Half here

Deedee got back from India. She stopped by work to say hi. I like how when someone first gets home from somewhere far away they’re still half in that other place. They stand in front of you, their body wholly on the ground in front of you. But you know that inside they are still there.

She was so recently there, hearing the bells on pack yaks in Nepal, hearing the traffic in Calcutta, feeling the heat and the dust and the smog on the streets. There is still all around her the mist of another language, other food, and the imprints left on and inside of her: Mount Everest swept into fog and children acting silly and charming.

Half here

Deedee got back from India. She stopped by work to say hi. I like how when someone first gets home from somewhere far away they’re still half in that other place. They stand in front of you, their body wholly on the ground in front of you. But you know that inside they are still there.

She was so recently there, hearing the bells on pack yaks in Nepal, hearing the traffic in Calcutta, feeling the heat and the dust and the smog on the streets. There is still all around her the mist of another language, other food, and the imprints left on and inside of her: Mount Everest swept into fog and children acting silly and charming.

Half here

Deedee got back from India. She stopped by work to say hi. I like how when someone first gets home from somewhere far away they’re still half in that other place. They stand in front of you, their body wholly on the ground in front of you. But you know that inside they are still there.

She was so recently there, hearing the bells on pack yaks in Nepal, hearing the traffic in Calcutta, feeling the heat and the dust and the smog on the streets. There is still all around her the mist of another language, other food, and the imprints left on and inside of her: Mount Everest swept into fog and children acting silly and charming.

A frog and an elephant

Today I choked on a dried cranberry, argued, saw a snake, walked for an hour and a half carrying heavy bags because of a missed ride, got rocks in my shoes, and welcomed the breeze when a dump truck went by.

I also went swimming in a warm lake with silky bracken water, played with a cute baby with chubby legs, and ate a marvelous plum in the sunshine.

I wished, while walking down the driveway to work, that something magical would come out of the woods and cross my path. Something that would make misunderstandings and disagreements fade, embarrassed, into the background. A seal on its way back to the water, maybe. Or a sudden swarm of huge blue butterflies. Or a huge frog and an elephant, deep in conversation.

Wet tents

I went for a walk in the fog after work. I passed the beach and remembered about beach peas. The ocean smelled strong. The beach in the fog reminded me of what summer smelled like when I was a kid. It also smelled like cut grass, watermelon, wet rose petals (used as confetti, perfume, decoration on mud pies…) wild strawberries, and wet tents early in the morning after rain in the night.

Today: a field of irises and contours of islands in the fog. The repetition of work, the sort of petty satisfaction of accomplishing small tasks.

Small (the baby-to-be) quietly with me all the time. What can you hear, Small? What does it sound like to you when I unroll the packing tape? When I talk to you? There’s the whole world, Small. This whole entire world that you’re going to come to. That you’ll get to find out about, little by little. It’s so full, Small. Full of big things and little things. Sounds and colours and ants and words and dogs and trees. Happiness and confusion and quiet and noise and cherries and cheese and bumble bees and love and other people and houses and boats and the knocking on of doors and the turning on and off of lights, and breakfasts, and skies, and slanting sun on the floor, and islands looking mysterious in the fog and wood and metal and cloth and paint and cameras and paper.

Needing and wanting and having and getting and the wide open space beyond all of that, that space you can let back inside of you despite all the clutter and trouble and misunderstandings.

Who what when where why

What have the last months been? Where? Here’s a new place in time, let’s earmark this page by leaving a few traces. And let those months in a row turn into the moths of these summer nights. It’s okay to let time pass. It’s okay to let things shift under the surface and gradually feel out the new formation. Tectonic plates shift, and things shift for us too.

Is it a news update I want to give? Or is it something outside of the who what when where why?

Something secret and small. Something I can give to you like a secret. Do the time and the place always matter? What is there besides the time and the place? People’s postures, elbows resting on tables, clues in the movements of hands. I read that a clue originally meant a ball of twine, something you could unravel.

There was an old house and a new house, there was a warm lake, there were the lost and found wallet and car keys. Sauce around the mouth and bowl after bowl of strawberries. The carrying in and out of suitcases. Muddy sleep on planes. Boats passing with Swedish flags and red houses with white trim. Fairytale forests and soft fields. The lupines and irises which came and went. The flutterings of someone new in my belly, at unexpected times. A little one growing, becoming, developing a presence and a belonging to us.

It clouds over, the children who were running and yelling have gone inside. There are bees inside and out. We’re cranky, we’re laughing, we’re looking at books.

I read that whales dream. I read that plants, like people, run fevers when they’re sick. And the chamois, a goat like mountain antelope, can balance on a point of rock the size of a quarter.