I wonder why I never remembered or figured out that they all knew each other, had known each other just the way we at Jewish People’s School had. And that maybe they weren’t being anything other than kids who knew each other who had known each other for ever. Familiar. And no doubt I was weird. Hell, in the junior class picture I still was the only girl with long hair, except for Lindy I’m guessing, who on the other end of the row, is in the shadow.
Beyond that, by now, if we are sidelined, the choice is ours.

We were sweet. Scrawny. Innocent for the most part. I mean each of us still innocent for the most part. Unsoured. Not yet sultry. Not as old as I thought we thought we were. So pacific northwest. No flesh. Or fat as the case may have been. Uncomplicated for the most part. Safe for the most part. Not yet up into the rhetoric that was to come. The war that was to take over one way or another our early adulthoods. I was already in love with the man who would become my husband. It was good until it wasn’t.

We’ve made our selections for volume 5. Our experience stands us in good stead, though I would have to say it doesn’t necessarily get easier. Or less complicated. Yes. Yes but. No. No and. And as hard as one tries to be objective, there’s really no such thing. After all, the heart is attached. But what after lo these many years and volumes we do have is language for why, or why not, or I’m not sure. And more faith in our prerogative as editors. Which this year may have enticed us to bite off more than we can chew.

I had every damned intention of going, of coming, and then it just up and left. It's easy to say it's too much money, or if I don't spend that much money then it will take too much energy, both of which are limited and not really. If I really wanted to, neither of those would be good enough reasons on their own not to go–and yet, that's all I can come up with except I don't want to–which is not to say I don't want to see you particularly cause I do, but–not enough to leave home again. Ah...

...and, he said, I’d be bitter I think if she didn’t tell me, and the more I talked about her she sounds, he said, just like my ex. Selfish, and a user but (obviously) fine and enticing enough that he still loves her which he calls being angry. Had I written the scene yet he wanted to know where Sophie braces her, he’d love to see it. Good motivation to get to gettin’ meanwhile I’m practicing the fine art of it...reading someone so they’ll listen, or at least not get hung up on why should they and who the fugaryou

“This is a bit awkward,” Maggie said into the silence.
“Hmm.” Sophie responded. Wondering how or if Maggie would commit. If she would say what she meant.
“...thrust rather into the middle of...what did Sol say about me?”
Sophie kept her eyes on the road. “Not much.”
“But...”
“He spent a good deal of time alone, and with Tad,” she looked toward Maggie, “and with Amos.”
“Really?” Maggie faced Sophie now, chin out.
“So, how are you?”
“You don’t like me much.”
“As if that has anything to do with it.” She pulled over. You can’t stand it, can you, Maggie?”

“You don’t like me much...”
“It’s too late for that. And beside the point.” Sophie stopped just short of the crest of the hill. Pulled the car over on the side of the road. “I like Solomon. I don’t know you well enough to not like you. But, I sure as hell don’t much care for what you’re doing.” She took a deep breath. “And taking Sol’s cue here, letting bygones lay, for the moment I’ll not venture there. But to say, he’s a better man than many...or, slow to draw...” she grinned, “unlike Amos.”
“Unlike Amos,” Maggie echoed

“You don’t like me much.” “No,” Sophie said driving past her house, almost daring Maggie to pay attention...which maybe she was, though she didn’t utter a sound. “...I don’t, but it’s too late for that. I like Sol, so it’s beside the point–as long, of course, as he likes you. You’re a bit opportunistic, or said the other way round, you’re a bit too chickenshit for my liking.”
Maggie’s eyes glazed.
Sophie howled. “You are good, though, I”ll give you that. Better than most. Not that I’m buying any of it...you mind if I ask you a question?”

“This is a bit awkward,” Maggie said.
What exactly,” Sophie asked, biting her tongue, and slamming the truck into third gear, “do you find awkward?”
“You’re not ex-actly being direct yourself...”
“Working up to it,”she said, glancing at Maggie in the passenger seat.
Maggie was quiet. But looked her in the eye. Unwavering.
“You’re hard to figure...don’t know you well enough to like you or not, but I sure think you’re full of shit.”
“Well la di da.”
“Listen Lady, your selfish and shallow is showing.”
“He’s the one that disappeared, not...”
“You don’t have friends, do you?

It was a cops and robbers, or scofflaws chase down our very own neighborhood in the middle of one of my round the block supposed to be peaceful post parandial walks, nearly got run over by both of them not really but it felt like it so of course I had a bone to pick with her aside from keep the shit out of our neighborhood it scared me and she’s got too much to lose to act like she has nothing to lose, or like she has no sense...and so rather than stew and nicker, I told her.

