took my maiden voyage in the electronic ride around cart, saved my ass, so there's another corollary to being cool, or not being cool as the case is, avoiding embarrassment has got to be the most ridiculous motivation and second only to vengeance and revenge for the most wasteful, dang thirteen days and counting
will start practicing street and getting a spatial sense of her and reorganize the house to withstand our onslaught, and the side door egress clusterfuck continues, found my gd keys in a coatpocket for crying out loud...put out a basket now planning my hospital bag

so there it is, the pretense, the sheen the gloss, the detail left out: took my maiden voyage in safeway's electronic ridearound cart * &IwasTheOne in TheWheelchair * tenuous at first so that immediately a stranger, as in depending on the kindness of, came along to move something in my way thanks, been there she said eye to eye...but well in hand by the end, ha so I was in my own private idaho asif porsche terrorizing innocent bystanders; nothing like a shift in perspective to get you through the day
& colder than usual the sky is clear
to the endoftime

there's a trick to self absorption that doesn't preclude others and not so take it or leave it that's what it is about isn't it others vs self so that self absorption as if protection is really selection yes selecting in and out those who will and won't tolerate each our own brand and not so take it or leave it we all need as in depend on the cooperation or others which anyway you slice it comes up the art of being in relation to others vs self
ah the art of spatial relationships: honesty courage kindness joy polarity

made it through the night past the moon in my window for a touchby past being crushed by a jar of mayonnaise that I couldn't open which in the end turned out to be sir woodroid of relentless woodrow fame past no spot no position just right past up twice to put wood in the fire thinking as much of a pain in the ass and elsewhere as it is, for the nonce I can still do it in less than 10 minutes hellyes made it through the russian novel that lends the night its flavor

and now it's cloudy

chasing warmth under a blue sky -- uneven less sanguine all the iron not withstanding irritable the rhythm is unnegotiable immoderate the spirit is ahoo and more so in the thinking it should not be so you'd think I would know better by now perhaps it is just an impatience and like pain it wants it will have its dividend resistance is futile not time for a last stand, ha make love not war better to spend the time searching for giving rise to creating whimsy

she sent the warthog just in time

warmth under a blue sky colors me ochre

so it's a week and counting and during the day it's sunshine and pollyanna and I've got a grip and at night it's russian novel time and death and destruction, so I'm writing love poems and so I buck up watching inspiring stories about comeback kids like chirs klug who won the bronze medal in snow boarding after he ripped his knee to shreds and had a liver transplant so what am I bellyaching about

hospital bag:
t's: yellow hogan's sail loft, blue bubba seafood, black goldberg wrestling, white human race
misc: lightpen warthog writing paper
hygiene: facecream toothbrushworthashit lipgoo

in a word
chasing just the right mozartian of too many notes adjective, ha-- dulcet mellifluous sonorant jubilant robust ariose rampant roguish rakish flirty tantalizing lively fervent amorous melodic bravura sweet haunting flaunting flouncy brilliant hallowed filigree apogee apology apathy agree fiddle-dee-dee jubilee concordant sonorous resounding astounding cantabile humorous lyrical and marvelous as mozart melancholic romper impromptu prankster trickster ad lib splendid renown musical prodigious prolific profligate lavish extravagant exuberant unbridled unlaced symphonic biding abiding enduring lasting everlasting undying fresh cheeky avant garde brash prankish frolicsome puckish unlaced

the shading is endless and this wasn't the half of it, damn

for a minute I realized remembered practiced my body, as if it were mine, as if it was a bad thing to feel estranged or chased out feeling small and puny scared and overwhelmed notwithstanding...and yes the wisdom of sadness and godhelpme vulnerability too is well taken but I all of a sudden remember that attitude is part of the gig and I will not be hiding out, tucked in is one thing but without voice and squatting rights ahh ground is lost; I got some chops time to pull em out

time to go light the chanukah candles

we all have our own lunacies and for all of it not being loved or even not being loved the most was not one of mine as in not being loved enough or there not being enough to go around we had been talking and I'd said like having a sister to hell with the wife competition and she said whaaat! as if she had no idea but somehow busted just the same after all there were three of us and thing is they'd each cast me as wife number one and then had to work from there...not me

hope as state dependent
isit the same as imagine and is the opposite of despair lack of imagination I have little time for anxious these days going right for overwhelmed as in right in the whelm and not so much over or under it for that matter
faith the same as excitement and is the downslope dispirited or less sanguine feelings as valent I hang in the balance plurality the same as unity or diversity isolation community death rebirth above below dark light hello goodbye
the morning is grey steeped in river mist the sun is biding its course, metoo

warming the cockles of one owns heart a priceless gift an unheralded talent a necessary skill in the armamentum of we who aspire to stalwart and shades of royalty the entourage is for sharing the good fortune with and not for making it on the back of
the way of flesh is what perforce patience is another word for forgiving and tolerating like suffering withstanding and bucking up in the best sense is abiding I lost at dreidel yesterday, but it sure was fun we made up rules as we went along

