Didn't Catch a Single Worm. Didn't Even Try.

Here's the truth. I like to sleep in. Between 7 and 8 a.m. the perfect Goldilocks temperature settles over my body. My brain swims around in the last dreams of the night. I fish for story ideas, character tics, conflict development. The day is untarnished by forgotten promises and obligations, dropped balls and time wasted. That hour in the morning contains all my greatest hopes, a sharp contrast to the hour of night that amplifies my greatest dread. Why would I spoil that one perfect hour of the day by getting up to do vertically oriented things?

Despite my lazy ways, I managed to write some pieces of short fiction and even submitted them to various literary journals. Lo and behold, a star in the east. No, wrong piece of fiction. Lo and behold, both pieces were accepted for publication and a third is forthcoming this spring.

So, maybe it's time to get back to blogging. Maybe I'm supposed to be doing other things to promote my works and the journals where they appear. I don't know. Blogging is such a relic. I don't tweet or facebook or instagram. I don't even have a smart phone. I'm not sure I'm ready to change those facts for the sake of trying to connect people to my work. I don't know where to begin. So for now, I'll get back into this and go from there.

My short fiction can be found at:

What You Don't See - Crack the Spine Issue 63

Flo's Gold - Fiction Fix (at that link, scroll down to Issue 13 and click to read.)

I'll let you know when The Safe Escape of Bears comes out in Stoneboat. 

Early Birds and Catching Worms

When I opened up the mailbox today I found a letter addressed to me, from me.  Self-addressed stamped envelopes always throw me for a bit of a snail-mail loop. There's some metaphysical thing going that I'm not philosophically astute enough to analyze, but basically, it's déjà vu in a business-sized security envelope. 

I wrote the letter the morning of the last day at writer's camp, sealed it up and handed it off to a woman named Pat, who promised to mail everyone's letter out at some undisclosed point in the future. This was one of those self-check-in letters to follow-up on a week dedicated to talking about writing, thinking about writing, listening to other people's writing and even actually doing some writing, too. Toward the end of this Dear Jen letter, my back-then self asked my future-self if I was being true to the small list of personal goals I'd established to help hone my writing craft. When I read the list today, I wanted to kick my back-then self in the arse. What was I thinking? Really? That goal? Again? I shook my head and thought, "Don't I know myself better than that? Maybe I'll just never learn." 

I wish I had a tally of all the times I've said or written in a journal: "Tomorrow I vow to get up an hour earlier than normal and  ________."  At various times in my life the blank has been filled with: do yoga, meditate, go for a walk, write personal morning pages, go for a run, write fiction, revise fiction. 

Not once have I been successful at this self-improvement goal. Yes, I love worms. In 5th grade I sported stickers in the upper right corner of my desk that spelled out, "I (heart) Worms". But getting up like the proverbial early bird to catch them is just not in my constitution. Or so I tell myself. What if I could do it though? For some reason I can't seem to shake the idea that there must be magic present in the early morning hours and if only I could get my ass out of bed I might harness some of that magic for myself. It feels like a character flaw that I can't overcome the desire to push the day's beginning off as long as possible. It seems like if I could just change my night-owl into an early-bird, something would be better. But I don't really know what exactly. 

I never stop wondering what it would be like to become a morning person, to add one more hour to my day, a quiet hour. Maybe there would be magic in that daybreak hour, maybe I would come to love it, to rise from bed not with dragging feet but with an eagerness for my day to start. For many things in life I believe that we can change our behaviors with practice and persistence. I should be able to will myself into a morning person, set the clock earlier, get up out of bed and carry on. Repeat until it's a habit.  And so, here it is on my list again. Maybe this time...this time....this time...

Stay tuned....

a run on Simple things

I worked a good day with people and at a job I love then dined on delicious food and drink with a friend for 3 hours that felt like 30 minutes, leaving us with so much more to discuss next time, next time, then drove home on congestion-free roads to my simple home where I stepped out of my car under a galaxy of stars poking pinholes in the night,  to eavesdrop on the melancholy conversation, "who cooks for you, who cooks for you",  between distant Barred Owls.

Gratitude for all the beauty that surrounds my existence.

Time's Messenger

Maybe the news you've come to tell me is unexpectedly good. Maybe, as Time's messenger, you've screeched into my driveway with raucous honks, pounded at my back door on the night of my birthday, to tell me that from now on, Time's passage will be different.


The montage of my thirty-eight years bullets by like scenery through the window of a bullet train, smeared  into a silky ribbon of visions that slips through the grasp of my mind. Even just twelve years ago is too far gone to remember with any truth, it seems. "What did we cook for dinner back then, back on Walnut Avenue in Belmont?" I ask my husband. I can't remember. But neither can he. We shake our heads, laughing at our inability to remember such a simple detail and change the memory question to something more recent, more tangible and solid: "Did my parents bring us this old green couch when we lived on Dorsch Hill or not until we moved to Springfield?"  Consensus is shaky and takes a while to form. "It's gone by so fast. It's just a blur almost" we agree.


