thinking of 1st pew rights and conversations that shouldn't go wanting &thinking in all goodfaith I must go on record the last tug of war shouldbe willbe mine I'm gathering witnesses

disabled is one thing; manifestly profoundly unequivocally unable as in without ability with nothing to look forward to with no way to recognize myself to name myself to speak for myself--nevermind at this point do for myself, I hereby call the game myself

without creativity of some ilk, it is no life for me, it is not life for me

*creativity: the presence&use of imagination to create something*

willing andor able rears its head again

factis when all is said&done I'm still not ready read able ahh
it's an endurance stamina and a qualityoflife thing which is not to say I'm not in less painbut

which is simplyto say I'm in significantly less pain but I don't have to so why would I if I don't want to and I don't want to, separate from, not being able to though I'm not able to *and* I'm not able to andorbecause I don't have to and I'm not willing to

it's an attitude thing and maybe they are inseparable

pageants
there is a season a rhythm that embraces coming&going leaving&staying that describes the echoes of yesterday that gives shape to tomorrow

the soliloquy of singlemindedness belies by the woven threads of my life
but I've not made it to the line yet

I once was a nurse
I am still a nurse but I'm no longer able to nurse

she called to say we're thinking of you and asked if I was coming back
probably not wasall I could get to

we are recreating each of us both of us new lives while a cat dies silently

Sunday rain

so giving up the buzz I'm getting the groove back
that stops me cold but there it is: I'm learning tosleep again
which is not to say the buzz is gone missing, there's still a visceral feeling of well being that overcomes me from time to time but the lifeboat is gone the caramel bubble wrap the rubber buggy baby bumpers that protect the finish from marring are gone andso I'm born again, ha maybe that's why he couldn't find me shit

&everyonce in a while I get that I'm absolutely filled with glee that
I'm a stay athome wordwrightermongersmith

grit
the making of a small thing into a big thing starts with a small thing that overtime asif with rubbing or practice accretes into a big thing with a life of its own which is a good thing for lawyers&politicians whores beggarmen&theives not to mention writers

so, being charged (by an electronictollreader) for trips across TheGoldenGateBridge we hadn't made and the customerservice person (an oxmoron of new and everising hieghts) saying are you sure it wasn't your husband instead of that is a problem let me see how I can help, was just the very sand in the oyster

fear&loathing inthenameof love
so on one hand she had the final laugh and hoisted the crew of them on her pointy petard since for the last 15 years mary&robert&michael were have been still are and always will be fighting about what and when and how and how much terri didordidn't or shouldorshouldn't have eaten, more power to them, but make no mistake it none of it had haswillhave any damn thing to do with terri, neverdid, and in return she rendered the lives of lot of them/us as miserably out of control as her own had been none are innocent

excalibur
she came the horsey vet woman who whispers to cats&dogs and not horses at all and didn't even disturb the air dispatching Woodrow to his greater beyond to be with the pope who we decide needed a catcompanion of SirWoodrow ofthe Moment's caliber it was sadbut I remembered how we always said he'd die trying and he was dyingtrying to stay alive which was in the end too terrischiavo for words and now he's flying let loose of the mortal coil and its misery
it had become no life for him and not fittin' a soul of his caliber

so I'm getting some of it, that I haven't had my time the time to reflect on my transition a part from my knee or paul's leaving general or dvora being here or all the things that took space and time and now that I'm cut loose from physical therapy and left to my own devices as a free agent with no where to go and my own devising to contribute and all the work dreams notwithstanding it's clearer

willing or not I'm not able able or not I'm not willing in no particular order all it needed was unfolding

mudpuddle refelctions
drape yourself in satin and drink scotch she'd said her answer to justabout anydamn situation that gaveway to a sense of deprivation or depravation, high drag was her thing, it's so onesize fits all so covering the possibilities from the sublime to the ridiculous

sunrain
there's a pot of gold out there to chase

butwait
he went from living to not very quickly after the naming asif once called it took on a life or death as the case was of its own and ofcourse this was not exactly so but either way now over it seems abrupt

so I wrote The ResignationLetter
I'm among other things finally bored with thestruggle though*grin* I'm reminded still of the craziness I suffered when we were on a remote canoetrip and I somehow had an ongoing battle with the notion that I should have been able to singlehandedly carry the damn canoe

it's not that my identity is tied up in being a nurse, never was but*grin* &it's not even that I've not been a retired *make no mistake* dilettante ha before though I was older than that then

it's the ending of an era Iguess that just needs its damneddue

outlines revisited
so I'm seeing maybe all of a sudden how one could have a sense of where you wanted the a story to go even if you didn't know how it was going to work or how you were going to get there or how any particular scene might go and how you might have to wrestle with the characters to get them to serve the story line
and short or long I can see how you're still responsible for knowing the whole damn thing no matter what you do or don't say

