Rabbit rabbit

 

Flooded with gracious light

"Too busy" to write on this blorg. 

I keep intending to call my dancer friend, but unfortunately she is in Spain and it always seems to be midnight there. The fact that she slept through that fabulous comet chunk makes me feel a little better about the fact that I slept through the northern lights.

We are piecing our back yard back together, slowly slowly, after losing two huge, stately trees. It looks less like an empty rectangle, bleakly immense, than it did two weeks ago. There are birds, and a faded forsythia, and bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots, rascally strawberries everywhere, violets, lilies-of-the-valley snuck over from next door. A bed of herbs growing inches overnight, especially after rain. We bought a serviceberry we'll pick up next week, and we're contemplating a dogwood. We're planning a pea stone patio, another garden bed, planning and planning as we sit on the dirty back steps with our morning coffee.

My "notes": 

Sweaty season commences, as evidenced by how everyone in Hannaford smells today.

"To pay attention is to love everything. To see the future as brightness." - Sarah Manguso

"It was early summer; everything was fresh and fair. The grass was green green; the sky was blue, immensely blue; the world was flooded with gracious light." - William Steig

Agree with these synonyms.

Be careful out there. I love you.

Rabbit rabbit!

 

Both ways is the only way I want it

O April, cruelest month, with nary a word a-written! My "notes" show much grousing this month about this and that, like so:

Say what you will about astrological nonsense, but Mercury is in retrograde and so far

• Broken refrigerator (repair ETA 4/10)
• Broken willow tree 
• Second ice storm in two weeks

In related spam

Now that's all in the past, and while there are no doubt plenty of bad news that I am about to hear, May is imminent and road trips have been taken and family members visited and a whole new distracting and miraculous season is unfurling.

It's squirty ice cream season!!

Also in my "notes" this month:

Me (watching an NCAA sportsball game): "What's Iowa's mascot?"

Mark: "I don't know — a stick of butter?"

Oh to see the squirrels 

sliding down the wet bird feeder poles

In the April rain

"All roads lead toward the same blocked intersection." — Mountain Goats

"Stars without light hold the others up." — Fanny Howe

"I almost forgot my amuse bouche!" — my Mom, eating a mini Reeses peanut butter cup

Rabbit rabbit

 

It is a kind of love, is it not?

I have walked out in rain—and back in rain

Related: I have been one acquainted with the ice. A surprise (TO ME) ice storm brought down a spectacular number of large branches into our yard, many of which fell upon and adjacent to the Honda of Nine Lives. It made for exciting photo opportunities but didn't cause any real damage. And our friend Geo came over immediately with his chainsaw and safety gear, so now our yard is full of logs that we'll eventually have to deal with. Pine and willow, pine and willow everywhere.

The ice was beautiful for days, sparkling in the trees and glittering down in shattered, shining pieces. Clover did. Not. Like it. There was crackling and popping like the whole world was full of strange brittle wind chimes. Now we've moved into the soggy phase. The birds are huge fans of the impromptu hiding spots around the yard, little bird fortresses of branch and pine needle, and even though the feeders are almost empty, they're thronged with the little brown ones.

I haven't collected much for you lately, but here are a few artifacts to tide you over:

Huh.

(Said in hiccup voice)

NOT ON YOUR TINTYPE, BUDDY.

(Insert bebop style scat singing here)

On the equinox, a cold day with heavy clouds that blew aside periodically so the sun could remind us it was still there, we listened to music outdoors, bundled into hats and coats. Mark even got his photo in the newspaper* (he's a small face among a cluster of small faces, and I am half a white hat to his left). I turned away from the music to photograph our long shadows on the dead, gold lawn behind us.

What else has been going on, according to my "notes," follows below:

Mark, on daylight saving time: "So it's 6:15 but we're pretending it's 7:15?"

I've been forgetting my dreams lately, but last night dreamt a menstrual products company called "Bulletproof Femininity."

An elderly Hannaford employee to me, a shivering 56-year-old woman in the parking lot: "Since I met you I’ve turned my life around! You — your aura — you’ve got a million dollar smile!"

A radiology tech to me on the phone: "Our breasts aren't twins — they're sisters."**

Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen worker, after we placed our drive-through order: "I appreciate you."

An unclaimed belt, abandoned in a bin at Logan Airport security. Why did this seem so poignant? 

Lines I liked:

“I like a little sand in my oyster.” — Joan Acocella

"If there is anything I’d enjoy before I die, it’d be not having to see your fucking horrible bastard face wandering around my garden." — Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera, just before having her leg amputated

"Calm is a form of resistance." — John Berger

“It is a moral failure to miss the profound beauty of the world.” — Lauren Groff

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." — 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich

"Quel est ton tourment?"*** — Simone Weil

*DM me for a link

**All is well in the mammary department

***"What are you going through?"

Rabbit rabbit

no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet

 

Rabbit rabbit!