So maybe you're standing here on the threshold of my house, smirking at me because you've come to grant my wish.  Just moments ago, I'd squeezed my eyes shut, let the last line of that awful, annual anthem drift away and puffed out the candles on my cake and thought : "Oh, Time. Please slow down. Please. It's all so good now." 


Because suddenly, life is flying by. That's the catch. Once you figure out where to find your joys, the things that fill you with wonder, the love, the friendship, the connections to be discovered around every corner, time starts to go faster. I swear it does, like some kind of quantum mechanics riddle. Once you find the secret to uncovering all the nuggets of beauty, life speeds up.  I want to savor it all two times, no fives times, no infinity as long! 


And so here you are Time's Messenger, telling me with that smirky smile that you shall grant my wish. For me - no more speeding bullet train. For me - time will become like a butterfly that floats and pauses, meanders and rests.  And oh, how I rejoice at this bit of unexpected good news!  Until I realize that I can't have it both ways. There can't be both infinite time in this life and infinite moments of beauty, wonder, friendship, love.  Those things are precious because of their inevitable end, because of my inevitable end. And yours.        And yours.         And yes, even yours.  


So, Time, I take back my wish. I retract the breath that extinguished the candles on my birthday cake. Fly the way you will. Let the years blur by, the days feel too short. Let there not be enough hours to in the day to wonder over ever bit of Nature. Let me never have enough time to read Nabokov until I fully understand his dizzying prose. Let there never be enough years to hold my husband's hand as we listen to the silence of a black and starry night. 


Time - do your thing. Race!  And I'll do my best to keep up. 

Spilled soup

My ears have no more room for listening. My heart has no more room for understanding. My nerves have fatigued of their ability to hold me back from wringing the necks of rude humans shopping for frivolous plants or breaking down in tears at a story of a nephew shot in Afghanistan, or explaining to you why your ears are ringing and that there's nothing we can do about it.  I'm like a bowl of soup filled too full and spilling over; what once was warm, nourishing and sustaining, is now nothing but a mess slopping all over the floor.

Why do I need to find a way to connect with everyone? Why do I need to make everyone else feel at ease, understood, relieved of their burdens?

Why does my way of interacting with the world end up overwhelming me? Why can't I figure out a better way?

Solitude.  I need you.

Separated by too great a distance

The four hundred pound man lay face-up, immobile, at the end of the mossy alley. One ambulance had already peeled away from the curb, red lights revolving, sirens screaming. Out of a second, quieter, ambulance, medics wheeled a gurney. Standing around, watching the scene unfold were some of the town's most undesirable. Grown boys who would never be called men, loitered at the mouth of the alley looking like perpetrators. One pale, twiggy kid tugged against the metal-prong collar of a pit-bull as I walked by. It wasn't even Spring yet, but unseasonably warm weather - high 70s and sunny - brought out the summer clothes ahead of schedule. Their long, loose, NBA jerseys, showcased scrawny arms, white and weak. Red and black polyester shimmered in the sun. Shoddy scrawls of blue-black tattoos adorned their bodies, signifying nothing to me, but perhaps everything to them. Rural thugs, fed on high fructose corn syrup and cigarettes since birth, (second hand followed too quickly by first) some with missing teeth, some with missing cognitive abilities, all with nothing to do, intimidated me. Conversation halted as I parted their sidewalk gathering.  Down the alley, the man-in-blue (tall, clean, broad, armed),  loomed above the 400-pound man, talking to the only woman in the mix - she and her t-shirt were both too thin, an ACE bandage wrapped her arm.

 I had the Norton Anthology of Short Fiction weighing down my little red backpack. I'd walked 2 miles to the library to return this hefty tome and check out a few other light authors: Thomas Paine, Saul Bellow, Samuel Beckett, since, hey, there he was in the general area of Saul Bellow.  I finished my business quickly  hoping that I might be a chance bystander as they hoisted the 400-pound man onto the gurney and wheeled him to the waiting ambulance. How was something like that managed - with the weight and the alley and the people loitering?  But the alley looked back at me, empty. The cop and the woman were still talking, but out on the sidewalk now, in front of the cafe window. Without any sense of urgency, the ambulance pulled from the curb, lights revolving, a few brief siren blasts as it pulled into traffic. Was its passenger dead?  Over my shoulder, with my ears straining backward, I heard the police officer ask: "And where's the baby now?"  The woman started to answer, but too much distance separated me from the scene, from those people. I couldn't hear her answer. Not without stopping, not without an effort. 

Becoming Our Mothers

If you are now, or ever have been, a daughter perhaps you'll understand. I can't say if these observations hold true for sons. (Does it seem strange to you that three out of four nuclear family roles are two syllable words: mother, father, daughter and then bam! - son - showing up with just its single, solid syllable?).

