We stopped off in Fergus Falls last October while driving home from a conference in Fargo, ND. It’s a small town in western Minnesota with an old-ish, very well kept downtown. I had the Nikomat loaded up with a roll of black and white and was wandering around, shooting mostly signage. As I finished snapping a jive fox, a gentleman in his 80s came up to me and said, "Whatcha taking pictures of?" I pointed to the sign and explained my fascination, and he asked where I was from and I asked where he was from and it turned out he was from there but spent his youth in the northern Minnesota sawmills back when they had real winters, when it was cold enough to freeze the saw blades so the teeth would snap off and fly out at the sawyers. He was interested and interesting, dressed in boots and jeans and heavy black-rim glasses. He wouldn't let me take his photo. “Oh no, it'd break your camera. No. No.” Eventually he took his leave and walked on down along the buildings, as spry as me or more so. I couldn’t resist making a shot before I turned away.

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— Joy Harjo

how can you stand it
he said
the hot oklahoma summers
where you were born
this humid thick air
is choking me
and i want to go back
to new mexico

it is the only way
i know how to breathe
an ancient chant
that my mother knew
came out of a history
woven from wet tall grass
in her womb
and i know no other way
than to surround my voice
with the summer songs of crickets
in this moist south night air

oklahoma will be the last song
i'll ever sing

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Becky offered exactly the right terminology. Farewell, '99 Kia Sportage.

In case you’re wondering, I replaced her with one of these.

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It was the car I bought entirely on my own.
It was the car I drove away from him.
It was the car I drove to the university.
It was the car I drove to New Orleans.
It was the car I drove to my girlfriend's every weekend.
It was the car I drove to Mister Boyfriend's house.
It was the car I drove to his mother's the summer his dad died.
It was the car I drove back and forth, back and forth that long hot summer.
It was the car I drove to the Cohabitat.
It was the car I drove to graduation.
It was the car I drove across the country to another life.
It was the car I drove to teach.
It was the car I drove after surgery.
It was the car I drove to my wedding.
It was the around-town car.
It was the hauling things car.
(It was a car you could haul a couch on top of. Which I did.)
It was the carousing with friends car.
It was the car I finally grew up in.
It was my car.

It's still my car for tonight. But after tomorrow, no more.

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More here and here.

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There are many reasons I’m not really cut out for the sort of long-distance relationship Mister Husband and I find ourselves conducting these past few months. But one of the most surprising reasons to me is that I evidently lose all sense of a civilized home life, and it happens quicker each time we split off again. A couple of months ago, I still cooked but made G come over all the time to help me eat things. Then I just didn't cook as much and ate out more. Now, I not only haven't cooked in a week but also haven't even eaten here. Last night, I forgot to eat at all. This morning, I finally unloaded the dishwasher and put away the plates C and I used Monday when she brought over a huge sack of food from the Holy Land deli. I worked on those leftovers off and on all week, and the containers are all still stacked by the trash, which needs to go out. The couch is completely covered in various peripheral cables. Last night I was out at the 331 waiting for a jug band to come on, all femmed up, stone sober and sipping club soda, instead of at home on my couch with a comfortable beer. I suddenly notice I should be texting more and phoning less, and I hate my current txt interface. The bed hasn't been made in days and I find myself conducting my business from it just because nobody else is sleeping different hours in it and therefore I can.

Thankfully, he'll be back late in the week and I'll be temporarily saved from myself. Today, I have sworn that I'll muck this place out, clean the cars, and cook some damn chicken and asparagus for dinner. Which I'll need to buy, along with some milk.

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— W.S. Merwin

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning

My friend Fresca sent this lovely, sad bit to me this morning after reading the previous poem I posted.

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— Mary Oliver

Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.

When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain—
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.

And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,

and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.

(I picked up a copy of Oliver’s New and Selected Poems, Vol. One after finding her online a few weeks ago. Her imagery is much more nature-based than what I’m accustomed to, but quite a few of the poems really work for me. Most particularly this one, for obvious reasons.

Also, when I selected this quarter’s banner art I never imagined the events that would come to pass, or what it would be like to look at that one sharply focused gravestone every time I come to my blog.)

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I suddenly understand why so many men I knew growing up sought out time in their garages. It's quiet in here, where I've set up 1x4s across sawhorses and laid out cabinet doors for painting. It's a little smelly in all the right ways, and there's a pollinated breeze coming in through the open door. Things smell a little of dust, a little of paint, a little of last night's flood down the way, and a little of me. I can watch the twilight inch through the yard and down the street and also spy on the crazy bachelor brothers across the way, with their garden and their dachshunds. The work is physical and tangible, so different from writing, so tactile. I do something, and I can see and feel that it's been done, marked on the boards and in my body, which aches in new and subtle ways. I paint and attach hinges and curse and redo, and there's just me in here, since I've left Mr. Husband to grieve and ponder in solitude on the couch on the other side of the wall.

I have a wonderful colleague back in the Twin Cities. Brilliant and well-traveled and cultured, probably more of each of those things than I'll ever be. But he grew up on a farm in a tiny town in Georgia, and some days when the light is right I look at him and see the mildly bent Southern man he would have been in another life, see how the overalls would have hung, how his legs would have bowed, how the sun would have weathered him. Here, living this life for these weeks, I also see the little ol' Southern man I would have been in my own other dimension.

When I buy a house, I think I shall move my study into the garage, mix the books with power tools, keep the MacBook and the DeWalt drill side by side. When I hit a hard spot in the writing I'll move over about a foot to sand and drill and curse, and then I'll come back to the computer to tap away and curse. It'll be alright.

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the action is over on Twitter for the moment. I just don't have energy for more than 140 characters at a time.

Update, 30 minutes later: okay, maybe I just lied a little bit there.

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I keep thinking that I will write about the past few weeks, or perhaps the coming few weeks. But when I sit down to start typing, it all feels too big and personal. The family is very private, so I will probably not write much about it here, at least not now. At the moment, I don’t feel like it's my call. Mister Husband has written a small bit about it here.

The bare facts are that I am currently living in my terminally ill mother-in-law's small house in a small town on the border between Oklahoma and Arkansas. I am visiting her in the nursing home room I arranged for, teaching my online course, and learning to renovate a house. I am learning that my marriage can indeed easily withstand periods of long-distance-ness, although this is certainly not our preferred state. (We are trading teaching stints in Minnesota, more or less.) I am learning that there is much satisfaction in duty.

These past eight months have brought a significant illness for my spouse, the quick death of a grandparent I had a complicated emotional relationship with, and now the slow death of a matriarch in the family. I think the universe is teaching me to breathe and to just be there for whatever needs to be done, to remember to take time for the big events in life. I am learning, albeit ungracefully.

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