Cosmic Spec

Earlier today, the wind whipped the freshly fallen snow up like a wave and it crashed on the road. Schools are closed and the streets remain mostly empty. Except for the few people driving around with probably no place to go. I walked to the mailbox just as the clouds started to move away and a sun filtered through the evergreen and think of Antarctica. That's not what Antarctica is like; it is more barren, more open, more wild.  It's a place like Mars or the Moon, that feeling of awe and discovery.

I often think about what it would feel like to go to the Moon. Standing there looking at Earth the same way I stand in the yard looking at the Moon. Sure there are pictures, but it never is the same is it? Unless you see it for yourself.  I try to imagine what it would feel like stepping off a lunar vehicle. I'd like to take off a glove just to feel the vast coldness. But I also like both of my hands where they are.

In all this thinking, my mind is creating new worlds and recycling old people. When I dream at night they are there mixed together in some underground heated spring on the Mexican American border. They say that you only dream of people you have seen, even for a brief moment in passing. I would like to believe it but these are strangers. And often my dreams run like movies. I am more of a passenger. Sometimes, I am the lead. Sometimes, these dreams tumble together and it finds its way on paper.

I can't help but think of an apocalypse. There's fascination there as well. The people that survive. I like to believe I am one of those people. There's a lot of untouched universe out there and on Earth. And I remember I am just a cosmic spec.

Darkness of the Forest

Today, I went to the Seneca Nation in Salamanca, NY. To get there, we have to go through Route 219 which takes you through the Alleghany National Forest. I was hoping to elk or even a bear roam through the woods. Not lucky today.

We started back well after sunset. Bradford has a refinery and the smoke pours into the night sky. It is not as cool as the refinery in Chester where flames shoot from the tops of the stacks. The refinery is huge and they have a weird slogan? Principles? One of them is "have fun". I am not exactly sure why anyone should be having fun at a refinery. But it makes you think about before like how it was in the 60's and 70's. Except for the refinery and the Zippo factory, it seems forgotten.

The highway is smooth and mostly empty at 7:30 pm. Bradford disappears in the rear view mirror and there is nothing but blackness once the forest opens up. The Allegheny National Forest's sign has vintage yellow lettering from the 1950s with the dept of agriculture underneath on a brown background. Like stepping into another time.  The half moon barely sheds light on the road, the white and yellow lines are faded into the salt-encrusted blacktop. But the mountains are a thicker black, silhouetted against the dark, starlit sky. Small little villages that have small little signs and you forget the name of it as soon as you leave. A radio station with a white hound comes out of nowhere and vanishes into the black mountains.


Ridgeway is long forgotten and maybe at one time, it was a great town to live in. I can see the people wandering downtown Ridgeway. Most of the brick buildings are empty and hold whispers of another time. I wonder what happens to towns when they die. Do they come back to life? What if they never do? These are things I think about when I am working on my apocalyptic mini stories.

Sometimes, I love the darkness of the forest. The silence of memories, of towns, the night sky. A place hiding in the forest.

Till next time...

Cigarettes and Caterpillars

Today is Tuesday. The neighborhood decided to mow the grass, but not me. I will mow it tomorrow to run the gas out,  so then I scrape the bottom.  I mow over the scant leaves just to watch them shoot out the side. The trees are already bare in the backyard. So much for leaf changing.

I watched black caterpillars undulate over the worn blacktop. Where they are going? Who knows? Will they even make it to spring? I've seen more caterpillar this October then I did all spring.

Yesterday, I went to the Seneca reservation in New York to buy cigarettes. 

So there is progress being made in my writing. But most days, I have no idea what's going and everything around slips through my fingers like oil. The days and nights are slick sometimes time moves too quick. But, I say that all time. 

Sometimes, I love the silence. Most times, I love the silence. But then even in silence one can go crazy. So I find chaos in people and remember my imagined craziness is better company than most people other there.

Mega Millions is creeping closer to a billion dollars. What does that even look like? Sure, I would love to win the lottery like others. I wonder how I would change. I'd like to say that I would be the same as I always was. But I highly doubt that. I wonder if I could actualize my writing by having a room of my own and my own money.

