tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52009782024-03-13T07:25:07.630-04:00ironstone whirlygigSo much has changed since this started.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.comBlogger664125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-66896223348991476102021-03-18T09:02:00.001-04:002021-03-18T09:02:20.751-04:00This morning the sky is white. Everything else looks gray: the roofs of the houses, the branches above them, the small birds and the big birds and the birds in between. Today it will rain. Tomorrow it will snow. How many grays will that be?Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-4937334707674305492021-03-11T13:24:00.000-05:002021-03-11T13:24:28.459-05:00 March. There is a staleness in the air, like sawdust on a market floor. It feels like walking in mudflats. The weight of the year, the dishes in the sink, the unopened mail on the kitchen table. This morning I ate leftover mac and cheese with green hot sauce. I am not sorry.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-86247540655479825442021-03-05T09:03:00.001-05:002021-03-05T09:03:19.098-05:00 Friday morning. The heat is hissing behind me. Yesterday I heard a mourning dove. This morning nothing.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-58094465810765899862020-05-06T09:42:00.000-04:002020-05-06T09:42:46.869-04:00Wednesday morning. I am not sure what day of this we are on, but it feels normal now, this slow waking, slow moving, slow starting each day. It is the second or third sunny day in a row. A child is playing the trumpet upstairs. The cat is in the window. Today I am trying to resist putting my houseplants out. It is too early. The front steps need painting. There is room for Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-67839821416875084592020-01-24T08:19:00.000-05:002020-01-24T08:19:00.916-05:00Going back.I am getting used to the days. Walking the halls I feel like some sort of spectator, like I am there to collect information on what exactly it means. I feel my difference. The students don't look at me, don't look up, but the professors nod their heads, make eye contact, say hello.
I am finding places to exist. The end of the hall only computer science students go down, with Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-88486076035599182442019-01-02T11:05:00.001-05:002019-01-09T09:53:01.101-05:00When the visiting nurse calls I tell her I am no longer part of the patient's care. She is on her way, she says, to draw blood, and the other number goes to a message. This is not her house, I say, even though it is on file as a number. I will make sure they change it, she says. Wait, I say. Please. Please don't change it. It is the only way I know she is alive, Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-49448663764355483312018-01-02T13:45:00.003-05:002018-01-02T13:45:55.240-05:00This morning the harbor was full of sea smoke rising into thin air. The house was warm when I got home, warm enough. I did the things I meant to do: washed a sink full of dishes, swept a room, wrote a poem. I was thinking of that last cup of coffee in the pot. When I finally stopped to get it I found the pot empty, the coffee maker off. I am nearly certain somebody Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-7490664273849477722018-01-01T22:45:00.000-05:002018-01-01T22:45:00.569-05:00This year I am thinking about embroidery floss and walnut ink. I am trying to slide into the right notes. I am making new habits to break.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-58177005494528279052017-04-01T16:16:00.001-04:002017-04-01T16:16:01.163-04:00Last night in my dream my mother had become small, the size of a large baby. Her limbs were curled in and her body hunched so it resembled a beetle. She was being kept in a little shack on a stone pier. My sister and I took turns holding her, comforting her. The young women taking care of her and the inventory in the shack tried to get me to initial things in metallic markers:&Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-51814739241414705392017-03-07T09:02:00.002-05:002017-03-07T09:02:29.881-05:00 This morning walking to get the car there is grey everywhere: the streets, the sky, everywhere. A woman walked toward me. As she got closer I could see my name tattooed across her chest.
I know my mother is alive because this morning the nurse called my house accidentally but once or twice a week I dream she has died and I wake with some phantom pain.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-25470434022969854402016-04-06T13:20:00.002-04:002016-04-06T13:20:45.009-04:00Everything is heartbreak today. The woman with the car doors open. The empty recycling bin.
There is a space somewhere under my rib cage. It is weary, aching, like a waiting room.
I lit a candle. Ate an orange.
Wrote a poem on the wall.
Still it sits, still, that hollow, dreading
being filled.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-25794796103108929112016-01-17T15:11:00.000-05:002016-01-17T15:11:29.971-05:00I used to have ideas. I remember having them. Thinking things, then putting them into words. Ideas that weren't connected to the people in front of me or the dishes or city politics. Ideas that came from other ideas or the sky or books or the way two shades of blue looked next to an empty box.