If you were lucky, like me, and born to the best kind of mother, there was a time when she could do no wrong. Your world revolved around her love, her approval, her kindness, her all-knowingness, her hugs, the way she told stories or made cookies. In turn, her world revolved around you.  

But then you got older and you started to see you'd been wrong. She wasn't perfection, not really, you'd been mistaken. How could you be so blind to her faults for all those years? To hell with that, I won't be like her! you may have said sometime in the two decades between 12 and 32. Those were the years you broke away, saw how other people lived, maybe went to college, became the most annoying of creatures: a privileged young idealist. You may have turned on your family, dating someone they didn't like, moving far away, judging them harshly and often. You launched yourself out of the gravity pull of mutual orbit. All good and necessary, but never a very flattering time. 

Eventually your 20s faded and with it some of that idealism and, I don't know why, but that also may have been about time you found yourself whispering in horror, "oh my god, I sound just like Mom." Or even worse, you felt your face or body act in such a way that for an instant you looked or moved just like her. You could feel it in your guts, in your bones. You may have panicked and said to yourself and to your very best friend since childhood, "I will not be like her! You have to promise to tell me if I'm getting like her." And that's also when you realized that you'd heard those words before. You remember hearing your own mother say that about her mother, usually after a long holiday visit or car ride with your grandma. Your mother would finally be free, she'd sink into a chair with exhaustion and say, "Please shoot me if I ever get like that."  You remember laughing, nodding and promising you would while thinking, but, Mom, you kinda already are. And you thought it was funny, quaint, that your mom couldn't see the inevitable happening to her. 

As your 30s rolled along you slowly resigned yourself to "being like mom" in the way you left the toaster-oven on long after your'd finished eating your snack, or left the mail sitting out next to the garden because you got distracted by some weeds on your way back from the mailbox. The weeds made it to the compost pile, but then you noticed that the blueberries needed water and so you did that and then you heard the kettle's distantly shrill whistle and remembered that you'd been boiling water for tea . The mail neglected until your husband came home from work and noticed it gathering evening dew by the tomato plants.

When you'd get together with your mom, you'd still notice many of the patterns and habits that could get under your skin but you tried not to let them bother you. You stopped vocalizing your judgments about her life and her approach to the world. Not because you'd become a more mature person, really, but because you realized that you, too, were permeated with faults in behavior and thinking, many of them similar to hers. Calling attention to her short-comings would be calling attention to your own. Such judgement was uncomfortably close to your own skin and psyche, so self-protection kept you quiet.

But then, if everyone made it this far and you eased steadily toward solid middle age, your mother's mother - your grandmother - began to fail. Maybe you watched this process from a distance with fear and humility. The daughter became the caretaker. Illicitly, she brought Cheez-itz and candy to her mother, one small joy for both of them. Your mother's every waking thought, and probably her dreams, became filled with "how do I help her get through this?"  A mutual orbiting returned for a brief flicker of painful time until it was finished, save for your mom getting down to the business of consolidating a lifetime of memories. 

And maybe a year or so after your grandmother's death, you began to see a profound beauty in the inevitability of "becoming our mothers". Maybe you got to spend a few days with your mom, you listened to her ways of talking and saw the mannerisms you share. You no longer got annoyed with how she interrupted her own quiet reading with interjections like, "Huh!" and "Wow!", so that you always asked, "What?" as she told you about something interesting she'd just read. You don't get annoyed because you heard yourself doing the same damn thing. And you knew that she couldn't help it, couldn't stop herself from doing it, because neither could you.  That was when it dawned on you that, dammit, there isn't enough time left. This will all be over way, way too soon, even if it's 30 years down the road. You imagine orbiting around your mother again, not as a child but as the caretaker. How will you negotiate that strange and looming landscape together?  And then, how will you negotiate your own without her? 

Someday it will happen, there's no way to stop it, you can't pretend anymore that it won't. And so you let yourself imagine what it might be like.  You imagine, when you sit at the piano there will be times when it's not you playing, but her ghost, rolling the big chords and holding the sustain pedal down too much. Even in the way you play the piano you've become "like your mother". The hemming and hawing over the mistakes and difficult passages, will not be your voice, but hers echoing in your ears.  When you walk over uneven terrain and your body moves awkwardly, you will feel that your are not yourself, but her.  When you leave things behind at other people's houses or your purse at a restaurant, your best friend will teasingly call you by your mother's name and you won't feel embarrassed, but proud and connected to your past.  "Damn, it's really happened. I'm just like my mother."  And so maybe, as you imagine this dreaded inevitable future, if you're lucky, you get to a point where you realize that in the time you have left there is no room for judgment and criticism.  Becoming our mothers is how we carry them forward, not just in our memories, but tangibly, visibly in our own gestures and habits, embedded in our own flesh and bones. There is no longer room to force her to fit some idealized "mom" shape and no time to fear "turning into her".  If you're lucky, you understand that there is only room and time enough for love, however you understand it.  

