country darkness is massive. If you were a city kid or a pussy like Frankie you would be afraid, but we weren't scared of night. It meant that the tent of sky light stars would open and we would crane our necks back and talk. Talk about eight year old fears and wonder what we would look like when we were twenty. How we would change. It didn't matter much that my friend was skinny and had buck teeth or that I was chubby with incredibly large feet for my age. Everything was fine and when we looked up we weren't afraid of the curious future.

And then we heard him scream. He was yelling our names so loudly. We were busted again. Across the road. On the gate. In our nightgowns after dark. Only Mr. Miller was jumping up and down and flapping his arms and motioning us over towards the house. He was squealing and against the porch light dim we could tell he wasn't angry, only excited about something. The closer we came to the yard we could see Mr. Miller's face scrunched up and strange and his finger pointed sharp towards the green wet grass. It was there on the lawn, burning and popping. A meteorite. Mr. Miller said it was matter from the solar system. Fallen from up there. He wasn't even mad that we were on the fence because this was important he had said. Soon it was over like the way a sparkler from the fourth of July simply stops with that last shooting spark. I remember Mindy's teenage sister came home and thought we were stupid to be so excited. She hadn't seen it. She swatted us away and walked into the house. She was mean and wretched, but I still wanted to be her. I fell asleep on the top bunk that night wondering if it was anything special to see the sky fall.

Now I'm twenty three and drinking a raspberry ginger ale with my friend Pete. It is September and hot still. We are on his roof in the city. He is complaining about not being able to see the stars so well and what he going to do with himself in the Fall. I tell him about that night out at Miller's farm. He listens hard and tells me how beautiful, how rare of an occurrence. Do I know this he is asking me as he leans in closer. I hear him, like a murmur. But I am thinking, I am wondering if Mindy can remember that one night out of the hundreds we spent in childhood.

And Pete is now looking up like we all do to escape the ground. To swim around in the sky. I take out a deck of blue playing cards from my handbag and we begin to play war. I'm beating him but that's not why he's jealous. He wants to see one too. A moment that stops everything else. I can see it in the way he looks at the card that accidentally flies out of his hand and over the edge. Falling blue matter...

written in 1996/ats