Suspect

I’m house/pet/teenage daughter sitting for a professor I don’t know that well. I have Amelia with me- she has decided to temporarily allow the small yappy dog to live but has crushed the will and self-confidence of the ancient golden retriever after he tried humping her. In her defense though, she gave him plenty of warning. The cats are watching Amelia with ears flattened, plotting. I made sure to shut Amelia in the bedroom with me last night lest the cats enact what are assuredly evil plans… The teenage daughter is fine, actually, seems very responsible and self-sufficient, which leaves me, frankly, suspicious.

8 hours later

I was wrong when I spoke before.  No matter how I love these gentle hills filled with places and people I know, that I am,  there is only one home, and it is with you.  Home is next to you, beside you, in our bed, no matter what that bed should smell like.  When you are not here, when I must sleep alone, in this house I clean and decorate and know, it is only preparation, it’s just a building, and no matter how comfortable I make it, it is empty without you.

of Baseball, Georgia, and Talking Heads

‘Home, is where I want to be, pick me up and turn me round’

Talking heads lyrics running through my head, while I’m in Atlanta, visiting Eli. I always thought Home was where ever he was, but home, is apparently, where I work and sweat and toil and shower in my own smells and my own ways. After three days in Hotlanta, I am now quite certain, where before I was only inclined, that I am NOT a city person. There are very few things one can do in the city that can not be done in a normal-sized population- except, of course, for waiting in long lines, avoiding killer traffic and cramming into apartments the size of shoe-boxes.

Eli has some tickets for a Braves/ Red Socks game today- I’ve never been to a baseball game before, and while I thought I wanted to go, as the heat of the day bakes into the Georgia hills I’m slowly rethinking the outing. In fact, I think I want to go home. But, how to tell Eli.

I could, I know, have a decent time taking pictures of the super-fans, the super-celebrities, and the super-drunk, but I think, I think I’d rather watch the interstate in the rear-view.

The price of free

you proudly tell me of the worth of your wit,
but words are cheap, my old friend, and so are you.

There comes a time in every young man’s life when he contemplates the future without that pretty little bit of now, and he thinks, I will do whatever it takes, I will be whoever she needs, I cannot face the lonely without her, no matter how she may nag me. And then, he proposes.

You can tell yourself you’re above and over tradition, but we both know you’d buy her a ring so large she couldn’t lift her hand, if you could. Instead you cover her ring finger in words made of dreams, of sweet honeyed tobacco and trinkets of ink, but not on your skin,
no,
the words written there are your permanent chain mail, and you’re too scared to wear her there, or, you’re too honest.

turn left, then right, then left again

I’m still too tired to write, I think. Hundreds of thank yous, painstakingly scribed in illegible handwriting and bedecked in the unspoken magic of canceled stamps are traveling, or sojourned somewhere near the mail tray.

Yes, I’m still far too tired to write- that last sentence made no sense at all and took too long doing it.

Today I started digging out the mud pit that is also a mountain that is also the ghost of a pine that is also the home of a gas line, which, thanks to the meso-cyclone, I now know exactly how scary it is to have rupture.

I’m clean now, showered, hands red and blistered from the shovel, it’s hard to see that I’ve done anything at all.

But that is, I remind myself, kind of the idea. Work until you bleed just so things can look like you haven’t done any work, so it doesn’t look like the sky fell, so you don’t see the ghost of a tree. Looking out there now, all I can see is the ghost, all hot and holey and blinding in the sunlight. And I’m sick of stepping in mud, so I guess I must dig out place where the knowledge used to be, even it out, wait till it rains, and hope it still looks like I haven’t done anything.