Trajectory of a Coronavirus

Pre Sick Day:  I think I might be getting sick. Yes. Definitely. No. Maybe not. Allergies? Just tired? No, I'm getting sick. X was sick last week and I probably picked it up there. 

Pre-Sick Night: Ugh, I'm definitely getting sick. Stupid sore throat. So scratchy and hard to swallow. It burns! It burns! 

Day one:  Oh, hey. It's not that bad really.My sore throat feels a little better.  I can beat this thing no problem! Bring on the OJ and soup!  I'm winning, I'm winning! 

Night one: Oh. my. god. My brain is clogged with phlegm and it's running out my nose unstoppably. I've used up all the toilet paper in the downstairs bathroom because we have no tissues. I'm sleeping with a bandanna under my nostrils to keep my pillow dry. Just let that snot flow, baby. Ugh, I feel like crap. 

Day Two:  Oh, my god. I'm going to die. I can't breathe. Every time I swallow my ears make a crazy glugging sound and then I can't hear right for a few minutes. I can't taste anything. Every fiber in my body aches. I can hardly keep my eyes open. When I blink I hear my eyeballs creaking. I'll never be healthy again. Waaaahhh! 

Night two:  I will never again be able to sleep. If I breathe through my mouth, my lips, tongue and throat become the Mojave and I wake up unable to produce saliva or swallow. But if I try to breathe through my nose, I die of suffocation. I'll just make a little tent around my head out of my blankets and breathe through my mouth under here like a little virus-breath-filled steam tent. Still no sleep. 

Day three: Hey, I can breathe a little bit! I haven't had to wipe snot for the past 30 minutes! Cool! Wow...look at my nose. Red, raw, flaking skin. Disgusting. Hawrk, hack, cough,  Have I been smoking for 40 years? That is one hell of a barking cough. I go to the store for some cough drops and people look at me like I've got TB. What are you lookin' at, you stupid healthy people. Get outta my way or you're next. 

Night three:  Can't sleep. Can't lay flat without coughing fit waking me every time I start to drift off. If I cough one more time like that  I'll either vomit, hack up a laryngeal fold or cry. Maybe all three. But wow...I think this might be a good abdominal work out program. I will spend the night in the recliner chair watching Youtube videos, drinking tea and feeling sorry for myself. 

Day four: F-U cold! Fine, you're winning. Whatever. I am going to the store and I'm buying DRUGS, dammit! Did you hear me, coronavirus! I'm gonna bring the 'Quil hate to rain down of your MF-ing head, beatch! You're not keeping me down anymore!  I've got things to do, people to see, important life to live!   Ah...Dayquil. The friendly kid sister to the Nyquil nighttime bully. Relief. Why didn't I take drugs sooner? 

Night Four: Well, hello there, anise flavored, syrupy green, elixir for the sick...where have you been all my life. Ah...the taste of sleep and crazy effed up dreams.  Thank you, Nyquil. I love you. See you again tomorrow night?

And so ends the story of the first four days of a coronavirus' trajectory. 

of note: I am not currently sick nor do I hope to become sick with anything common or uncommon. Thanks for sparing me from your potential germs, M.  

"If you give up, it's all over."

Nature's drive to persist despite disaster seems, to me, a more truthful and powerful inspiration for our own perseverance than any imaginary divine purpose could ever be.



h/t www.brainpickings.org

Something to watch. To make you think.

The first term paper I ever wrote, in 10th grade A.P English class was on assisted suicide. That was 21 years ago. In most of the world we don't seem to be any closer to providing healthy, safe, compassionate spaces and protocols for dignified, self-determined deaths. Talking about death - real, personal, individual death - is still a great taboo, even between loved ones. Perhaps most especially between loved ones, for where else are stronger emotions and greater attachments generated? We need more conversations about death, we need better options for dignified, compassionate, self-directed deaths.

This documentary is worth your time.

Bird Brain

 This past Wednesday was a long day working at the doctor's office and in the evening I wanted to do something to distract myself from feeling bombarded by personalities. So I took out the watercolor paints. Now, before you go thinking, "Hey, I didn't know Jen could paint!"  I can't. I took a class up in Bangor, ME in 1998. I painted some lemons and limes artfully resting near a blue aluminum can and it looked like a 3rd grader did it. But I still have all the brushes, paper and paints and what's not to love about making colors appear on paper. I tried to paint a sunflower.  Fail.  I tried to paint some trees. Fail.

So, I decided I'd paint some letters because that seemed fail-safe. I did Chip's name. Then I felt like changing it to "CHIRP".  That made me want to paint a little bird. Fail. Then I painted "CHOP" and the same orange bird (Fail) with it's head chopped off. The major success was flicking droplets of red paint from my brush to simulate blood. That's a satisfying watercolor "technique". So, anyway... I randomly painted a weird picture of a decapitated bird. 

