Dreams are just like that.

A screaming fit about coffee

grounds, windowsills and 

compost. 

There was the usual banging

together, he uses 2 hands to 

clean both the filter and the pot, clanging them on the sides of the ceramic pot. 

2 hands, Not one, but both, tap tap tap until I want to scream at him

and I did

you never, its always and he uses my words to not listen, 

which 

makes sense as I am screaming. 

In my dreams I wander 

mountains alone 

looking for sasquatch or

bobcats or wolves. 

I sail the whole of puget sound in a boat

navigating

by stars. I photograph

wars and wear my 

dungarees on my hips, my belly 

still concave and my hip bones 

an anchor for the waist of my

 baggy and dusty jeans

But, really, its just another day. I wake up,

go to work, and when I can’t stand another minute of it,

Create a tempest in a teacup

as Melvin used to say at the AA meeting. 

And I scream, my voices rises the more

he ignores me.

then I say "fuck” a lot, but never fuck you,

because honestly, he’s the best person

for me, partly

because he ignores my

tantrums. 

Im grateful

they are only a once

in a while thing, thundering when

the mountains

call, wars rage and

coffee grounds turn to 

clouds.

Los Angeles Catholic Worker and Skid Row

Coming home from  just a week at the LA Catholic Worker house left me with a renewed sense of duty. Duty to strive to live towards what I consider and say are my values as well as an acceptance to allow myself to fail at times.

We sat on milk crates, covered with ripped towels and soaked feet and delved into toe jam and fungus with orange sticks and dremels behind the mural of Christ in the Bread line in downtown LA. 

The parrot mural, bright back drop for our table of supplies was miraculously below a strange naked tree with green fruit that the parrots periodically visited while we worked. People came and had their feet treated and then came back again to visit. Meals continued as always and continue now while I sit here softly in my bed writing, flanked by my favorite morning companions, Spooke and Shadow, my house cats. 

 While in LA, we spoke a lot of destiny in trying to make sense of the tragedy that befell some people. Before going, I had always wanted to believe that people had control over their fate and I confused fate with destiny. I looked up the 2 words and it seems the dictionary on my I phone confuses them too as the definitions are exactly the same. Both indicate a predetermination, usually decried by an omnipotent being. If thats the case, then the people of Skid row and all other places where the conditions are harsh and inhumane, the ones who maintain their humanity and show kindness and resiliency even when it seems impossible to do so, the ones who continue to hope, must be the walking saints of the world. For how else can fate make any sense? 

But then, what of the people who resort to drugs and violence to cope? I ask myself this because I don't know how I would fare if the bottom fell out of my life. Would I be able to trust in God, in some  divine intervention bringing me to a place of utter vulnerability as acceptable? And if I couldn't maintain my faith, does it mean I am loved any less? Did Jesus love the sinners less? 

Richard Rohr this morning writes of restorative justice and within his lovely paragraphs writes "Love is the only things that transforms the human heart." And this is exactly what the workers who come to LACW do. They love. Simply and in action and in it they allow themselves to be the human people they are and, AND.. they continue to show up. And somehow, that is the piece that matters. By being there daily, they continue to bring love int he form of food, smiles, jokes, gardens, blooms, dentistry, blankets and everything else. It is a love of action, tangible and deep. Its the commitment to be present that makes them remarkable. For when it hurts, when the pain they view and hold space in their hearts for becomes overwhelming, they continue.

lacatholicworker.org

Is this is the very first grave in Pere Lachaise? Its on top of a hill, towards the back and near Edith Piaf. The legend? A 5 year old orphaned girl. Our guide ( yes, they have impromptu guides at the cemetery, Pere Lachaisians, they call themselves, old men, who gallop you across markers and tell bawdy stories about the cemetery as well as ones guaranteed to make one cry a little. I would imagine some of it is true. Ive spent a little time doing some research and it doesn't seem to be true that this is an actual grave. what I would say is that following Gerard around is a wonderful, entertaining and interesting way to spend a rainy day in Paris.

The lame deer walked across the road in front of me, her fawn, dappled with snowflakes the shape of small moons leading her, waiting for her. I saw a small child with a sick mother, waiting, understanding even without knowing;

loving without understanding. 

The fawn waited. The lame one, the large doe, ribs showing and left front hoof destroyed and flipping over with every step needed time between each step to recover and prepare for the pain it caused. I wanted to approach her and use my hands to comfort her. I wanted to have them both lay down on the lawn of my neighbors and with my hands feel for the injury, perhaps make a cast, or an ace wrap, tell her RICE, give her my recliner and get an xbox for the fawn and let them live in the living room until her foreleg healed. 

As I stood there with my bicycle helmet on,  I gave her care from my heart in a straight beam that was as much love as I could send anyone and she moved slowly towards the next vine maple that her child was also enjoying, I felt my heart burst from care and knew that tears were coming too, so before I scared them and she felt compelled to run which would have caused me more sadness watching her suffer,  I turned the bike around and went home. When I saw my husband I started to cry from that place from deep and he tried to comfort me but I wanted,  no needed to cry.

