The Get-up and Go

Rearranging routines is crucial for being housebound. Though I'll probably live long enough to eat these words right off the screen, mixing things up semi-regularly has gotten me through many years of isolation and a few of being outright housebound.

Being one who needs a change of scenery daily, I've taught myself to make that occur even if I'm trapped within the same four walls.

As a kid, it used to be that moving every three years pretty well did the trick; about the time you got settled in and your turf well established, it would be time to up end it all and begin anew.

I starved for deep connection to place. Finding a partner who's identity was sunk into the core of the planet (and the cosmos); parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, all in the same distant county, was a certain boon. He valued the farm stock heritage from which he came and wanted to begin his own legacy...but somewhere other than amidst the old family ties. Perfect!


We worked out our partnership and built a fine home and family in the hinterlands of SE, Alaska. Enough wilderness in our surroundings to keep my wanderlust fed for perpetuity.

However, twenty eight years later, the circumstances in my life (over these last two seasons), have drastically changed. The story of how these two veins come together is falling into place and I'm pecking away at a telling that hopefully will be of interest to others.

Today, for your adventuring pleasure, I offer a wonderful site.
Coupled with the Writer's Almanac each day, and listening to the creativity of A Prairie Home Companion on the weekend if I can catch it...(Garrison, dear friend, I missed the big 4th of July event. Damn! How to be in two places at once. We had a very good time though, drifting down the Chilkat), with these things combined, most everything at this end of our equation is keeping afloat.

I'm off with the cart to gather groceries for The Mazoo and I today.

It's terribly hot...I think I'll bring the computer and nest a while at Barnes and Noble. I'll be able to get a few character sketches while I catch up with the Surreal Circus at Gather.com. I'm helping there as a moderator/student, kind of a summer internship. Maybe helping to grease the literary gears of a few others as well.


Poet.org, and with this introduction a collection that is divine.

Enjoy!

April Fool's Daughter and Grandson/ RLR remembered on the 2nd

Hey Ma,

A fun post Mom, (< click to article).
I still can't seem to wrap my mind around the fact that not a single one of my acquaintances east of the Rockies has any idea of what the sensation of "breaking in" feels like. Dad's right - you can't know humility until you cross an April snowbank in the absence of snowshoes.

I can't help thinking of that time when I was seven or so, when I took off on an early April adventure going who knows where, and doing it solo, and making it about as far as the place where the garden tank would stand before sinking in as deep as my legs were long and being completely unable to extricate myself. How I struggled and thrashed with escalating levels of contempt and catastrophic rage, never daring to ask anyone in the house to come down and help me lest I expose myself to the even greater torture of embarrassment, and finally giving myself away through the sheer noise of my exertion and despair, at which point you and Dad came down, and to your inestimable credit somehow managed to keep straight faces, and Dad yanked me out by the armpits, but did it a little too abruptly, and I came out wearing only the liner of my snowboot, the shell sunk two feet deep in the snow, and Dad saying - with that vaguely sadistic humor of his that gave rise to such good-natured witticisms as the one about saltwater causing one's feet to fall off - that we'd have to wait until June to get the rest of my boot back.

All in all, a great day to be an Alaskan.

I hope you're well. Happy Birthday. And keep up the good work.

Best,
Micah
April 1, 2009 6:35 PM

Where We Might Overlap

That tunic of cloud hung densely, veiling all planes and vertices.
A saturated blue gray tilted more toward flattening white. No angle of lens could lend such precision to form or catch the magnitude.

Child, don't forget how we tracked near the small, quiet, old, and sparsely swift
with wing, tail and quill.

You and I trail across whispered intent, follow likely syncline and marvel that the animal tracks always lead the best route; least effort spent is energy conserved.

For them, energy is hard earned while we have little more skill than desire.

Still, we take pleasure in practicing flight; river far below our four out stretched wings.