It’s amazing how many enclaves, camps, sides there are. And how unskilled we are at peacemaking. At talking to people we ‘don’t like’ because they ‘don’t listen’. Because ‘nothing changes.’ fuckin’ wow man! Ain’t we just off the hook. Full of shit.
It’s the stew and nicker thing, that dissolves, when you speak to. Not about. Not confront. Or wave fingers at. Or punch. Or dismiss. Or disrespect. Or dis.

Raymond was wailing in the middle of the other night all through the neighborhood cause he had a cross wise turd. I have a bone to pick with him too.

“You mean, friends wouldn’t let me act this way,” Maggie said.
“Something like that, I don’t get it. Don’t get you...”
“And which exact...honor code, shall I say, is it that I’m not living up to...the loyal wives, selfless handmaidens, happy grandmothers , the multi-tasking liberated woman...what’s your story, anyway? One could say, isn’t this just...aren’t you just the kettle calling the pot black?”
“You mean fuck me and the horse...?”
“No, I don’t. But I do mean, poor Sol, isn’t. And–talking turkey, since we are–what really got you so far up my ass?”
“You do have friends!”

“Not many. But at least one who keeps me honest. Or tries...”
“Does she like Sol?”
“Good question. It’s complicated.” Maggie rolled down the window. Looked out. Ran her hand through her hair.
“Why now?” Sophie asked.
“Why not now? What makes what I’m doing..how I’m acting...selfish? Any more, for instance, than what he is doing? What makes this all about him? Only about him and what he needs or wants? And at the same goddamned time, none of this has anything to do with me! So, why not now? What’s the big deal?”
Sophie laughed loudly.
“What!”

“Not all about is a far cry from nothing to do with you.”
“Why am I talking to you about this?”
“Because I’m bothering, and you need to get your head out of your proverbial ass.”
“I’m just...”
“Begging your pardon, and in the interest of time...you’re being incredibly and ungraciously selfish. Not to mention–truth being told, I’m led to believe it has a lot to do with you...”
“How?”
“You’re just stalling for time, right? Or are you working at being so pigheadedly dense? Or...”
“Or what?”
“...deep down you’re just that shallow,” she said into the wind.

“Or, it’s the all of you who think poor Sol, is really poor Sol, who are deep down very shallow, and of little faith, though clearly with righteousness–which is incredibly unbecoming–to spare. The all of you have no idea what you’re talking about,” Maggie said, turning to face Sophie. Her long hair, loose and windblown, framed her face. “It amazes me, that everyone thinks they know better than me, what it is, that I ought to be doing, and feels quite free all of a sudden to say so. As if, all of a sudden, I give a rat’s ass!”

I wonder how I could have said it so that offended wouldn’t have been one of the by-products. It is overwritten. It is underwritten. The people are missing. You are missing. The animals, speaking for themselves would I’m convinced say it differently. It elicits the same response in me as when I read Green Peace literature, by which I mean it leaves little room for imagining or identifying. Promoting debate rather than compassion.
I think I’m no further ahead.

It’s not well done. I don’t like it. It does not inspire me. It’s a rant. The poetry’s music is missing.

I thought I was past that. Past dreaming about him. Past live long gone feelings swirling about him. Past having him stand in for current events. And I am. So, wow. How unexpected that he would show up as some thing new. As a portal, as a representative of continuity as then and now. And who or what better. It’s the feelings though that are unsettling, as of course feelings by definition are. How so astounding he’s the best, read then the most honest there is to stand in for the loss that is part and parcel of life’s course.

I fell in love again, without even knowing it. And in coming upon it, in reconstructing the shape left by the traces, I’m ever more convinced it’s a geography. I mean I couldn’t have said it better than Jay when we were talking about the it of whatever it is that is it when you run past the wall and how that changes you forever, ‘there’s a there after he said’ of the lingering way in which you are never the same...so there is a way in which women show each other theirs, that is the geography of loving.

The fledgling fell out of the nest, there’s a drama unfolding he said coming in rushed and bothered, we have to go and participate he’s grown up but too young to fly, and he was. They’d already lost one chick, and they’d come so far, he felt bad. We found it hiding and put it back in the nest, but as these things go it was already lost. For all we know they could have pushed him out, not to fly, but because, well because that is the way of things. He never made a peep.

The nest is empty.

Whimsical, or just right, those things that hold, that safeguard our feelings.That (are able to) front for too much to bear. That are just somehow the right size. I think of the cows killed on the road during a thunder storm that held mine. Burst into weeping the minute I saw them. As if out of nowhere instead of out of me.

I’m having dreams. about work. Nothing so paltry as anxiety. Or mean as dread. But along the lines of vex. Which brings to mind, and sex. Lots of dreams of would be sex. With familiar but unknown men.

Closing in on perfect, I tend to want to slow the process down, so it doesn’t sound all the same. So it’s not all tidy or clean, and that some resident imperfection, some last strain of the writer’s scent is left on the page for the reader to grapple with, some remnant of the striving is there to be seen, or read or heard. And she said, yes it is better but I miss the energy in her energy...well there it is...the time to stop...

