Little Weirds(21)

On a Sunday afternoon, I went outside in my slippers and picked my kumquats from two young, slight trees. I picked ten Meyer lemons and five oranges. I picked yellow Mexican marigolds that smelled so strong, and all I could hear was the air moving the plants, and what I could smell was the perfume of the marigolds on my hands mixed with the wild lemon and orange scents. It was quiet and peaceful and I spoke out loud to the mystery of people, to the traces of the lives that had lived here before me. I imagined them looking out at me from the kitchen windows as I pulled up my sweatshirt to use it as a basket for the fruit. I grinned and showed my bare abdomen to my house and dog, and filled my sweatshirt with oranges.

I imagined a ghost of an actress from the thirties, a young woman filled with life and bitterness, who called nail polish “varnish.” I imagined her looking at me and all of the oranges and my stomach and saying, “She’s gonna bring all of that into here?”

And I do bring all of that into here—that’s kind of the main thing I do in every situation. Like it or not, I bring it into the here and now. But the other thing is that I keep a pretty keen eye on everything that has gone into making whatever “here” is, like the trees and the lives.

I feel very lonely sometimes, and I felt very lonely when I bought the house. But I walk through the back door into the kitchen and I say to the oranges that they have made me the happiest woman on earth, and I say to however many ghosts might be watching me that I am so glad to be in the house, and I let my loneliness be there too, here in a very old house in a notch in a living hillside, not looking out and down but looking straight into the energetic wildness that drapes itself all over itself and has many mysterious roots that shoot deep into the earth.





Important Questions

I’m humble enough to admit that I don’t know everything and I’m secure enough to ask questions.

Examples:

How can I shrink enough to be small enough to respectfully ride a lamb or dachshund?

What would my body look like (specifically boobs, butt, hair) if I only ate food cooked by bolts of summer lightning?

What happens if I put a spell on a tiny piece of paper, put that into a nectarine, and bury it? What kind of tree could result from this action?

Does the violin know about the cricket? Has a cricket ever lived in a violin?

What if, when I felt a little off, I could flip up the top of my head and sprinkle just a few flowers around my brain and then flip the top of my head back down?

What if a moonbeam gets caught in my soup and I swallow it in a sip and then I always float a little bit off the ground because there is a moonbeam in my stomach?

Can I wrestle on the lawn? Can I sleep on the lawn? Who invented lawns?

Who is more chatty, a squirrel or a seagull?

When I die, will I turn into a ghost or just be garbage until I am part of a garden?





I Died: Sardines

I died! Do you know? And can you believe it?

I was in the kitchen with my father, on a Friday afternoon at maybe a little bit before four PM, and I opened a circular tin of sardines and furthermore I knew that there was a lemon in the refrigerator. These were the conditions. And I opened the tin of sardines very carefully so as not to spill the oil, and there they all were in there, perfectly nestled into each other, these plump, oily, salty little fishes. There they all were and I knew that I was about to make a sandwich for my father and that I was a lucky person and I saw it so completely and I will tell you what: I just died. I simply passed right away. By the time I went to get the lemon I was only a spirit. By the time I laid the little guys on the toast, the soft spines still in their bodies, the bread drenched in lemon juice, the whole thing dusted with fine black pepper, by the time I cut two fat fancy caperberries each in half and laid them on top of it all, I was nothing but a holy holy girl ghost. And when I gave my father his very own sandwich and it was much more exciting than he was expecting, I was a new saint. And when I opened my pretty mouth to chomp the little sardine bodies and the bread and the lemon juice and pops of pepper flecks and slips of caperberries, I blasted back into life with such essential joy that (good sweet goodness gracious!) I just about died again!





Sit?

I saw a little boy put his puppy on a skateboard and say “Patrick. Sit?”

There are a few things to say right away.

The first is that he wanted the dog to sit on the skateboard and not on the ground. What is that for? Why? The other first thing to say is how it makes me feel a sort of completeness that this young one has apparently named his dog Patrick. I wonder if the puppy is perhaps named after a character in a book or a movie, or maybe after a cousin who is admirable? The third (other “first”) thing to say is that he said “Sit?” And not “Sit.” He was not sure if it would work, or was uncomfortable with giving a command to the thing that is his friend and ward and companion. It is not natural to be a master in a casual way, to some of us. The last and only thing that I could say and that I mean with all of my heart is that I wish them both the best for all of the years that are coming to them as a pair of companions.





Kathleen/Dog-Flower-Face

I don’t know who used to live here. Only I live here, me and the old dog.

I hired a woman named Kathleen to come and make a fence around my house so that I could be safe in a self-imposed pen, like an old goose or a young pig. Like both, really.