Apropos of nothing above: I follow a blog by a writer named Vivian Swift. She did a great art journal book called When Wanderers Cease to Roam. She likes to find blue jay feathers. Sometimes when she's down-in the-dumps she talks about asking the universe to help her pay attention to the small, beautiful things in unexpected places. Sometimes she asks the universe to put a blue jay feather in her path and then often she finds one. She likes to write about that. And I am a sucker for those kind of stories because I have a feather finding feature. Some might call it a flaw. I'm obsessed with them. I find them all the time when we hike. People are amazed at how I can spot them and how they seem to find me. I've had them literally float down from the sky into my waiting hand. There have been times when I'll think, "it's been a while since I've found a feather...I hope I see one today on this hike." and then 5 steps down the path...there will be a feather. I know it's just coincidence, but secretly I imagine it's my special "gift". Wow...what a rockin' super power. 

Also seemingly apropos of nothing above: Today I really wanted to go for a big hike someplace exciting. Like in the Whites or the Greens, up a big mountain with big views and big wow factor. But for a bunch of reasons it didn't happen. (up too late, slept in, roads to all the places I love are closed, entire forests still closed). So I went to Springweather Nature Area.  An elderly man and his dog were heading out for a walk at the same as I was and we talked for a few minutes. He suggested I turn left on the path down below and walk to the bench for a really stunning view of the reservoir.  I was walking along enjoying the beautiful breeze and temperature, enjoying time alone. Thinking meandering thoughts. Thinking about Vivian Swift and her blue jay feathers. I jokingly, in my head, "asked the universe" if it might be able to put some feathers in my path today. In a few minutes I arrived at the bench the old man had told me about. I was going there to see the view of Irene's flood water line. The North Springfield dam saved my town from Irene's flooding destruction.  Thank you, North Springfield dam and reservoir.

 I sat in the warmth of the sun and gawked in amazement until I decided it was time to head in the other direction.  And that's when it happened. Walking back on the opposite edge of the woodsy road, something in the weeds and twigs to my left caught my eye. Instantly I knew - male cardinal feathers and lots of them! This was clearly the site of a bird murder. 

So, I did what any feather-loving, crime scene investigator would do, I took pictures, collected samples and generally studied the scene in great detail. This kill was very fresh; some of the quills were still dark and wet inside. The piles of downy feathers, flight feathers, tail feathers hadn't yet blown apart from each other. I picked through them, examining their beauty and variation. I put a few into my coat pocket. I was pretty sure I could even identify feathers that would have been part of the bird's crest. I moved around to the other side of the scene for a different look and there it was....jackpot! 

Anyone who knows me knows my fascination with dead things. Anyone who knows me will easily guess what I did next. Yep, you got it!  I picked it up by the beak. The eyes were closed, of course, but not yet sunken in. There was still weight of  bird brains inside. The back of the head was clean of feathers, exposing a hemisphere of yellowish white skull-orb. When I woke up this day I never imagined that by noon I'd be holding the head of a recently dead male cardinal. I wanted to keep it. Yes, you read that right. I wanted to wait for the feathers and flesh to decay and then to have a bird skull. So I started walking with it down the path toward my car where I was going to leave it while I continued on my walk. But then I saw the elderly gentleman I'd met on my way in. Our trajectories would coincide shortly and he'd see me holding a bird head by the beak. Also, I was afraid his dog might want to eat it. Awkward, to say the least. So, I did what had to be done. I unzipped the upper chest pocket on my windbreaker and dropped the cardinal's head inside. 

With my treasure safely stowed, I decided to continue on my walk without stopping at my car. For another hour I walked, took pictures and had a lovely afternoon. I chuckled to myself once in a while but felt occasional bits of nervousness about the mental health of someone going for a walk with dead bird parts in her chest pocket. 

So, the lessons for today are obvious. You don't need to go far away or to mountains to find fascinating things to spark your wonder. The routine nature walk place right down the street has wonder and beauty to spare if you're willing to look for it. Second lesson, be careful what you ask for from the universe. You just might get it tenfold. Third lesson, stuff that seems apropos of nothing can sometimes end up making a curiously serendipitous story. 

Two photos to cleanse the mental palate from all that dead bird head talk:

This is not a Oz. This is not a photoshop trick. It really looks like this. 

I peeled up a leaf to see its imprint. I love that it looks like a black and white photos except for the the rusty, pink hue of the real leaf in the upper left edge

When Summers Stretched Forever

There's no getting around it, as long as it's a little warm and sunny, Memorial Day Weekend marks the psychological start to summer. Today, right now in fact, could be the epitome of the transition from ephemeral Spring to lolling, lingering Summer -- sunny, hot, breezy, possible thunderstorm later.  Summer is the season for the young. That's when it still feels safe to believe you have all the time in the world, when long, hot days unfold like epic chapters in young lives. The beginning of summer is heavy with possibility and promise. Past a certain age, the freedom of Summer disappears. Year 'round jobs. Yards to mow. Gardens to tend. Kids' activities. Lives full of obligations and responsibilities - the exact opposite of what Summer is about when you're a kid.