Time to set he said get the opal. Now. I put the labradorite away.

Closing in on perfect, I tend to want to slow the process down, so it doesn’t sound all the same. So it’s not all tidy or clean, and that some resident imperfection, some last strain of the writer’s scent is left on the page for the reader to grapple with, some remnant of the striving is there to be seen, or read or heard. And she said, yes it is better but I miss the energy in her energy...well there it is...the time to stop...

Time to set he said get the opal. Now.
I put the labradorite away.

I want to say, it’s not that you are speaking for the animals–however erroneously–but worse that they are speaking for you. That the images of desperate dying animals are as manipulative and agenda laden as dead babies. You said you felt manipulated; Goddamnit Ditty notwithstanding animals are not manipulative, rather it is a between people gig, so speak for yourself is what I want to say.

I want to say it’s not about you and your relationship to animals but about the piece and what you are communicating, or not. And get off your high horse; out of the pulpit.

I will go for her birthday. How often are you going she asked? She’s not who she was but she is who she is and I am missing her. I miss her. This her. She can’t, we can’t I cant get her on the phone. The phone is a miss. Amiss. About as often as before but it’s not the same. I am tethered, in the best sense–it is a visit. I go from home and return home and in the best sense am tethered.

It’s been a year. We thought she would have been dead. Maybe it was us.

Sophie waited before answering. “That part is clear, anyway.”
“What part?”
“The rat’s ass part.” She began chuckling.
“You are insufferable.”
“Relentless, yes. Not easily put off. So what’s your problem?”
“I don’t have one!”
Sophie laughed. “The trouble is, Maggie, rat...horse we’re still talking ass. And as my mother, God rest her soul would say, you’re being an ass, Dear. It’s unbecoming. And this is not about poor Sol, it is about poor you. He’ll live with whatever you do. And so will Emanuel and Carmen and the baby. It will be your sorrow, a selfish irredeemable regret.”

there, after. There is a there, after. It, the understanding of the consummation, of the having happened, is a becoming in itself. It is a geography, yes. It is a mythology. I took up music, the making of music as she shed hers. In that split second it was as if she had handed me and I had taken the baton. I remember the feeling. The color. The smell. The wind. But there are no words. Only the music. So there will be music where there might otherwise have been words. After all it is about the music, there. After

“What do you care?”
“What does it matter?”
Maggie laughed. And it multiplied. Until tears from that place of tears ran down her face. Laughing. Crying. Eyes open. And closed. To the beginning of time. And back again.
Sophie was holding her hands. Rough, full of knowledge, hands. Like her own mother’s. Wise and patient. Competent.
“Thank you.”
Sophie shook her head. “It’s what we do for each other...”
Maggie started to say something.
“...and you’re welcome.”
“I can’t.”
“You could.”
“For just those reasons...”
“You’ve got it buttoned wrong.”
“I need to see for myself...that’s why he left...”

“...that’s why he left, so he could see for himself. Think for himself. Didn’t want to hear what I had to say before he knew what he had to say...”
“If you would know that, why...”
“So, you don’t know everything there is to know...that’s a relief.”
“A smile and no sarcasm...”
“You do yourself well. One starts to believe you are the earth mother incarnate...when you’ve been together as long as we have, you don’t even have to say. Proximate is by proxy. Proximate is by default, a demand for something that can’t always be given...wait...”

“...this is important...the what everyone was plotzing for, the what everyone wanted to know...so please wait...of course it’s ourselves, but it gets foisted...gets turned over to the other, to be the other...the other side of the story. The bad of the good and the bad. The wrong of the right and wrong. Or worse, the right of the wrong and right. One gets to hold the polarity...to represent the ideal that one rails against...I knew he would leave. I didn’t know I would. But he knew...he’ll understand. And wait...like I did.”

I bought a violin for crying out loud. Don’t know why, exactly. It was one of those things like getting the opal ring from Ea, now. Don’t ask questions. One of those not debatable things. One of those things like food and water. The consequences of not are just so out of proportion the argument is lost before you start so you don’t start you eat and drink and make the best of it.

That said in the same breath I’m off to Winnipeg. For her birthday. By myself to languish with her. To hear the music there, after. Yeah.

So I suppose Sophie could be a bit, overbearing. I mean if you didn’t modulate her, know her well enough to edit her incoming...oh dear.

The piece is about reclaiming self and body And the last line for crying out loud is ‘...my body has through its left...’ so I changed it to ‘I have’ and would have commented editorially it is interesting that at this point you distanced from your body...but was advised against it. So I didn’t. But was I wrong? Too easily misinterpreted as personal? Across some line I have a wont to tread until