How the Birds, Beat with Summer Heat, Still Keep Their Promises.

       The cool mornings of spring are gone. A window left opened for a night breeze will only yield the sounds of sleepless birds searching for cool puddles in the dark black heat. Summer has arrived to challenge freshmen life just clear of the bony grip of winter in its arrogant youth. I lay. Still. Shirt less.
       The birds grow quiet. Finding relief, they retire. Exhausted. Behind frozen lids a white land meets the horizon. A storm, cold and stiff, settles in. Hands become cracked with ice and wind while legs end just below the knee and feet have forgotten sensation. I lay. Motionless. Packed like fresh fish. Eyes Open. Breath dancing in circles.

       The birds wake with labored song. Tired yet determined to fulfill their commitment to the sun, that grand entrance of the day their ancestors swore to cherish. Eyes Open. I lay. Still. Glad with perspective.

Where The Dark Lives

       Being uneasy stalks a person like a striped cat in tall grass waiting for hours as little birds hop unknowingly closer in their search for seed and fresh worms. Its wild tail slapping the ground on both sides in untamed eagerness to hold beating wings between clean paws. Fear needs no reasoning, no excuses, no warning. No one needs the darkness of woods, the shadows of trees at an open back, or calls in the distant dark to pull a hat down low over the eyes and walk faster toward the light.

                                     For One I Love, You Are Not Alone.



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One Ticket To Somewhere, Please

       The middle of May has been slow to approach and each day brings a season altogether different than the day before. Today has barely seen fifty degrees for more than a few hours and even in this mild weather I have struggled to find a warm place to sit. If I had forgotten why I despise winter it does not escape me now. All the simple pleasures come with a certain labor to either ignore or endure the uncomfortable cold. Its this kind of cold that brings out the melodramatic monologues that eventually make me laugh as I reread my words with deep criticism.  But honestly, Its cold and I hate it.

        Its my "fix it" nature that drives me to buy two gallons of bright yellow egg-shell non-toxic paint (you know, for the children's sake) and paint the living room into a burning Sahara with added little touches of improbable fiction for my own happiness like Giraffes and Lions floating on the endless golden sand dunes. Now we're getting warmer. Here comes the Saharan snow cone salesman. He has all our favorite flavors in a three sided glass case swaying like an ocean liner on the back of a camel. Relax, the ice doesn't melt because its in a rear compartment on the flavor savor that has blacked out windows and its own, get this, solar powered refrigeration system. Yes. That just happened. I ask for one "Rainbow Swirl" and one "Dead Ninja Turtle". He asks "Whats a turtle?"  I skip the part where I ask him how he knows what a ninja is and explain to just add the green flavor then blue, purple, orange with red all over. "Duh?, right?" Even for a desert dweller "Rainbow Swirl" came pretty natural to the callused roughed skinned rider. After the exchange of a few gold coins I found in my M.C. Hammer desert camo "jammer" pants that probably were left over from a 1980's Aladdin's Castle arcade token collection I spent my childhood hoarding, we walk happily over to a park bench and sit beneath the shade of a giant Magnolia tree.
       Seriously, you're going to question this story's realism  due to the obvious non-indigenous tree species I've set our final scene with after we just got a great snow cone from a desert camel rider? Please. Just enjoy your snow cone and this nice warm air. 

Wait For It...

      I've been waiting. Waiting to see my child born. Waiting to complete my college education. Waiting for winter to be out of my life. Waiting for a house checklist to be full of scratched off tasks instead of staring at all the empty square boxes next to them.
      It would seem that waiting is one of those things that doesn't really exist. Like an emotion you can't see or touch, as in hoping or hurting, waiting seems to stand passively in the background. You see a person crossing their arms, twiddling there thumbs, pissing away their future, but you can't pinpoint that they are just waiting.
      I woke up angry. Livid that I had made no forward motion with my life in months. Sure I....

• Bought a house
• Painted house
• Filled house with furniture
• Made Baby
• Painted baby's room
• Painted baby's furniture
• Read half of 6 parenting books (surely, that equals 3 whole books)
• Trained Dog not to jump fence
• Chased Dog
• Mulched yard
• and filled Shed and Attic with all the stuff I've always had, have no idea what it is, but can't bring myself to get rid of. 

      That much I certainly did.

      But all of those things were the passive actions in my life. What I've truly been doing is Waiting. Waiting to win the lottery even though I have never played. Waiting for someone to say "Wow, you are so talented. Here is a Gagillion dollars. Way to Go!" Waiting to be given a honorary Phd from Harvard. I keep thinking if I can just wake up and get motivated or if I go back for that fifth cup of coffee that finally I will really get this train a' rollin'. At age 29 I've realized people don't just wake up at 30 as adults. Everyday you have to take one more step to becoming who you want to be, where you want to be it, surrounded by the people you want to be it with. I better start stepping.