Fall Into Winter 2016
Almost a year of silence. I wrote. Just not to you. Short words. Because those were the only ones I could find. The big ones mangled on the way from my brain to my mouth. Way too often I’d feel the “f word” form on my lips, swallow it back before it spewed it’s way out. It’s a lazy way of expression, though sometimes the only perfect word. I miss you. Make no mistake. My long voice is longing. By the way, YOU equals the collective you out there.
I was sure I at least wrote poems. Yet couldn’t find one fully formed. Not one. I must have written them in my head with that invisible pencil I carry around. Now they’ll never to see paper. I remember snippets. Half things I dictated to my phone at stop lights, or where ever they hit. So there you go. Gone.
an ocean
of tiny rip tides
low and high
drown my face ….
tears.
and then there was:
A song
of slippery words
keepsakes of something
hot and sticky and amorous …
blah, blah, blah. Though I had to laugh at the last one. At least part of my brain was aroused. That it was something other than deadened.
The more you try to still your mind,
the farther flung it sweeps
capturing even the whisper of suggestion.
And this happened. Sweeping down Erwin Road at a respectable clip:
I kilt that snake
essing in a hurry
across the blacktop
smack off center line
he looked right at me
with a slithery smile of gotcha
and for a second looked like you.
Too late to stop,
braked and backed
a time or two
just to make sure …
he needed killin’ …
and I needed
to smile
at something.
Gotta think for a while on what that was all about. I thought I was over that guy, but he rared up from time to time. Unexpected and always unwelcome.
Losing a parent is, well, nothing short of devastating. Losing both in the space of a year and a half is double that. Like walking in a giant jello pool of every flavor. Just getting to the other side is exhausting and feels impossible.
Somewhere peeking out of the loss comes clarity. Fuzzy at first, but something to hang on to in the rush of unexpected feeling.
………………………………………………………………………
Shufflin’ & Steamin’
In the Garden – The Avett Brothers
Turtle Dove and the Crow – Mandolin Orange
Carolina – The Honeycutters
Stardust – Rod Stewart
Since we’re talking movies … I liked, no, loved 
Shufflin’ with Muscle Shoals
If you’re unfamiliar with La Farm Bakery in Cary, well, shame on you. Lionel Vatinet is a master, and La Farm products are available at all area Whole Foods. Get thee toward a croissant.
City Grocery owner and chef John Currence, while maybe less well-known except among rabid foodies, actually began his food career as a student at UNC, washing dishes at Crook’s Corner when the man in charge was Bill Neal. He returned to New Orleans, working for the Brennan family of restaurants before opening City Grocery in Oxford, Miss., in 1992. Also multi-award winning (2009 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in the South, e.g.), Currency is contributing editor for Garden and Gun.
An outpatient of love
a weekday. Any day. Let’s just say Tuesday. It’s not unusual for me to run by the post office on my way to work. My route takes me by an adult emporium. And not just one X. Not XX. But XXX. Sometimes I slow down to count the cars in the parking lot. At 9am on a Tuesday. What ARE they doing in there??? Merely rhetorical. Smell the glove.
One Saturday in March
One Saturday in April
One Friday in May
Sofa Shopping Shuffle:
Pup would be a good place to start here. A friend who was watching me grieve for my beautiful Remy sent me a link on Petfinder. Even while protesting that I wasn’t ready for another dog, I was a goner before you could say “roll over,” and was driving the back roads to Monroe one beautiful October day. Max (a four-year-old mix of bearded collie and PBGV = Petit Basset Griffon Vendéen) was rescued and came to live in the little red house. He’s a nut ball and he makes me laugh every time I look at his furry face.
without a pit stop, or even a wall to stop the motion. When love is new everything in your field of (and peripheral) vision is stunningly clear. Sharp. Gleaming. And achingly fragile … like an expensive Riedel wine glass. You’ve never been surer about anything in your entire life. But when, and if, the shiny wears off and the cracks spider off into everywhere and nowhere, suddenly everything is muffled, dull, pillowed. And achingly fragile. When someone’s talking, you nod like you’re listening, but you’re not really. Suddenly you’re trying to walk through pudding or Jello® wearing 6” spike heels. Which in my case meant my flip-flops were skidding on every surface, every step I took. Downright treacherous, but that’s the thing about trying to make long distance love work. There’s all this empty space between in which to get trapped.