&I'm waiting to tell a story

geography
the study of the relative physical arrangement of places and of human activity as it relates to these

and now allofa notso sudden it's underway and the geography of anxiety is behind us is and we're onto the land of chips falling as they do &into mastery

the ritual is important and absent that the time and requisite energy for planning&participating as the evening's star

ah! the shrine is about storytelling it dawns on me now and the easy true right answer to dvora's question about the objects on my altar is that each one tells a special story

story telling
I came to nursing late and like most good things in my life by accident by serendipity by following the course of the river or the season of change or the reason of change by way of nursing school initiation a chapter unto itself of rivers&valleys of darkness and divorce of light&grays and something ventured something gained

ohmygod I sit here utterly dumbfounded realizing the many&vast unplumbed arenas in my her-story where was I

I became a nurse but I never was one asif it were a thing simply in one plane asif it were simply a noun

story telling
I'd started in the proverbial backhall--the lockedside--knowing the everything of nothing but as I've said before I was older than that then and knowing was the thing, funny how at this end the hallmark of wisdom is infact notknowing and the allowance of uncertainty

we went out last night as writers poets&editors and landed smack in the middle of a project with our poet laureate asif it were no great rip in the universe atall

anyway she my 1st young thoroughly psychotic patient took asit turned out verygood care of me; she didn't fuck with me

so, as she said I resigned myself to a glorious day and future as I passed through the rainbowtunnel a nurse and came back through a publisher and as he'd said I didn't look back and it was, as my other husband asked yet again to be sure that I was sure, absolutely the right thing to do

it was soclear that staying would havebeen as I would say just tooterrischiavo for words

it is no longer my (kind of) place or my (kind of) work and as she'd said knowingly, "this is the end of that chapter"and itwas

I took my leave without rancor but almost too late and with great relief for not having to be responsible for knowing all that stuff anymore filled up a garbage bag throwing out all my papers emptying my mailboxes and my locker and my this&that scattered here and there and left with only 2 books, race power & class and surfing the north shore, my fingerprints and my scent

and I reserved the right to change my mind about a celebration realizing well enough it's not just about me, never was but I was gone before I could getback to leave

I'm working on a piece now that alternatively gives me gas and joy, gas when I'm feeling pressured ha and hurried and stupid cause I haven't "gotten it" yet and joy when I relax and take in the geography the hunt the foraging and the process is changing yetagain
she'd asked why I changed thepoem she'd liked the other ending--the two of them on the porch not talking--because it was consistently being read as not the poem I'd written which is to say where people got stuck was merely a moment in time in place and not forever

storytelling
I started nursing in August 1977 and nearly didn't apply for the perfect job, well actually started nursing in the summer of 1976 on a student provisional license as a MedNurse in a convalescent center
first time I'd ever lived alone first time I'd ever had a real job earning real money first time I'd ever been grownup and woman in those heady women as a force to be reckoned with times and first time all myour friends thought I must have been inlove or having an affair, maybeso it was the first time I'd met possibility
head on

storytelling
I had no boundaries in the beginning and no limit setting skills, neither of those having been being at high premium in our my growingup families, but I had knowing and knowing how-I-knew which were of the highest value and discernment and broad shoulders and milk in my young breasts and enthusiasm and curiosity and willingness and a pert give-a-damn, the best damn giveadamn anybody could have in fact, and zeal and a headofsteam
and then for whoknows why just as I became A Nurse with a job and a new car in my name my 9year marriage ended

whereami
he (MyPhysicalTherapist who actuallyhasaname) helped me find the way a way to discern my exact position noteven on the horizon but proximate to the ground he helped me to locate (eyes open or closed at any given time) my body's exact position in space given I'm short the minimum system requirements for a functional onboard global positioning system, one of thosethings like water you don't miss till the well runs dry, the knowingof up down leaning--side to side forward or back asin like the tower of pisa--ornot
atleast now I know I'm falling sooner rather than later

wow&ha there we are in the window of thehotshitlocalchainofbookstore's national poetry month display center stage along side neruda rumi hafiz camile paglia sharon olds gary snyder charles bukowski the ongoing perfect binding debate notwithstanding and there is our book with its notperfect binding in its full frontal glory on the shelf right above charles bukowski...next to susan's perfect bound book tuckedin so you can't see it...and in the same breath as billy collins, thing is a perfect binding is not worth giving up the feel the texture the weight of our book as it sits in your our hand