So, I'm outside about a half hour ago, sweating and stinking from a day of tree-planting, garden-tending and lawn mowing. Back-and-forth, back-and-forth, vvvvvrrrrrrrrmmmmm. Mow.Mow.Mow. Get this done before tomorrow. Before it rains. Before I go to the store. Before I make dinner. Before work on Sunday.

Then movement caught my eye a few driveways down.

Kids. Boys and girls, maybe 12 or 13 years old. Six of them in shorts and teeshirts. They were playing basketball, running around gawkily in the small driveway passing the ball, taking shots, laughing. I pushed the mower along in front of me and tried not to stare at them. That used to be me. That used to be us - our neighborhood -shooting hoops, making baseball diamonds in the neighbor's back field, bonfires, swimming all day, expeditions in the creek, late nights playing Ghost-in-the-Graveyard, crushes on each other coming and going like summer storms. It felt like it would never end.

I watched those kids for a minute and felt the box of my childhood memories spill into the soup of my brain. I  ached to feel like I still had all the time in the world, that summer would stretch before me like a blank slate, that my neighborhood was still filled with enough friends to make two reasonable teams at a moment's notice and just a bike-ride away. Summer used to be my season. Summer was our season.  But now it's theirs and it's been theirs for a long time, I just didn't realize how much so until today.  Lucky little bastards.

But then I realized I could get in my car, drive to the store, buy a bunch of cold beer and drink as much as I want without worrying about getting caught. I'm gonna do just that....

...as soon as I finish mowing the lawn and putting all the tools away before it rains.

book recommendation for June inspired by this blog post - Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. I am going to re-read this gem. Seriously, everyone should read this book in June. Highly, highly recommended.

Shadow's Edge

Some paths lead to places unplanned. Follow them. Music by Arms and Sleepers.

Shadow's Edge from Jennifer Audette on Vimeo.

Birth + Death = Life

Birth. Death.

My family finds itself poised on the very edge, waiting for both life and death at exactly the same moment.

My Grandma might draw her final breath sometime today. Or, we may still be waiting, watching while nature has its way with her for a little longer. At the other end of life's continuum, my cousin has been ready (since Friday) for labor to start and a new life to begin its own cycle. But for the last several days we've all been waiting. Waiting for death. Waiting for life.

The average annual world birth rate is currently estimated to be 19.95/1000.* That means about 370,317 babies will be born today. And tomorrow another 370,317 and then an entirely new batch of 370,317 babies will be born two days from now. Imagine how many people will be affected by those births each day. Even if you factor just five people anxiously awaiting each of these births, that would be over 2 million people personally affected every single day by births.

The average annual world death rate is currently estimated to be 8.37/1000.* About 155,366 people will die today. And again tomorrow. And another 155,366 or so the day after that. Think of how many people will be personally affected by those 155,366 deaths. If an average of even five people are affected by one of today's deaths, three-quarters of a million people will be involved with death somehow, each and every day.

So, if today you happen to find yourself: being born, dying, waiting for either of those two things to happen, or if you're mourning/rejoicing yesterday's occurrences or anticipating tomorrow's - you are not unique, you are not special. There are over 7 billion people in the world; each one born in a pretty similar way and each one heading toward a similar cessation of life. What could possibly be more mundane, more insignificant than one single instance of birth or death?

And yet, what could possibly be more significant or more unique? Birth is the capital letter at the start of a life's first sentence and death is the punctuation mark at the end of the last page. All the days in between become the story of a singular, unrepeatable human experience.

To the capital letter on the very first page and a full-stop at the end of the last chapter I dedicate all the pages in between.

Life.


*statistics from the CIA World Factbook

Someone has to let go first.

Should I put my left arm over or under?

What about my right arm, where should that go?

Oh crap, our arms are on the same trajectory, we're gonna have arm collisions. Should I switch my approach? Or is the other person going to switch?

This person is so much shorter. I think I just gouged her in the throat with my shoulder. She's probably trying not to choke, I better let go now. But will that seem rude? Like I don't really want to give her a hug?

People with some meat on them are good for hugging.

I've never hugged this person before, but I want to, but what if a hug isn't appropriate in this circumstance? What if they don't want a hug?

It's hot and humid and I've been in the car for hours. I hope they can't feel how sweaty my shirt is in the back. They probably can. Gross.

I barely know this person, but here they come, in for a hug. Do they know how forced this feels? How many authentic hugs do we ever really get/give? Maybe fewer than we think. Hmmm...I don't think I like that thought.

Why does my heart always beat too hard when I hug someone? It embarrasses me. I know people can feel it beating away in my chest. I've had people mention it before. I don't want them to think it has any real significance. But it must mean something, right? It's easier just to avoid it and not hug people very much or else try to keep my heart area away from theirs or just keep the hug short.

When I visit my family and I hug my mom or dad and if I hold on extra long it always threatens to make me cry. And that makes me feel silly and childish so I don't hold on as long as I really want to. I think they do the same thing.