I think the universe is pushing me on a path, sometimes I want to do something else. But here I am always going to the same place I was two years ago. There is a feeling of one day, I am going to wake up and just burst out of the shell I am in.

Well, there you go its a caterpillar kind of day with falling leaves and a chilly wind. I smell snowflakes growing in mountain clouds.

Brazen Spiders and Shiny Grass

I'm sitting here thinking about how it already is the middle of August and soon it will be fall, then winter, and then 2019. Time is always the same, but it never feels like it.

I've got a lot of thoughts in my head, and I can't keep them straight. All this stuff I want to write with this feeling if I don't I'll just explode. I think my brain exploded last night and every time I closed my eyes, it was a lost thought trying to get out. A bit melodramatic I know, but perhaps there is no other way to say it. I read news stories, comments and high brow literature and if that isn't enough, I think about imaginary people and what they're doing. I think about the poetry

I should be writing; even if it is about Indiana Jones spiders that come swinging on their fine butt floss in front of my computer. They are tiny- those baby spiders. You can barely see them, they are like misplaced periods. Indiana Jones' theme song plays in the background, at least in my head. Because what adventure is he on now, swinging to and fro? And later on he will find himself on my arm, tickling my invisible hairs,  and I'll spend an hour looking for him, lost in the jungle he is, and then I squash him. I actually feel kind of bad because he is so tiny, but there's nothing on my arm interesting to him when there is a whole house to explore. Maybe he was the odd man out. Who knows?

Yesterday, the rain fell in a criss cross pattern like an apple pie lattice. I think I'm the only one who seen it, no one else mentioned it. Then it stopped and that was all. At least the grass grew another quarter inch. I wish there was astroturf instead, but that is kind of stupid because grass is real and maybe the only thing that is when my brain goes haywire. They say walking bare foot on the earth centers you. When I walk barefoot in my grass, I either step on a stone and curse under my breath or almost fall in hole, left by rotting roots. Never do I feel the oneness with the universe.

So there you have it. Another day in the history books, another day online. When some three hundred years from looks on this, they will know there was grass and I didn't enjoy it like I should have.

If I Lose My Mind

It's been almost two weeks since I posted anything, and I know I say I'm sorry- I probably am. But then I just can't seem to break from the fog that holds me hostage.

It's amazing that I can even get my school work done and make dinner. Sometimes, I don't even know where the time goes. I work and work and get nowhere. Maybe it's like quicksand, I would have no idea because I've never been in quicksand. I think I know what to do, but I know me, I would flake the fuck out if I was drowning in quick sand.

Years ago, I wrote all the time. Dedicated to it. And now it feels like I've lost the dedicated feeling. Except for April, I have no problem writing a new poem every day and posting. But I guess, there's not much more to say about that. 

I sit around thinking of great things to write, these thought provoking phrases come and go and by the time I sit down to write, it all vanishes. And I want to maybe post at least a 100 words. That is nothing. But for some reason 100 words is quite difficult. These thoughts combine with the thoughts about my creative work and it all gets flushed down the toilet.

I find myself daydreaming about the improbable- dreaming about fame I want but don't at the same time. The house on the beach or maybe in the Poconos. Or maybe both. Even my daydreams become blurred with the fiction I always seem to find myself in.

I told the doctor about this fog. I should've told her that if I lose my mind then I am nothing. But sometimes I wonder if I already lost my mind, and I just don't know it. I want to find those pieces of myself that went missing over the years. 

Once I think I found my writer's voice and now it seems missing again.

Well that's enough for today... who knows what tomorrow will bring. For now, I'm going out to mow the grass while there is a strong wind from the west and the sun peek a boo through the clouds. And maybe the wish fuzz will float in the breeze sparkling in sunshine.

Till next time...

June Bugs

In the day it's bumble bees, their squat little bodies hover in the air  and look right at me. Their wings invisible in the late afternoon sunshine. Then back into the hole, it constantly burrows kicking wood bits like spring snow from the board. And no matter how many times I cover the whole, every year they come back to the same hole.