I told a lie yesterday. That losing my wallet was more of a hassle Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-48967281381690977312015-09-27T16:51:00.001-04:002015-09-27T16:51:26.734-04:00My uncle Bernie's paintbrushes. A bobbin of yellow merino. A Moominpappa figurine.
I am dusting frames. I am sorting change. I am drinking too much coffee because I don't have your address.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-72663323951080592512015-01-13T22:38:00.003-05:002015-01-13T22:38:53.553-05:00It's hard, these days, to find a thing to say. I mean to find a thing to say that someone might say something back to. It's hard to have someone say something back. It is all too much.
Last night there were six drummers waiting to play. They each had their own style. One a little more uptight, another had jazzy flick of the wrist. One played earnestly. Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-19620229914416522622015-01-12T00:14:00.002-05:002015-01-12T00:14:49.690-05:00Trying for the life of me to think of some words that ring true.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-59175790746368471492015-01-10T23:09:00.000-05:002015-01-10T23:09:11.546-05:00Try these on, I say.
I won't wear these to school, she says.
The past week she has been tucking her long blond hair up under a cap and going to school as the new boy. She wears hand-me-downs from her cousins and pants from her brother's drawer. She calls herself Robert.
I know, I say. I didn't get them for you to wear to school.
She expected a fight. Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-57227450683174852692015-01-09T23:27:00.000-05:002015-01-09T23:27:00.833-05:00Today's snow unshoveled on the walk. Blankets hung in the windows. So much is going undone that eating leftovers feels productive.
Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-26513784561956049122015-01-08T22:33:00.003-05:002015-01-08T22:33:54.650-05:00Two aisles in and I find myself sad in Market Basket. I can't even make myself smile at the old people so I try not to make eye contact. Not even with the white-haired woman who lived with Danuta. I decide to skip much of the store. Get what we need for lunches and dinner. Look toward the end of the aisle. By frozen foods I am nearly crying.
I end up in the Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-58126835503143909662015-01-07T22:44:00.001-05:002015-01-07T22:44:12.999-05:00One is the song stuck in my head.
Two are the children up in their beds.
Three is the ache that won't go away.
Four are the bills still left to pay.
Five are the points on the morning star.
Six are the strings on my old guitar.
Seven is loneliness. Always. Again.
Eight is the turnaround. Turnaround then
Nine is the steps walking back to the start
Ten it is over and time to part.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-30196249669447907442015-01-06T23:02:00.003-05:002015-01-06T23:02:52.154-05:00All of a sudden the night isn't young.
I forgo all that is left undone--
the cleaning, responding, the bills and the work
so that years from now my daughter
will remember me playing the fiddle
downstairs while she was falling asleep.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-64268548598396673912015-01-04T23:57:00.000-05:002015-01-04T23:57:06.740-05:00Rainy Sunday, warm and wet. Yesterday's snow is all but gone. All around town people are readying themselves for tomorrow's routine. The market full of mothers buying food for lunches. Lines of cars at gas stations. All of us quickening.
It is nearly midnight. The kids have been in bed for four hours and still aren't asleep. They are fighting the end of Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-55537418681590302592015-01-02T22:36:00.001-05:002015-01-02T22:36:20.222-05:00I wish I had a picture of them sitting on the floor, sketchbooks in hand. The ladies in their fine museum clothes stepped around them. The men with canes spoke over them. Children love mobiles, they said. They love the way they move.
The children don't hear them. They draw carefully, intently, copying the ribs of Calder's creatures, capturing the movement withAmandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-82003543988021340212015-01-01T16:27:00.002-05:002015-01-01T16:27:26.750-05:00The cats are curled up on the radiator. The kitchen floor still needs to be mopped. My feet are tired and my back is tired but my eyes are wide open. For the moment everything is quiet and I am happy being quiet.Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-60783748380265386342014-07-19T10:47:00.000-04:002014-07-19T10:52:07.519-04:00I dreamed about my mother last night.<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Amandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5200978.post-11142426137260612322013-08-21T23:16:00.000-04:002013-08-21T23:22:51.066-04:00Today my mother turns 64. There is a party with loud nurses and children and neighbors with flowers. Balloons and slices of ham. A bottle of port.
They poke her and tell her to smile. Ask her if she is awake. Feed her sliced ham. I take her inside. We are quiet.
The man who lives in the house I grew up in comes with his guitar. HeAmandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16053893932522025848noreply@blogger.com1