She found the old guitar in the attic, its strings stretched thin and twangy, its varnish cracked like it had been draped in netting. There were only two people who could have played it, put it up there, hidden it from view and forgotten it was there, but she did not know which one it might have been. Neither of them seemed the type to form chords with their fingers, to wrap their mouths around a sentimental song.
Cocoon
May 18, 2009Later, they wrapped her in billowing fabric and she slept, cocooned against all that lay outside. It was a sleep hard as diamonds, and after she finally woke, she never quite managed to feel that tired again.
Vectors
May 16, 2009Ordinary vectors can be added, subtracted, reversed, multiplied, scaled. They are more than small lines and arrowheads on notebook pages. They represent more than a simple equation. Sometimes they measure acceleration toward a point of intersection.
They might represent force, or velocity, or a southbound train accelerating to 70 miles per hour. These things, after all, can be measured and documented, tracked and analyzed. There is direction. There is magnitude. And even when logic has dissapated, there is no vector without sense.
Return on investment
May 14, 2009For a year, we tracked the data:
- Number of kisses per day;
- Time spent doing chores without nagging;
- Total cost of gifts to each other.
We ran the numbers and met to discuss costs and benefits.
The numbers did not lie. Unless we forgot a variable, we love each other very much.
Right place
May 12, 2009I woke in a panic, fearing I’d forgotten something. There is such little room for error these days, schedules so tightly interlocking that a single misdirection scatters it all. But one message said everything was alright, and another said it was better than that. It was enough to allow for breath in between the noise of awakening. I set about my morning—coffee, breakfast, candles, music—calmer for the knowledge that, at least for now, everything was in its right place.
Caught out of careen
May 10, 2009She took a step, expecting firm ground, and everything shifted beneath her. She caught herself out of the careen, but knew she would never again feel quite the same, quite so steady on her feet, quite so certain that each step along the path was meant to happen as she’d mapped them out.
For my mother, on her birthday
May 4, 2009She knew me before I knew myself, and as we age, the photographs show two women marching along such a similar path.
I love her fiercely, and fight her fiercely, too. We are cleaved, we are cleft, we are contrary, we are carbon. Sometimes it is complicated, this dance away and then back again.
But I always carry her with me. Her voice is my voice. Her heart gave rise to my strength. Her approach leads me to accept nothing less than a life with arms fully outstretched.
100 Proof 