June bugs pelt the screen during the night like addicts looking for light Buzzing and fighting the screen. Humid air hangs over the long grass and dandelions.

Whippoorwills, but I call them whirly birds because  their song whirls in the night.

It  is almost June, but the hot days come and go like thunderstorms and most days feel like April.

Without looking for the video, I can tell you there is a Bugs Bunny cartoon called June Bugs, but I have no idea what is about. You know other than Bugs getting the upper hand in whatever situation he finds himself in.

I always wanted to be a cartoon voice, but then I never was an actor anyway. I always wanted to write an animated movie. But like all movie ideas, they just collect dust in the back of my mind.

Here I am thinking about all this stuff, and I don't know where to end. I want to breathe in the sunshine.

In Heart of Darkness, this line sticks with me "something that had a right to exist- obviously- in the sunshine" and I am no sure why, there's something there but Derrida is failing to speak to me from the twenty pound book.

And then while sitting among sheets of paper, a phrase flits across my mindverse language is a lie. And maybe it is. I think that is monostich, which is something I want to work on but for some reason, I don't. Like a lot of things.

On Mars, there is more day light and heat, and also night and coldness. But I would still go there, maybe in my next life.

Language is a lie and June bugs seek the night light, while bi polar weather does nothing predictable,  Pink Floyd tries to give me a cigar. So am I going to far, am I going to fly high?

Haystack Odyssey

It's a haystack odyssey wrapped in white plastic lingering in thrashed fields, but there are no animals in sight. One day it a false spring and now crinkly ice patches sleep on the grass that looked like it was starting to turn green again.

It is 9 p.m. and the wind still knocks on the window. I like to pretend I'm in  pioneer times in a little cabin in the woods throwing logs in the fire. I secretly wish the power to go out just for fun since it hasn't went out in awhile. I think to myself that I can survive in a new world. I can shoot a gun, and I don't live near a lot of people. I have a big enough yard to grow stuff even though my green thumb is non existent. I can grow tomatoes. They don't win the blue ribbon, but they are always sweet and juicy. 

As much as I like the wind, I wait for spring and the onslaught of thunderstorms. Thunder so loud, it shakes the old walls and lightening so close, the hair stands up on my arms. I like the storms that can spawn a tornado but never do. And I am lucky for that because even though I have a tornado action plan-  my feet and brain stop working when the touchdown siren goes off. 

It's coffee at night while the wind blows. It's dreaming of living in the middle of the woods. It's dreaming of being a writer that people know. I sit here just thinking when I should be writing because that story is there. I tell it to myself when there is nothing but silence between gusts.

I close my eyes and open them in a haystack odyssey looking for moo cows that hide in overgrown shrubs, and I feel like I should write a poem about this moment but words flee and die in the wind.

Fireflies in February

The night sky is a patchwork of stars and cloud mass. Crusty snow lays on the grass and the road appears to be slick in headlights. Silence is everywhere. In the distance, semis cruise on the highway to somewhere else. And I want to be writing.

I woke this morning, and it was rush rush. Before I knew it, half my day disappeared. Before I knew it, my week break is already almost over. I woke up this morning and realized February is a going to be bitch and soon it will be March.

I dream in words; they are like fireflies in the forest, there but never found. I think about the weekend we went camping at Laurel Hill State Park in Somerset. Our cabin was the last in the row closest to the trees. And we stood on the porch and watched the forest light up in yellow-green phosphorescent Morse code. I tried to take a video, but it wasn't sensitive enough. It felt like a million fireflies surrounding us, telling us secrets we wouldn't understand.

I want to be writing. And yet, when the time comes, I find myself lost in another plane. I don't where I am sometimes, at least mentally. I wrote in a journal entry for my one class this last term, that biggest obstacle to writing is myself. Half the time I don't even know why I get in my own way. There aren't enough therapists to go around for that one.

Here I am on this February night, thinking about poetry, stories, Stirling and friends, Holly and friends, while my current favorite songs are on repeat and the silence creeps into my bones, even the oil furnace sounds like it is another dimension. All I can seem to do is daydream about fireflies in the summer.

