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Undated June 2017
When I woke there was someone sleeping under a red blanket, in the grape vines, outside the window, in the garden. Carefully laid moccasin slippers near the rain barrel. The cardinal fed his new young in the mulberry tree.
Avoid all but the deepest gaze.
To look upon, an act of worship
higher than creation
Standing on the street corner, hunched, gasping for breath. And on the other corner a man asks for anything to ease his burdens. It used to be that I sought the company of others for emotional and intellectual sustenance.
Now I merely reverberate internally, with good or ill cast bouncing, endlessly repeating until such tension is unbearable. These episodes usually end up in either creative production or wounded recovery, either way a mild depression. Sometimes, both things happen in tandem. A mutualism where any useful product is avoided, pointless time is wasted and anxiety about what could be further made abounds.
July 6 2017
Maybe we will remember it as the year of the berries. This summer there have been huge numbers of all kinds. On the 4th we ventured south to an undisturbed section of the Mississippi. We ended up leaving the paved ‘trail’ as we found our way along the dense corridors that crested the steep hills. There was a huge number of black raspberries. ‘Unreal,’ she said, describing the flavor. ‘They are my sustenance’. And it was true. We ate them as we wandered and guided towards water by the thorns and precipitous drops. In the distance, across the valley, something swarmed amongst the tree tops cast about in the breeze. We scared a deer. I ended up descending her path down a less-steep section of the hill. I reached a bracket fungus covered stump and was transfixed by a translucent spider web.