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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: life

What Happens In May

23 Sunday May 2021

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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birds, child, life, mother, son, spring, woman, womanhood

These last few days have been particularly abundant with spring life, new life, embarking on their new lives. People wonder what are the birds saying when they make that sound and as of yesterday I know:

A juvenile blue jay sat on the branch in the tree that is 2.5 feet away from my bedroom window. There are trees behind my apartment that are secluded and safe for birds and squirrels and other wild things to do their thang. I watch them all year long. The JV blue jay sat on the branch and squawked a soft squawk, not quite the jarring screech of an adult blue jay, similar, but soft, like it hadn’t found his diaphragm yet to ANNUNCIATE to the BACK OF THE ROOM. It sat on the branch and softly called and an adult came, and I watched it feed the young with something. The adult flew away and the juvenile hung around for a while and then hopped up and away out of my sight.

A juvenile squirrel came creeping on a branch. I could tell it wasn’t an adult because its eye was too small, its tail full grown but its body still smol. It stayed on the branch, still for a long, long time. And then it creeped, it tread, it wended carefully so carefully, unsure about what it was supposed to do and where it was supposed to go. This was not a professional parkour squirrel, though it would be someday. I should also like to mention that last year I saw a juvenile squirrel waiting on a branch for its mom, and she came and nursed him. I’ve never seen anything like this, and I was thrilled and amazed by this tender moment.

A juvenile robin, his head and back dark, dark, black was sitting in the backyard making that call. I know that call. It was a thready, reedy, whiny, gently screechy sound that said, “MOM MOM MOM.” The robin hopped a little bit here and there but mostly it stayed in the enclosed backyard of the lady who has a very vocal energetic black Pomeranian who barks and loses his shit if the wind blows. No sound. The adult robin came and fed the juvenile, then led it towards a large bush growing on the side of her house, probably where the nest is. This morning I watched the scene again, the juvenile hollering but the adult sat on the white fence calling “HERE HERE HERE, THIS WAY THIS WAY THIS WAY” and flew away. The juvenile kept watch this way for another meal and all I could think was that “Baby, you got your mind on breakfast and the hawks hear your crying and you’re going to be their breakfast.”

Yesterday the birds were crazy with activity. So many flights in crazy directions, things that made no sense to a dumb human, and I wondered if we had bad weather coming in, but no. This wasn’t about weather. It was about spring when the young are tested and called and cajoled to do that thing on the hot air rising from the rooftops and the sand. When wings and limbs are forced to grow and go.

There is no way I could see all this and not think of my own gestational effort and offspring that happened in May. I even told him all about it while he was here on his yearly visit, yes even in front of his fiancée. I tried to be matter of fact and not lean too heavily on the woman things, the things we scare each other with and dare each other with and support each other with if we are lucky. Spring life is nature and nurture, instinct is not a given. We struggle and suffer and none of us come out on top with gold medals. I could have attended a birthing class and watched the movies and read the books, I heard next to nothing from living women about “the day.” And yet somehow we all figured out how to make it work. I came home with a pink fella with some dark hair on his head and his balls. He cried and I cried and we figured it out, mostly. In Spring. When the birds are flying crazy and the heat is rising up from the earth.

In Your Presence

17 Thursday Dec 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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conservation, Elisa, friendship, future, life, lion, memory, New Jersey, orangutan, son, Zoo

When my son was young and we wished we could still confine him to a stroller but yeah good luck with that, we brought him to the Space Farms Zoo in Sussex New Jersey.  I’d been alive awhile and never heard of it, but hey!  A learning experience, let’s go!  We parked in vibrant emerald cornfields before harvest, and before we left the lot I was stricken, no exaggeration, absolutely stricken by the sound of a lion who was half a mile away.  I stopped walking and just couldn’t stop listening to his voice. He was speaking, announcing, conquering.  He had a truth he wanted to say and I don’t know how anyone could not hear him. Breathtaking.