Shoplifting by Ghosts

The shutdown injects the spirit. What spirit? The spirit of a long dead person who plays the music box when you least suspect. Or maybe it's your spirit. The one lives inside your bones, the one that died some time ago and makes an appearance once in awhile. Or maybe it's the Christmas spirit. But you find yourself like Ebeneezer before the ghosts find him.

I want to believe in ghosts. I want to talk to one and maybe play cards. They could tell me life secrets. We could shoplift and sell our finds on Ebay. No one would believe a ghost would shoplift.

I shoplifted once, or I should say almost once.  I was young, five or six, and I was at the mall with my mom. The store we were in had Smurf figurines. I wanted Smurfette; she was my favorite. Mom said no. So I took it and put it in my pocket. The store clerk saw and told my mom. My ass was beat when I got home, and I was grounded to my bed. This was the 80's so that meant there was no such thing as a TV in my bedroom. It was summer because it was still light out. I sat in my dark room.

I always knew stealing was wrong and still do. So why would I want a ghost to shoplift? Just to see if the ghost will do it. And to see how the people in the store would react. How could you charge someone with theft if that someone is dead?  And of course, I don't want to do the dirty work. After all, I'm alive and would have to pay for those transgressions.

So here we back at the shutdown and the imagination goes nowhere fast unless it is 1973 and then there is a focal point strung up by lightening. Here am I today thinking of creating a ghost army to do the bidding I know is wrong.

Till next time....

Breaking the Synapse

I have spent all day thinking of what to post to tell the world I am still here, still in the world's cacophony, since it has been almost a week since I posted. And even though I make daily to do lists, weekly to do lists, and  goals for the year, I'm never sure where the time goes.

I tried to collect my thoughts and focus on one thing, but everything gets away from me. I sit and stare at a blank screen thinking about politics, about Donald Trump, about North Korea, about the people in Puerto Rico, about the what it means to be a patriot, about the book I just finished,  about last night's episode of American Horror Story,  about the novel I'm going to write for Nanowrimo, about the story I want to work on, about the Christmas poem I want to write, about the dreams I have been having that make me feel disoriented for the rest of the day.  So no, my thoughts just aren't there.  They are everywhere.

Sometimes, I feel like pissing off people on Facebook. Sometimes, I wish I could quit playing Candy Crush. Sometimes, I wish I wasn't so hard on myself. Sometimes, I wish I could get something published instead of the endless barrage of rejection letters. 

Sometimes.... you just sit in front of the computer and explode. And look I probably wrote 300 words.  Not that I feel any better or less cluttered. Perhaps, I am seeking a few moments of quiet where my thoughts nag someone else. And there is nothing up there but quiet.

Maybe we all need quiet, silence from the world that keeps drilling and breaking the synapses. 

Silent Gray

Seamless grayness covers the sky. One wasp, with his large thorax and long legs, hovers in the stillness as I exhale silver smoke out the door. He looks at me, and I look at him. We regard each other with nothing more than beings in the same space and continue on our respective paths.

Silence. Not the pleasant silence after spending two hours in the casino with the digital bells and whistles, and card players cheering for their big win. The kind of silence which is unsettling. Engines and brakes on the wet road are muffled at the stop sign. Acceleration at the crossroads are flat and lifeless. Crickets rub their legs together as if they were trying to warm up and vanish into the silent gray day.

The silence creeps into the house over the Celtic music on Pandora.  You can hear it settle around the house and into my mind. Where for once, it is silent. The thoughts are put to bed, wrapped in newspaper and filed in boxes, tucked within the deep  gray matter crevices that are responsible for my breath.

I guess that is what being mindful is all about. I am supposed to find the solace that everyone promises. I am supposed to find the hidden beauty in the silent gray but nothing is there. And maybe I missed the whole point of mindfulness. I lost the directions in websites and ebooks that were free, because everyone needs a little self improvement now and then.

I don't know if I enjoy it or not; I am thinking about returning to the real world. But in a way, I don't want to.  I don't want to read about destruction and hurricanes, Donald Trump and rampaging hate. Here on this silent gray September day, I am here between the light and dark, between silence and cacophony.

The world can wait until tomorrow.