story telling
ann nancyswanson loisyoungersbeckydietrich jimweinstock mike kathy and the bubblegum chewing headnurse at the time who hired me timmurphy the evening shift charge nurse & judycohen my preceptor...in fact it was those two who played a huge part in what being a nurse looked like for me; the one a consummate professional who was a nurse when he grew up handsome and smart as hell distant yet kind witha bigfund of knowledge the other an ohbytheway i'ma nurse mostly a writer came in onthefly out of her garden but was the best damn nurse we had; knew her shit

now that I think ofit
in a spur of the moment, in keeping with the spirit of TheExodus, I threw together asin whipped up a little seder brunch celebrating asit turned out our own exodus&emancipation, so given this was ourfirstseder & I've been cooking for god'ssake, up for grabs was "why this night is different than any other"and the irony is justas practically all our other housekeeping&religious doodas were donated asitwere by friends somewhere in the armamentum is a handmade seder plate, yes I even threw together a SederPlate, but I couldn't find the damned thing

guess enough is enough

bleep & entropy redux
reality as flux reality as fixed only when it is measured and already it is out of date but then just as "neurons that fire together wire together"reality is becomes what we practice
I stopped practicing nursing and the stanchion falls away
change again pops up as a misnomer as a wrong paradigm maybe change is more rightly understood as becoming and naming is for better and worse a fixing in time and place or maybe a starting place ah the practice of uncertainty as opposed to causality;

this must shoot the hell out of entropy

a flash of white across the way heralds the osprey sitting on a branch above the muddy river waiting just the same for salmon heading upstream waiting for the tell hummingbirds five at a time at the feeder

garden timers set for earlyspring watering morning glory seeds soaking yellow peony come and gone

ravens crisscrossing the bluing sky

cats in their morning chairs and me and me now part of the ever changing never changing morning landscape at the table in the window watching for the flash of white heralding the osprey sitting on a branch above the muddy river

story telling
I started as a nurse's aide in a convalescent center and quickly decided if the proverbial they could do it I surely could and went after the more moneypower&responsibility so I left the convalescent center and spent the summer before nursingschool working as a housekeeper at the town hospital or maybe it was the other way around either way I still remember I don't know where I'm going but I'm on my way jessie; leesen dear ven ve eat djenette and cleaning the OR before&after surgery
guess you could say Hospital Town USA was where I grew up

will TheRealJezebel standup
so went to TheCity to finalize our emancipation, well his deliverance out of egypt, and as it turns out I'm now a member of yet another new set, the...unless or until you remarry club, it certainly is as odd way we do our elders, set up our later life, protecting what stipulating what I wonder, wow what kind of governance is that I think of Eve, I think of Lot'swife damn I think of dour sour I think of unimaginative and I think of all who have been castrated hogtied and offered into servitude before me

chasing a damn title

Buddha, Zebra and the New Moon
new zebra moon, a buddha zebra and new moon, zebra moon, light off the zebra's back, light of a zebra moon, light from the zebra moon, zebra moon reflections, new moon zebra, zebra moon reflections, zebra moon refractions, black&white or black and write, shades of black and white, after the rainbow, after the rain, blushing zebra moon, moon in zebra light, zebra's rainbow, zebra rainbow, under a zebra rainbow, moon under a zebra rainbow, rainbow under a zebra moon, zebra reflections under a rainbow moon, black and white reflections deargod

zebras revisited
I walked the beach today, amazing how when I couldn't walk--couldn't walk never mind surf--it was always about couldn'tsurf never even thought to covet walking so busy was I missing the water, today I walked the beach not missing the water so busy was I enjoying walking hill and over dale and having the wherewithal to go after the never to get there

and running smack into ridges into wind trace in the sand and wouldn't you just know the patterns the storyline mimicked as shapes in nature have a wont to do the damnzebra stripes

paradigms:
color time geography emotionstates causality continuity believing seeing trusting, sand shifting in time, time shifting in sand, sand standing still

initial hesitation misread as doubt, I came to object permanence about the time of menofuckingpuase but forall of it, I never thought I was going to disappear invisibility notwithstanding I was notseen but definitely heard of
seeing is believing, being seen being scene ha is a ground thing, the standing owning taking up residence on the sidewalk thing the in the body thing the corporal thing and for the other it's a master of disguise, the chimera thing, ohyeah