Years later I came across YouTube videos of a man in South Africa who took lions into his care and works so very hard at trying to help people and lions live together on the same land.  His name is Kevin Richardson and you can look up his work at your will.  I learned so much about lions and hyena, their relationships, behaviors, and why we need to preserve them in our world.

Recently my friend Elisa and I visited the Norfolk Zoo and at one point during our walk a male lion spoke. He made us aware of his intentions. He became the center of the Universe. I’m not convinced the people at the zoo understood lions the same way Kevin Richardson does, but I do not doubt their dedication to the creatures in their care.  So he roared the way you don’t hear him in the movies, Roooarhhhh ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh…. His call to assert his hierarchy and his bond with the ladies.  And I could not move.  I just had to stop.  Breathtaking. Lion. Captive yet regal, visceral, owning us all, all the way down into my bones. I was not expecting to hear this. Hear him. And I wept. And she saw me. And I could not avoid the question, “Are you okay?” Of course I’m not okay.  How can any of us be okay in the presence of him, while we condone canned hunting and can’t figure out how to live with him in his land? So I lied and said, “I’m fine.”  But she knew I was not.  Elisa wrote about her very own capture as she walked in peaceful astonishment with the Orangutans.

Today I’m thinking about the lies we tell ourselves.  The lion’s roar in lands we can’t quite commit to living with. Humans we won’t commit to protecting.  Elon Musk’s rockets are dreams of the future, ones we should pursue, but where is that future for 20,000 lions left on the continent of Africa?

Soon?

15 Tuesday Dec 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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December, dream, green life, growing, insomnia, life, long dark, Solstice, soon

The neighbor’s bathroom door slammed.
He’s a very good slammer.
My eyes opened and saw Christmas cactus silhouette
on the windowsill, echevarria’s sawtooth lump,
prayer plant’s leaves erect as they are not during the day.
It was a miracle I slept between then and then,
I dreamed, and hated the dream and
wanted to call you and tell you I’m sorry even though it was
just a dream about your fish in a tank, saltwater in fresh,
giant in small, and that you just didn’t seem to care.
I catalogued my pains and knew I would not sleep anymore.
Loud footsteps cross downstairs.
His microwave door thumps closed: breakfast of champions.
Nurse shadow passes my window, bundled.
It will be light soon? I asked swaying bare branches outside.
The laptop is so cold on my wrists; I turn on the heat
and hope it will satisfy the plants on the sill whose magenta faces
press desperately to the cold pane.
It must be light soon. It was dark at five, surely the sun will come soon?
Where is that cool cobalt that cancels coal dark,
sherbet palette on the way? Now? Is it now?
These are the long nights of winter in this hemisphere
5PM and the timers kick on the courtyard lights
6AM they’re still glowing
When the light finally comes I see crows flying west
as the dragonflies did in late spring, certain.
The crows of Middletown flew west late in the day,
I could tell the time by their flocking
as I sat near tall windows, chatting on the phone about nothing.
Cars dripping dew awaken, Navies on their way.
The sun’s trajectory short like patience.
My plants drink, hungry, and I use my indoor voice to say
“Good morning” and I rub their leaves gently.
I dread the night.

What Does This Button Do? (book review)

23 Friday Oct 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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autobiography, band, Bruce Dickinson, cancer, childhood, children, creativity, fencing, heavy metal, insomnia, Iron Maiden, life, pilot, review, survival, wife

At the time Bruce Dickinson published his autobiography many things were going on in my life that kept it on the back burner. He is one of the heroes of my young-woman and heavy metal life, and I was shocked and prematurely mourned when he announced his cancer diagnosis. A new album was expected but I was still uninspired by the previous album he made when he was healthy. My life was upside-down and I had little patience for much of anything, particularly the band Iron Maiden where I felt their music and tours were, while high-octane, mostly the same.