With loaded arms I come, pouring for you.

 

Their greenness is a kind of grief

Alas and alack, I knew this day would come:

HORROR OF HORRORS

How am I going to blurb this "word"? Ah, but there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so. Right?

In other news, various birds and dogs, it's Calendar Spring, and tiny crocuses are poking up through dry brown leaves and dirty snow. It seems as though the yellow ones were tastier, since I've only espied purple and white so far.

And now for some things I collected for you on the internets:

I suspect Japan is the best place on Earth.

Hamster content.

More hamster content (not ham).

Everyone needs a wee baking raccoon tattoo.

And a sausage dog named Nigel.

People also ask.

I was a child of the shining meadow

Trying to write here, dear (and few) readers! I'm still attempting to surgically detach myself from very many of the Online Places, and this is one good way. April seems like an ideal month for such things. I'm also writing on paper, some. 

I filled my bird feeders and the Little Brown Ones are gobbling it all, once again battling each other for the cheap finch food in the red feeder that distracts me while I try to work. They can be pretty brutal with their little beaks, and always I wish I could communicate there's more than enough to go around, small friends. 

We're watching so many TV shows, keep intending to sit down to a whole movie but then getting pulled into series that keep us busy, plus the sportsball of course.* Here's a really good thing we're watching and loving: SEVERANCE. Here's a really bad thing we're watching and loving: Inventing Anna. 

I'm also reading. I liked Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads a lot more than I expected to, and about halfway through, I'm warming up to Klara and the Sun. I really loved Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso. I am also reading all the things about the Larry Ray trial.**

We have continued to have social interactions with a small number of actual humans, which is lovely. This week's plans involve more humans, on at least three days! And I can hardly believe it, but Adam returns to Portland one week from today!

*ROCK CHALK, though I may have just jinxed it for tonight, and they'll be rushing Franklin Street instead of Mass. 

**CW: bizarre and terrible cult details

I look upon time as no more than an idea

Home from a trip to North Carolina with Isaac and Zoë that feels a bit like a dream now, but hey: what doesn't? We were treated to sunny, almost warm days there, sat outside with coffee, walked in gardens, observed more than our fair share of birds, played games, ate food, all with some of our most beloveds.

The road trip part was fun with my copilots, falling asleep in our Aloft to the sounds of HGTV and Food Network and something about a Bigfoot-type creature in Alaska except it's a bird, and the two of them laughing together. Our ritual stop for really good biscuits in Richmond.

The Durham part was an opportunity for much-needed hugs and sorting through photographs and listening to stories and being together — and also Buckaroo Banzai!

A.k.a. buttermilk sky

Now I'm home and it's basically winter again and I put my Bean boots back on and walked under a mackerel sky on the beach. A bit of false spring, a thaw before the weekend. Soup and tea, movies on TV, dog naps. Isaac is back in New York, Zoë finally off to India for her work, after a year's delay. It had been a while since we had the vicarious thrill of watching her move around the globe on a flight tracker! 

Rabbit rabbit

The month after the month they say is cruel

 

Pretend it's spring

On the beach, a sweet puppy named Townes, browned butter-colored with patches of white, a white heart on top of his head. "My boyfriend just learned to play Pancho and Lefty on his guitar," said the puppy's person. "That song makes me cry," I said, my eyes welling with tears. 

I raked leaves all weekend, revealing sweet-smelling dirt and the surviving crocuses just barely peeking through the earth (the ones the squirrels didn't eat in the fall). A cluster of tiny green shoots had exploded with purple blossoms by the end of the day, like magic.

Someone in my elderly next door neighbor's house was playing the violin. I couldn't hear it, but I could see through the window.

I took off my jacket! Ate my lunch in the yard! Even made an afternoon iced coffee! Fifty-five fucking degrees!!

Rabbit rabbit!

Kettle corn edition.

Like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers

Spring

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again? 

Beauty is not enough. 

You can no longer quiet me with the redness 

Of little leaves opening stickily. 

I know what I know. 

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe 

The spikes of the crocus. 

The smell of the earth is good. 

It is apparent that there is no death. 

But what does that signify? 

Not only under ground are the brains of men 

Eaten by maggots. 

Life in itself 

Is nothing, 

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. 

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, 

April 

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. 

(Thanks, Mom!)

Rabbit rabbit!

April is the cruelest month.

Rabbit rabbit!

M'aidez!

Rabbit rabbit!

This rabbit is sitting on a knife for no particular reason except perhaps that APRIL IS THE CRUELEST MONTH.

Rabbit rabbit!

Where did April go?