Jupiter on Repeat

Jupiter sounds like unseen hand bells in a windswept wasteland. And perhaps those were hand bells, alien instruments from beneath the surface before Jupiter reclaimed it self. We are on borrowed time here on this planet. It is a matter of time before we are artifacts buried deep in sandstone.

Do you ever really look at people? I find myself looking at each person, while sitting in a parking lot or on the boardwalk. Wondering what they are thinking about. Why are they going into the beer shack, is for a get together with friends or to drown their problems in amber? I wonder who they are, where they are going. Sometimes, if you think about people long enough, you realize they might be wondering the same thing about you, and in the end you are all almost the same- just a spec in the universe. We circle around each other like atoms sharing electrons.

I couldn't mow over the garter snake in my front yard. I thought I had killed him when I mowed over his tail- twice. But once I turned the mower around, he was there. His head upright, flicking his tongue, sensing the air. I moved the mower closer, to scare him. He didn't move. He looked right at me and I looked right at him and I mowed in another patch of yard. Later, I found him under the car. Then even later, I didn't find him at all.

Sometimes, beautiful word phrases will come to mind and they swirl and tumble like dandelion seeds. Then just like that, a wind comes and takes them away. And I find myself wanting to write but the muscle desire and discipline also vanish in the wind. I think that, maybe, I am too hard on myself. What is productivity anyway? And how does that mean anything to anyone? Somehow, through mind numbing levels of Candy Crush, I get my work done. I should be glad for that.

It is like summer just turned on. The heat outside lays across the horizon like spider webs. I want to go swimming, but the lakes are too cold. Inside, the heat has not found its way in. It will by eleven tonight. The thermostat will read 81. I like the summer. I like sitting in the sunshine by water feeling my skin burn even if I am wearing SPF 75.

There are too many thoughts in my head. And my dreams are disturbing. Sometimes, I don't know if my memories are real or memories from dreams. It is in those dreams, I  am  looking for something. I don't know what and sometimes I feel myself losing my breath, somewhere in the void.

I think about the people all around me and the summer heat and all I really want is a cherry Popsicle to make my lips red and listen to Jupiter on repeat.

Floaters

It was the summer of 1979 (and since I was born in the summer of 1980)  I don't what happened in the summer of 1979. Was Reagan running for president then?

I often think about nuclear weapons and how I am lucky I wasn't born during a time of drills and nuclear threat. All that plutonium and uranium somewhere in the earth like it was waiting for us to discover its power.

Why do even need nuclear weapons any how? Are there really aliens and we have to stop them to preserve our way of life? Like pickles and hot peppers.

Does anyone know what a billion dollars look like? Imagine all the good a billion dollars can do. Imagine what 54 billion dollars can do. I read somewhere Bill Gates is on his way to a trillion dollars. I guess one dollar for every star we can see.

Lately, there are floaters in my head. Random phrases and words But when I get to a blank page, they hide under the covers or in the sand with a scallop shell place holder until the tide takes it away. Sometimes, I lie in bed and the floaters come and swirl around like pixies.

Are pixies part of Carl Jung's universal symbol theory? I would have to look into that.  I want to write and work on stories and the blank page stares at me. I know I am missing something but I don't know what.

Everyone talks around me and today I watched Al Roker on TV and he talked with Lisa Kudrow and for some reason she seems just like Phoebe. She sat down at the table, which was just a prop for the segment, buttered her roll and nibbled on it. I wonder what they did with the food.   Jennifer Beals was on there too, and I was thinking about Flashdance. And for once, I could watch TV  without DT . Amazing, and yet I still think about those nukes.

You can buy plutonium containers from Russia. In the story that I am working on or more like staring at the next blank page, I researched nuclear weapons. I learned as long as Buffalo does not have a direct hit, I should be okay. I wonder if Canada would let me in, if bombs started dropping. Then my mind plays those scenes of what I would bring to my flight to Canada.

There was a book called Flight to Canada and I can't remember who wrote it right now. I remember it was strange and trippy and I loved it. I read it an African-American literature class at Penn State. The professor was in the majority, which I thought was odd at the time.

