So much has happened. So much to say. So much Bow. So much Edison.

But I'm not into blogging about it now.

In the meantime, this.

Day of the Living Bees.

I found a dead bee drowned in rainwater on the porch of Sloughside Studies, where I work. I picked him up by wing and brought him in my car with me as I was leaving. I put him on the dash on a bit of paper. He was most certainly dead.

Later, I went inside to collect books to return to the law library. When I resumed driving, he was all a flutter around my head in circles. I thought, this zombie bee must die! But then I didn't want to risk a sting so I rolled down the window and transplanted him from Edison to Bow Hill at the intersection of Samish Hts (Sandwich Heights, Max says) and Hobson (Hotdog) Road.

This was the most exciting thing that happened to me yesterday.


The end.

[Two days earlier, two wasps emerged from studiomate David's easel as I was borrowing it. I stepped on one to kill it. It just started moving it's little wasp legs around again. It is certainly undead, I fear.]

A Hard Bed to Lie In

A Hard Bed to Lie In
by Marilyn Dumont

A hard night, slept up against a rock face on the side where my mortality
looks like a mountain, leaving my life where it is on an edge
looking down.

tempted to jump, sprout wings as fantastic as the married arms that would
catch me if I leapt

I could have easily been a doe on a highway, (you a driver, your wife
beside you sleeping

me grazing, ruminating the coarse clover, wet blades a mixture of green
desire and

regret that I didn't accept the offer even though

a gold band shone like a beacon, to ward off prey
—not to be mistaken for a jacklight,

just a doe, a stretch of road, high beams

headlights, your eyes,

legs petrified at the speed of light, a flash burn, flare

transfixed by the jacklight and the daylight of the woman who moves
touching you
with her mouth of the moist night,

the night of my turning, aching, having you disclose your desire for me,
turning to yet
another confession in my bed, another crease,

the safe imagined hand crosses my breast to my waist, pubic bone, and
thigh, turns to
another imagined and perfect clean slice of a meeting, the one where I
would have met you years ago when you were an open space, a
meadow to be walked through at high altitudes

and the night's turning

down, wears out

trust in my age, that

flat sheets and a hard bed will not forgive.

Sometimes There's a Day that Begins Before 11 AM.

Some snow came. Then snow came heavy in secret in the night. Warm rain puddled into mud on waking and disappointed hopes of school cancellation. Winter break made us itch to go back, but it feels time is more precious if it's supposed to be dedicated to something else. Something more tedious.

After eight years of college level art studies, I should have been done. But then, here I am. Enriching my value as a worker, a useful cog in the machine, learning how to this and how to that ever so carefully so that I might contribute one day. Pull a salary while I nurture my artwork. While it grows into the big thing everyone promised me, (and I had promised myself), it was destined to be. So at Skagit Valley Community College, I chug along a route that will take me to hold a certificate from the paralegal program. Might as well, here. While I'm tucked in between the salt water and the snowy mountains of the valley, might as well. I scored an unexpected 4.0 GPA last quarter, and last week I was nominated for and elected paralegal club vice president.




I woke this morning with my husband. I sat in front of the light that mimics the sunrise well before there was any light in the sky. I showered, brushed my teeth, and thought about my week. Now, at the art studio space I rent in Edison, I plan. I look out the window at the slough, brimming with murk and a very special wildlife. Two hours until I'm to do some contract work at a local law firm.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I've been thinking about him. I've been thinking about Eisenhower. I've been thinking about Jack Kennedy. I'm only blocks away from the elementary school I attended until I was 14. I remember loving the holiday because sometimes it fell on my birthday and I would have the day off. I have the day off from classes today. My birthday is this Thursday. Fifty years to the day after JFK was sworn into office.


Tomorrow, there is a Paralegal Club budget meeting.
Then class at the Law Library.
Wednesday there is homework due. Class lets out at 8:30 pm.
Thursday, there is a chapter to be read.
Then another club meeting, out of which, I shall duck.
Max will take me to dinner to celebrate my birthday. Il Granaio.
At 1 pm on Friday, I will be getting my #10 root canaled.
Hopefully to recover quickly to dash off to Seattle and collect my scientist pal from the airport. (flying in from Nashville!)
Drinks.