Sometimes hugging someone surprises me with how perfect it feels, physically, I mean. Some body shapes just fit together better than others.

Hugging brings two people together and yet you are still separate no matter how long or how hard you hug. It's kind of a metaphor for existence - the desire to know others/be known and the ineluctable solitude of our individual consciousnesses.

We can never know exactly how our hug feels to the person on the other side.

The implications of a hug's end are subtle and complex. Someone always has to let go first.

In the Face of Overwhelming Disaster

Haiti. Earthquake. Devastation. Response.

We could almost say it's an incomprehensible catastrophe. Except that we're all forced to comprehend the images we'd rather not see (but can't stop watching), the reports we'd rather not hear (greedy for the next sound bite to illuminate the scope of humanitarian response), and the as-yet-uncounted thousands who are right smack in the middle of the catastrophe. The nearly instantaneous, all-media access to global events forces not only those immediately affected by it, but also the entire world, to comprehend the devastation.

Those directly involved must respond. Viscerally. Their responses are immediate, physical, meaningful and without premeditation. They are life-saving measures. I can't imagine there's much thinking involved. It must be purely fear, hope and adrenaline driving the living forward. Forcing them to comprehend the incomprehensible.

For the rest of the watching, waiting world, we gnash our collective teeth, wring our collectively concerned hands, discuss how fast the U.S. is or isn't responding. We analyze, we discuss, we "oh" and "ah" in shock, we chastise governments for doing too little, too late. We internalize the sound bites and the media blitz and then out of our feelings of necessity we offer money to various organizations promising to give aid to the victims. This is how we try to comprehend the incomprehensible and assuage our guilt--subconscious guilt that we are relieved to not be on the receiving end of such a catastrophe.

There certainly seems to be a need within our collective humanity to assist during disasters. Long, ago in early human groups, we would have only known about relatively immediate disasters--those close in both proximity and relation. Therefore we would have been forced to respond in order to preserve our own lives or the lives of our family-group or tribe. So perhaps, from a biological perspective, it makes sense that we desire to offer some type of assistance in the face of disaster, even when, seemingly, it has nothing to do with us.

Today I was driving around my town, discovering streets I'd never been on before. The radio was tuned, for a while, to NPR like usual. I had a trunk full of bagged lunches and hot dinners and a map of my route drawn in blue ballpoint pen sitting next to me on the seat. The midday show was, of course, talking about the impossible chaos, panic and death in Haiti. Before I left my house, friends and acquaintances were posting updates on Facebook about how they felt regarding the devastation and to what groups they recommended giving money. I admit I felt a little odd that I didn't want to run right out and donate money to a charity because of the earthquake. It just didn't feel like enough to me. It wouldn't make me feel as if I'd really helped. How would I know who my measly contribution really helped? Or did it just pay for some stamps to send out letters asking for more donations? Did it just pay to alleviate my subconscious survivor's guilt?


It being my very first time delivering meals, I had to turn around a couple times after missing roads and/or driveways, despite my map. (I didn't know so many of the roads in Springfield were without signage. Who do we think we are? Boston?) Finally I pulled into my first stop. I opened my trunk and pulled out a brown-bagged lunch and a dinner from the hot bag--kept warm with an oven-heated piece of soapstone. My trunk smelled like a mobile cafeteria. I walked up to the door, gave a knock for formality's sake. I turned the knob and let myself in to a kitchen I'd never seen before, belonging to an elderly woman I'd never met until this moment.

"Hi, there! Meals on Wheels. I've got your food here. How are you?" I set the packages on her small kitchen table and noticed all the funny chotchkes she had arranged so perfectly around her home. It didn't smell like I thought it would. It didn't smell like the elderly. It just smelled like a home.

"Oh. Thank you so much! How wonderful. Oh, but it's cold out there, isn't it? You've got the right idea with your hat and mittens though! Broke my hip, ya know. I'll be better when I don't have to use this thing anymore." She directed her last comment dismissively to the walker waiting patiently in front of her. "Thanks so much for the food. Maybe I'll see you again?"

"I'll be seeing you next Thursday, probably. Enjoy your food. Stay warm." I said. I shut her doors tightly against the cold and hopped back into my car, surprised at how satisfying it felt to do such a simple thing for someone in my community. On the radio they were still talking about the disaster in Haiti. On the map, I located the residence of the next person on my list of about 10 people. I backed out of the driveway and shut off the radio.

Fear of "The Last Time"

Nature should be no friend of mine, as she forever marks the passing time. And shows the world held upside down, in a drop of rain slowly stretching toward the ground.

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My desire to write hides deep under cozy covers dreaming away in a sluggish slumber while time has its way with me. Perhaps I must shake my creative-self by the shoulders, set off an alarm, dump a bowl of cold water over my lazy creative head; in other words - force the beast awake. Heh...just in time for winter's hibernation. An uphill battle? Or perfect timing? We shall see.