I wonder why it rains diamonds on some other planet and gold found in only certain places, just like coal. I like the trees and the mountains where I live and the creek runs rusty. I guess in another ten years it will go from rust to black. It's a good thing I have dark siding on the house now but we have cream-colored siding in the basement. I keep looking for pressure washers because there is nothing I would rather do then pump funky water to clean cream-colored siding while  looking for the sun.

And maybe everything is in my head. Sometimes, I just see (not like a psychic mind you) something foggy in the future. Something has changed. I know I said that before. The universe has changed. And I like what Tesla says about how we are energy or something like. I know the word frequency was in there in that quote I like.

Since I have no clue on what else to write. I'm just going it end it, sort of abruptly, and with the thought of floaters in plutonium.

Snow

For some us, there is way too much snow. For some it might be a way of life. Most of us are already hoping for spring. And then you have that small population who want more snow. It's not that I hate the snow, it's just that I am tired of it. I am tired of the white all around me. But, at the same time, it is quite beautiful. I can look across a field of untouched snow and how the sun explodes over it  and it is radiant. Then there are other times I have this urge to run through the snow just to put my footprints in it.


Several years ago, I lived in New Hampshire. A blizzard- like storm came in and it snowed and the wind blew like crazy for hours. The only time I went was to take the dogs out and then went right back in. Sometime in the early evening, the wind stopped just like magic or if an unseen someone turned off the wind machine. I can't remember if I took my dog Buster out (he loved the snow whereas my other dog, Snoopy hated the snow) but I dressed in couple pairs of pants and put on my gloves and coat. At the time, I lived in a development but it was a rather dark neighborhood, there were no street lights. The only light was provided by outside lights at the garage or the front door. The snow came down in fat chunks which always me think of cloud crumbles. I flopped in the snow and it was deep and I could hide in the snow. Looking up to the sky it  was stained in pink. I could never figure out if this is normal or light pollution but even now, I live on a mountain and I still see the pink night sky especially before or after a winter storm. So I am laying in the snow and I can already feel the cold stinging my ass but it didn't bother me. The chunky snow fell on my face and the only sound was the distant plow truck. I was probably 15 or so but I can remember just laying in the cold snow and feeling peaceful.

A couple weeks ago, my husband and I were fixing an inner tie rod on my car. There was some snow on the ground and it was really cold. There is a sweet silence that filled the air. Even the crows found solace in roosting wherever it is they hang their hat. The only sounds were those from the highway which is about a mile away and the occasional sound from the main road only several hundred feet from my front door. No children, no birds, just a gentle breeze the creaked the large evergreen in my neighbor's yard. Although my toes were about ready to fall off, it was rather calming sitting in the cold snow.

Yesterday, my husband and I went to Denny's and then to Wal-Mart for a little shopping and seriously I need to get out and do something because all these storms have been putting a damper on any plans, except for  running to the grocery store or the Laundromat.  We stepped out of the nice warm Wal-Mart and a gust of wind rushed by and took my breath away. It picked up snow and swirled it around as if it were smoke or foggy climbing from the swamp at night. The snow swirled and raced across the highway and made snowy worms squiggly on the salt-stained blacktop. The sun was covered by the blowing snow, but to see it was mesmerizing. If I had a camera, that would be a perfect photo.

Tomorrow, NWS already issued a Winter Storm Warning which means another 6 inches of snow or more. I want to complain but there are other people who are way worse off. But I am going to say I am looking forward to muddy shoes and muddy floors because that means the snow is melting. 

You know what really blows my mind about snow? Why it is white... For the science people you know why it's white because it reflects white light and our brain sees white. You know, this is mind boggling, at least to me. If you catch a snowflake, one of those perfect little flakes that drift lazily out of the sky, and you look at it, it is clear. Which makes sense, a snowflake is a frozen water crystal. But then when you have tons of snow all you see is white. But if you scoot down in the snow and find one snowflake, which you can do especially when it's mostly powder snow, it's clear. Do you see how amazing and mind boggling this whole concept is? Imagine if snow reflected purple wavelength, wouldn't that be weird, the world covered in purple.

Looking forward to weed whacking and wasp fighting....