I thought later of the people I had worked with these past few days, the Korean woman with the bad lungs who died 40 minutes after extubation; the drunk who fell and broke his neck and lastly, the sweet woman with no family, who had left everything to the caregiver who was a little afraid the family would balk. All of them, dead.  I saw daughters faces as parents lie in bed, gray faced and panting, no amount of morphine going to stop the dead breathing we all have, the breath of a gasping fish. We call it guppy breathing, us old ICU nurses and who ever hears it knows immediately what we mean.

I can’t help the lame deer. I know she lives behind Johns house and feels safe there, but she will probably not make it through the winter. The baby will lose its moon drop spots and grow, hopefully. At night I expect to hear the raucous noise soon of the coyotes, celebrating their next big feast. And I hope its one not two. 

Camping

I returned home this week from a glorious camping trip. I don't know why I love living outside so. I doubt when I was a young girl and I envied the girls who got to come home and play in their school clothes, complete with knee socks and penny loafers and skirts, that I would be the one to really love living outside and sleeping on the ground.
We went to the Hoh River and found a site at a DNR campground. DNR campgrounds are free if you have a discover pass so they tend to fill up quickly. We were lucky that we were "chosen" to be a member of their tribe. Several of the residents were living there, sort of. When we drove through looking for a spot everything as taken. We were a bit dismayed as it was getting late on a Friday afternoon. As we were rounding the corner, a woman, about my age, maybe a little older ran through a campsite to let us know that one of the sites was being "saved" and that we could have it. She told us we looked like the kind of people who would belong.

Its not easy for me to find my tribe. All my life I have felt just a little bit different that anyone else. I seem to be a jumble of paradoxical information that all makes perfect sense to me. But here, we were chosen by her. She introduced herself and as the days progressed we found out more about Marge and Mel and Eddy and realized that while I might not have had anything in common with them on the surface, the real glue that held us together was our love of the land and water, and our basic humanity and deep human kindness.

Marge ended up giving us a book she had written on spiritual seeking. She reminded my husband of Peace Pilgrim.
peacepilgrim.com
A woman who walked for 28 years for peace. I don't know if Marge was her, but sitting around the campfire, talking about the Perseid's and how a board game she developed and plays with friends over email to promote deep conversations about beliefs and stir thought pretty amazing. Her book is delightful, inclusive and deeply connected. I hope to find more immortals like Marge as I travel this earth. Marge identifies herself as immortal, doesn't give her age or other identifying information. she believes, as I do that the soul never ends. It just keeps seeking. Of course, given the work I do in Palliative Care it brings me to wondering about the nature of death. If our souls persist, then what is death, the act of death like?

What if dying feels like this? What if the very nature of our beings is to manifest in color, fire and spread? What if our nature is to ramble and flow, a life giving force in itself? With love

This evening I met with the man who has been teaching the writing class at our local senior center. Im not quite a senior. I imagine I have to retire to be a "true" senior, but I am old enough to take a class at the senior center. The class was 8 weeks long, meeting once a week on Tuesday evenings. There were 8 people in the class, all of us close in age, sort of.

The class was a a mixed bag of prompts and critique with an occasional lesson thrown in. The strength of the teacher? His amazing honesty and critical eye for what is good and believable about everyone's writing. He was able to get it through my head that my writing is worth reading by someone. For so many years, I have been paralyzed by reading brilliant writing. I then felt my writing could only be shared if it was perfect.

 I now believe I am a writer because I write. Is everything perfect? No. Are some things worthwhile? Maybe. Do I have fun doing it? YES!! A big YES.  What a gift to be given by another writer.

 Writing and sharing writing is not about an ego trip as much as its about sharing yourself for the joy of it and to build community  with others. Its another way we extend a hand out to someone, either by making them laugh, or cry, or just saying hmmm or ahhhh. It allows someone who reads to recognize themselves in someone else.

Started off the morning getting upset that a friend had posted about bomb control on facebook. He made some lame comment about how the government would issue an order to search all back packs or other carried items large enough to fit bomb making paraphenalia. Several other people that I know from Olympia followed suit. It was hard to imagine why people would already be screaming about bomb control when the remains of the dead are not even identified. Some cute little boy lost his life, an adult daughter, several lost limbs, suffered brain trauma and had disfiguring injuries that will follow them throughout their life.
I know that there were people in the conversation that thought that I overreacted. Dark humor they say. Perhaps its their way of dealing with tragedy. It seems like a lack of respect though, and perhaps not suited for a public forum, especially so early after such a horrible incident.
After I recovered and didn't need to unfriend anyone, my husband and I went to my Dad's and helped him rototill his garden. Glorious morning here in the Northwest. The sun shined and it warmed the back of my shoulders and tanned my cheeks. The rest of the day was spent primarily outside. Birds singing, building nests. People walking dogs in the sun who played tug of rope with their leashes.

Life goes on. Even in Boston. The dead are dead, the families begin mourning, the investigation continues. We all worry a little more about where next. Even in spite of this beauty of the sun and the energy it creates  bringing new life forth, I couldn't help but look at downtown a little different. A tad more suspicious, more skeptical, more frightened.  Even for a moment.
The question, of course, how do we stop it from happening again? Is it possible? Are we overwhelmed just thinking about it? Can we imagine just our own little life and how do we manage peace in our own surroundings? Our own relationships, food production, transportation, earth stewardship?  What one thing can I do today to bring more peace to the place I live?