I see hope inthe trees & wind inhis eyes

one of the times I wokeup last night I was actually excited asin let's take this show on the road, oneofthose blessedperspective shifts there being nodoubt this hobbling business is not even for the birds and it's past time for it to be on about the next phase
and somehow the poetry reading came to me how he wanted to know did I know what to write about and I got back to it's not the story but the feelings that beg following and ain't that one of the notable differences between prose&poetry asin whichcomesfirst the feeling or the story

hope state dependent is it the same as imagine and is the opposite of despair lack of imagination I have little time for anxious these days going right for overwhelmed as in right in the whelm and not so much over or under it for that matter
faith the same as excitement and is the downslope dispirited or less sanguine feelings as valent I hang in the balance plurality the same as unity or diversity isolation community death rebirth above below dark light hello goodbye the morning is grey steeped in river mist the sun is biding its course, metoo

up&at‘em
chased by the brook no nonsense PT who was hearing none of my uncertainty or maybe later (ain't karma just a regular bitch asin there's nothing quitelike being on the other side of relentlessness ha!) first day post-op still puking and here I am up in the damnchair trying out my new knee like it were a goddamn sled or a walky talky can you hear me now what about I've fallen and I can't get up
but I did (get up) and it was just fine
she atleasthad the good sense not to say I told you so

barbara the quintessential night nurse certain not only of her sensibilities but that they're the only ones of anyconsequence came in the veryfirstnight and licketysplit before I could even register an opinion had already rearranged the entire get together slam bang neveryoumind thankyou ma'am everything in its right&proper place so that by the end of it my bedside table had been liberated even if my lovely flower arrangement was out of reach but you know I never once had to ask her twice and she was the only one who knew about the air conditioners on the sequential legcompression giz

offered my kingdom for a cup of coffee this morning and och god it was lousy and hospitalfood has given me a whole new appreciation for not eating bad food asin when ones appetite is iffy to begin with it takes waymore than the lowest common denominator to get past the uncertainty and ambient nausea all the way to food in the mouth nevermind chewing and swallowing which is not to say that bland isnot comforting because it was
turns out I really wasnot as sanguine as could have been hoped for and I got my blood back, both liters

mother's little helpers
home again home again wow rode the chariot up the stairs thanksbetogod and paul who also tailored Street so she's now rigged with phone holders and carrying bags and sports the extension arm and had her wheels spun round to allow for three more inches of clearance and there is high rise seating on both toilets

and beyond that I'm riding my own private mechanical bull four to six hours a day to give me just the leg up I need during this two week window of opportunity to regain lost range of motion in my knee

ebb and flow
not just tides or moons waxing and waning or a year or a sun or light or heat or sound or rivers or wind or love and all things interpersonal but hope and pain and vision and understanding all things so easily thought of as fixed it's the lesson of the wall which as easily cannot be where it is now or as part and parcel of path like the meandering brick wall
steady as she goes isnot so much the steady but moreso the as she goes following her courses don't you know, with the flow

reconstruction of change ha coming home as not just a place but a set of mind of behaviors of comforts&discomforts justthesame a place where we do and are who&how we come to know and recognize ourselves as the I in who am I and what do I want and where do I belong a heart place not just ones own bed or bathroom or favorite music&books cats&husbands
when I got back home the hummingbird was still there and there was a message on the machine from Khysie curator of QuicksilverMineCompany saying aye to a penhouseink event and selling our books

so I think again of this thing we call home and what it is we fashion in our minds when we talk about at home and what it is we aim for when we go home and what it is we do and how it is we know when we are home

a noun an adjective an adverb a preposition a prepositional phrase a trap a fort a bunker a castle an anchor

and I think of him and how he doesn't know how to spend time alone and even less does he know how to spend time with another

so it's partly about what do you do when you having nothing to do where do you go when you have no where to go what do you say when you have nothing to say who do you see when you have no one to see