About two weeks ago while snuggled under the covers with my husband, my sleep-attaining process was derailed when a thought bubbled-up innocuously from my brain: "Huh...eventually one of these times will be the "last" time I ever snuggle in bed with my husband. Except I won't know it's the last time until it's too late." That thought extrapolated easily to "Wow... everything will be the "last time" eventually." One of the times that we linger after dinner - drinking a bottle of wine, talking for hours - will be the last. There will be a last time I hear him play the guitar. There will be a last time we ride in the car together. There will be a last time we make love. There will be a last time we laugh together. And most likely I will not know that I am experiencing a "last time" moment until it's too late.

That's not the end of it though. This thought process can easily be applied to everything else and everyone else in my life. It makes me hyper-aware of everything I do, say, touch, feel, taste, hear and love so that every moment becomes imbued with the gravity and awe of "possible last" status. But it's difficult to remain continuously hyper-aware and eventually I revert to taking things for granted. I've decided that for me, "taking things for granted" allows life to move forward without feeling continuously heartbroken by the unpredictable beauty and brevity of life.

Happiness Pinned to the Mat - now what?

For the past 5 years my need to struggle against various sets of conflicting thoughts and feelings has been like a constant, but burdensome, friend. Wrestling with questions about existence and happiness seemed imperative to my survival and constantly on my mind. And while it has been my mind that searched for answers and often only dug up more questions, it seemed to be my heart, my guts that experienced the weight of their importance. At times it felt like a high-stakes game accompanied by emotional fluctuations easily mistaken for passionate living.

With a solid six months of contentment, dare I say happiness, under my belt I find myself wondering what's become of my passions, my emotional landscape. Sometimes it feels rather dull compared to the "old" me. Is my personal philosophy now so well-coalesced that I no longer need to grope and grasp around looking for answers? Have I actually taken ownership of my happiness and found success where I feared I might only find failure? I feel there could be significant danger of boredom in what I perceive as the stasis of happiness. I admit to feeling some sadness at the loss of the emotional ups-and-downs that have swayed me for a good handful of years.

We all give lip-service to wanting happiness, but I'm not sure I believe that most people would know what to do with themselves if they actually became masters of their own happiness.

And so next week, as I recover from my early 30s and head into my late 30s I ask myself this: If my internal world has settled (for the time being) into a place of happiness, what next; what now to fire my heart, my passion? It's powerful to ask oneself this question, take responsibility for it and say, I don't know... yet...but it's gonna be a blast to figure it out and in the meantime... it sure feels damn good to be happy.

Scattered thoughts

I have been feeling a deep pull to write something, but the truth is that my thoughts are too scattered and varied to sum-up into a compact blog post. I am continually stymied by attempting to choose a starting point.

My thoughts these days cover the gamut from: what it means to become "friends" with someone (how it develops, how it lasts, how it ebbs and flows, how email and internet affect friendships, how they vanish or resume and what it is that makes someone a friend v. just an acquaintance or colleague), to the wonders of watching insect ecosystems happen right in my yard and then destroying them, to losing any disgust inherent in squashing a slug with my bare fingers in order to protect my veggie and flower plants, to pondering what happens to my intellectual pursuits when I suddenly lose almost all my solitary time but to a job that I actually love; a job that pays me one third what my "real" job pays but where I work 10 times as hard and gain about that much more satisfaction from my efforts.

That was an insanely long sentence and full of grammatical errors. Oh well. Such is my brain...it don't care none 'bout them thar grammar rules 'n such, just thinks thoughts in a messy sorta way. Ain't it purty?

Maybe I can tackle some of these thoughts and feelings individually and have a sudden burst of blog productivity. Perhaps just cracking the shell is enough to let the inside goo run out and spread into a form of some sort. Or maybe these moments will pass and these thoughts will be forever lost to my subconscious mind, dredged up only for strange, incoherent dreams and random melancholy feelings of nostalgia.

Musings provided by unstructured time

Sometimes I look around and ponder the scene I would leave behind if I died right now, or perhaps, disappeared instantly. I imagine the scene through eyes other than mine, the scene one would come upon when discovering my absence. What would be meaningful? What would be revealing? What would remain unexplained? What would make Chip, or anyone else who knows me, smile, shake his head and think...yep, that's Jen for ya?

What artifacts, what evidence do we leave of our minute to minute existence?

I look around now, right now, and see: the folding metal chair - partially covered with an old sheet to make it feel a little softer - sitting in front of the garage, the strange little gardening tote that turns into a stool positioned as a foot rest, The book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Dennett along with my index card of notes and comments, inside - the laundry still going, my summer clothes taken out of storage and piled haphazardly upstairs, winter clothes now optimistically out of sight. In the kitchen the computer is open, gmail up and running like it often is, all my bead stuff out on the table and a necklace half put back together, a glass of wine mostly gone. Evidence of an afternoon spent leisurely, no task fully completed, everything in medias res. The way every good story begins.