YR15! Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro – October, 2012. 
I was a reluctant first timer in 2010 when Leon Russell was the Saturday night big name artist. Been there, done that with festivals. I like little intimate venues where it feels like I’m yay-far from the stage and feeling up-close-and-personal with who I’ve come to see. Yes, I’m one of those … I want to see the sweat on the brow and the crazy faces the guys in the band make. It turned out to feel like someone’s ginormous backyard party (albiet a really big, cool backyard that has a view of the Cape Fear), and we were not all that many lawn chairs away from stage left. But wait. Two days of nearly non-stop music? More stages? Smaller ones, scattered around the park … one for blues, one for jazz … one of which was so close to the Cape Fear River you could almost party on the boats gathered off-shore. Local food vendors were filling bowls and baskets with seafood chowder, fried shrimp, and other goodies that were right out of the sea only days ago.
But that’s not my final stop for the night … I’m strolling just down the street to Cat’s Cradle for a double dose of Megafaun as they kick off the evening for The Old Ceremony’s new CD release “Fairytales and Other Forms of Suicide” just out on the locally-owned Yep Rock Records label. I like everything about Django Haskins, The Old Ceremony’s founder, including his name. I hope he was named after jazz-guitarist Django Reinhardt.
If you still can’t quite quit the night, turn right out of the Cradle and hit Local 506 on West Franklin Street. There are enough musical styles in alt/indie band, Morgan’s End, that you’re bound to find some notes in there that appeal to you. The odd band out here is Hunter Valentine. They have absolutely nothing at all to do with the local music scene, but you may recognize their name if you watch The Real L Word on Showtime where the trio are cast members of the current bi-coastal series that follows a group of lesbians through the daily drama of their own lives in both LA and Brooklyn.
Thursday there was something in the air. And it was not good. By Friday in the mid-90 degree heat, it was something altogether worse. Even Remy wouldn’t go gently into that good yard. I had to push him down the steps. Friday evening my neighbor, Katie, knocked on my door. We discussed the smell and the fact that her other-side neighbors giant 16-lb cat was AWOL. Uh-oh. We walked the two yards, hers and mine, sniffing … me trying to stifle my serious gag-reflex … trying to locate the dead thing. It was worse in my yard. Worser still on my back porch and I’m suddenly sure the dead thing is under my back porch. It had gotten dark enough that neither of us were going to go down on hands and knees with a flashlight to peek under the porch. After all, I’m the one who scoffs at characters in horror movies who go down in the basement without turning on the light asking “is anyone there?” We leave it that in the morning I’ll call our favorite man in the neighborhood. The one who comes to the rescue of us suddenly-helpless girls and seemingly loves every minute of being our savior. Back in the house, I lit candles and let loose an over-kill of room spray, but the dead thing was stronger than anything in a bottle or a jar. I fall asleep humming Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “That Smell.”
Saturday. Mid-morning. The savior arrives waving a short-handled rake. All he needs is a white horse. Only the knee-pads jerk me back from all but hanging a glowing salvation-like halo over his head. Yeah, I know, I’m a sucker for a ruggedly handsome savior. The search begins. The dead thing is not under my porch. It is not under my shed. It is not in Katie’s backyard. The savior walks the easement behind and suddenly sends up an “I got it.” Our first question … “is it the cat?” No, it’s a small deer. By this time, Chad and Shaena, my other-side neighbors have gathered with us at the fence where we toss around ideas of what to do with what’s left of the carcass. Black plastic bag at the curb knowing there’s no trash collection until Tuesday because of the holiday weekend. Sprinkling baking soda over to kill the smell. Collectively we all voted for ashes to ashes, dust to dust … let nature take its course.
simmer2sizzle 