so who is it that's home when no one is home
who do you trust besides yourself
it is a matter of faith

side by side equal shares into the pot
no one in charge
each carrying his own weight his own wait
what if there's nothing that needs fixing

sitting blessed not stressed

practicing of&in theminute
he asked outoftheblue are you coming back to work not this week I said it's as mindless inaway a question as on a scale of 1-10 rating my pain which is hovering ~7 but at the worst was 12 and factis itstill only makes sense on a 10 point scale
the OT also asked if I was goingback towork contextualized a bit more as part of the assessment but better framed too as wanting to ornot
beats the shit out of me but sofar from able I still have no way to make sense of the question

thoughts as washes or colors and maybe there are time zones as opposed to statutes of limitations, and anxiety--thoughts out of time out of place-- is a discordant tone a wrong color and doesn't match the decor and planning for perfect is inherently imperfect by definition and default is missing the mark and being a step behind and disappointment is the measure of the distance between expectation and acceptance and is the circumference of the path from now to notnow and perfect is another name for fool's gold ye of so much faith have lost track of its nature

beginnings its about beginnings of whatever we might want color it sunrise my blood is dilute as the thinner and sludgy as the narcotic the cats are giving each other respite in the round the clock watch, gussie is up today coming even to sit on my lap on the toilet hudu has only gone as far as the next room but she's resting

whatif is the color of burnt offerings
thankfulness is a web color it golden
notnow is yesterday's color gone dry, add water to reconstitute
i trust you is what color

so I'm chomping away on this really delicious green salad she brought the only thing that tempts me eating with reckless abandon and remember of all the do nots it's at the top of the don't go nuts list eating green leafy vegetables while you're on coumadin, shit ok meanwhile I've been riding the bull and icing and husbanding my pain pills because it dawns on me all of a sudden that I'm going to run out inopportunistically and I' can't substitute with the vicodin on hand because they have too much tylenol
shit ain't details just a bloodyha drag

it's winter now and the rains have started, and it's okay now, it was a respectful respite, waiting until now the blues the doldrums mostly behind me the incision mostly healed my first shower behind me neither in or out of the woods but certainly less dependent less frail less whelmed more trusting of the process though no less impatient and though this damn thing doesn't have a mind of its own it surely has its own mettle meanwhile the cats still go in and out in and out in and out I've neither killed them nor tripped on them

so the nurse didcome to draw blood and willcome again&again and next week too and the physical therapist kathleen who puts me in mind of susank didcome and pushed&pulled and reminded muscles of their whys and wherefores and like her kind does is holdinghope for me when I lose mine and with a pill and a half to spare after a volley of phonecalls and strategic pleading I'm in fat city with a brand new bottle, phew
and now my macaroni&cheese eaten and everything cinchedup I think I'll take a midafternoon nap, details will be the death of me yet

two weeks and counting and there are times I remember mygod I've had a total knee replacement which is not so much about having forgotten anything but somehow there's less to show for it which is not to say there's nothing to show for it the stations of the knee are scattered around the room; the bull, ice, rest, the wall, the breadboard, the walkabout, the stretch, softening thinning and numbing pills and my beloved Street now even sporting a headlight nevermind decals, it's not that
it's the subtle shift of having left something behind and I can't remember what

it was time he'd decided to get me outof TheHouse, I mean we'd gone the week before but it was doctors& hospitals and chores and painful and it took me damn near a week to recover, this was a lunch outing in our neighborhood in our community in our town in the pueblo on our normal route tapatias the video store where Tam came out to check it out and to the bookstore where I made a cameo and even the cat was glad to see me

and this time I used the outsidewalker for outsidebusiness, the wheels are bigger

so more of the time in more ways my leg works more like a leg, remembering leg things but just the same it's a good thing I didn't believe whoever it was who'd said it is a straight line, no way this healing business is a straight line anymore than life itself could be considered to be traveling in a straight line, ha ask anyone who has dared
today we dared Abel, brought him out of the corner, and asmuchas I had one of those moments about going out in public with the Street equivalent, wow, I ain't Abel ready

graygreen fog windless for the moment river well in its banks but ocean all ahoo, hard to look a wave in the eye he rightly said just now and so even he hasn't been out to pay respects

beyond that details to the last minute no easycome easygo day this last one of the year chasing the oncall doc for a new prescription for coumadin there being noway to make 4 out of 5mg tablets and 3.75 just isnot close enough

interesting again theview from this side of what we do &damn if kindnessreassurance&courtesy don't go a hellofa long way