And on Saturday, this:

Cliche. Aphorism. Inanity.

*There are a few swears in this episode of Bow adventures. I'm sorry, but they're essential to the story.


Yesterday sounded like turkey murder from the kitchen. I had to think, "Did I leave the gate open!?" Dogs and turkey and ...human? chaos resounding through my one window. I ran outside and a man was standing across the driveway yelling.

(The turkey just makes reactionary noises when things get loud).

"I'll ---king kill you! You son of a bitch!" he yelled toward the three dogs gathered around him. I looked at his truck. Post office vehicle.

"What is going ON HERE!?" I got quick with the yelling too.

"HE BIT ME!" and pointed at Eddie. "ASSHOLE!" He got in his truck and slammed the door.

I approached the window. "WAIT?! He bit you?"

"Well he nipped."

"I'm sorry, are you okay?"

Then the postman communicated that ol' One Eye had just nipped his PANTS and that he was fine, but in the most curt and aggressive way possible.

"He's never done that before," I tell him, and that's the truth.

He handed me a certified letter to sign, all the while tangibly hating me. My mom came out and he warmed up. So kind to her, he turned away from me. I just handed her the letter to finish signing, grabbed my dog and walked away.

I'm sorry mister postman, you were a dick to me. Like, a total dick. And I don't know what you did to my dog, but it must have been something. I've known him longer and better than you and I got his back. I rescind my apology.

"For (the sake of) old times"

Since thoughts of thee doth banish grief,
when from thee I am gone;
will not thy presence yield relief,
to this sad Heart of mine:
Why doth thy presence me defeat,
with excellence divine?
Especially when I reflect
on auld lang syne



Hearts beat much the same way they did in the days of poets Burns and Watson, who in the 1700s penned our midnight song to bring in a new calendar year. Hearts will continue to beat forth with regret and nostalgia (and more regret and more nostalgia), with hope and intentions (and greater hope and honorable intentions), and so on and so on. Just as fast as Christmas pulls the rug from your feet, you land on your ass December 31st. And a heartbeat away is 2011. A landmark propelling you further away from your past. Your mistakes. Your losses.

Last year we made our hair tall and checked into a hotel and cabbed to a party and danced among strangers in Seattle. This year we didn't even feign plan. I have lived a thousand theatrical celebrations. I feel my heart beat for another time and another place. To ring in another day, another year in a place I don't necessarily feel celebratory about remaining in, calls for no party dress. Only simple attire. A heavy coat.

I look out the only window. The sill, a shrine. A collection. Offerings to Ra, of whom I know too little. I drop vitamin D on my hand and lick it up. I look past the flowers of 2010, the dried remnants crumbling into the new days. The lavender bunch that felt like an apology. The twigs from the honeysuckle that smelled so much like summer. The dried Christmas flowers that were a miscarriage comfort gift. Above them sits the latest and the living. A "just because" bouquet that drinks up the water in the vase and the broken orange sunlight from the woods outside. I surround those memories with succulents because they need me the least. Aloe from John Simon's studio and the Belfast feed store. Jade because it reminds me of Eloise. A wandering jew wanders toward the sink where the woman's work is. It tangles with the dishsoap. Other treasures are there too. The bleached wishbone from the first turkey we slaughtered. I dare not wish.

I feel my heart flutter just in that way it takes your breath. I skate across the ice parking lots and the frozen mud driveway. I race the one-eyed dog around the property.



We heard mysterious snow crunch last night just outside of the porch light's illumination. The dogs went barky and we corralled them for fear of predatory cat. Listening harder with dogs safe, we decided it was not a wild creature. The sound was more human. More frightening. Roseanne flipped off the darkness and at the end of the night, I locked my deadbolt. I felt grateful for the protection of only one window. The guns nearby and my husband unafraid, I fell asleep and dreamed of what-ifs.

I wonder what's out there in the woods. What's out there in the future. I wonder what's waiting to be.