During another recent bout with insomnia I said, “f*k it,” so I downloaded the book and thought I’d have a look. I page-turned it to the point where mid-morning when I woke I was pretty sure it really happened to me; it wasn’t a dream, I was actually there in his tiny village in their tiny rooms with no televisions and few cars and people were losing their men in the war and little boys fell in love with aircraft. (Perhaps I had my first and only Edgar Cayce moment? )

Perhaps a better place to begin is here: Bruce is an excellent story-teller. Everything happens quickly, goes down easy, and you can see it all. What spoke to me most was his formative years up to when he began performing onstage, then his solo band’s venture into Sarajevo at the height of the war and their orphanage visit. The chapters that described his induction to the music life that introduced him to the Iron Maiden life, the interim years of solo life, and returning to Iron Maiden life had few moments I didn’t already know because I’m a Maiden fan and any fan who didn’t know those moments aren’t worth their salt were okay, and would be more interesting to those of us who don’t already know their story. He goes on a great deal about fencing which tells me it had a lot more influence on his life than any of us knew. I thought it was a hobby he was devoted to and not much more, but no. Same for his desire to learn to fly. I learned that he must keep his mind active, not just focused but laser-focused and full of creating and completing a task so he can feel okay; comfortably sane.

I knew before I read the book that he chose not to include stories about girlfriends and wives. This doesn’t surprise me as he’s always kept family closely guarded. He dedicates a passage to wife and children at the front of the book but that is all. In the epilogue he says he chose not to bring them in because the book was big enough and they didn’t move the dialogue forward. And that, my friends, pissed me off. Finding and falling in love and having children and all the stories in between does not move the dialogue of You, Mr. Bruce Dickinson, forward? Throughout the process of reading this book I kept hoping he would throw out a little mention of a wife or kid moment but no. It was microphones, amps, cassettes, managers, trousers, fencing partners, movie treatments, commercial airline pilot training. Not a word for the woman who stood behind him all those years? This might be a shocking comment coming from one of the Maiden females who wanted him all to ourselves, but leaving out any goodness you had with Paddy and your children makes it less autobiography and more like another Iron Maiden tour. This was my only disappointment with his work.

The casual reader will consume the book quickly because he’s an excellent writer. Here’s hoping he will regale us with more tales from the skies or possibly the stage because he is unstoppable. Not sure I’ll buy another album or see another show, honestly but that’s not why I’m here. I will end with two quotes from the book that spoke to me: “Nothing in childhood is ever wasted,”  and “It didn’t matter what it was that you engaged in, as long as you respected its nature and attempted some measure of harmony with the universe.”  

Guardians

24 Thursday Sep 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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body, death, honor, life, mantis, memory, mortal, poem?, precious, remembrance, sand, transition

When you come to collect me be careful where you step and what you touch
There’s sand on the floor,
slippery and on the couch,
kind of funny
and in the bathroom under everything, grit everywhere
in your hair and I hope it never washes away

When you come to collect me take note and be gentle
Precious cargo here:
Horseshoe crab molts, a seahorse
A green flower he found on the sidewalk and gave to me
Ribbons from gifts long enough to wrap sarcophagus
Penguins and llamas and Piglets,
Empty journals waiting for a smeared knuckle
Hoya and snake plant that thrive against the odds

A mantis, finger long, the color of bark
Who hung on the ceiling outside my door
Biding his time
Guarding my home
His mortal body now in the dish beneath my aloe.

Be careful.

A Letter To Jivey

16 Wednesday Sep 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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beach, change, daughter, food, grief, horseshoe crab, Journey, letter, life, love, molt, nosh, rise, son, vacation

Dear Jivey,

It’s been three days since you returned to the Hudson river valley.  I’ve been moping since, but today I find the courage to write aloud. 

I love you and miss you both.  You brought me blessings and laughter and happiness and treasure I won’t forget and thank you.

This morning the cicadae are shirring in the pine trees. (Remember the little guy shuffling off his former coil by my front door?)   The temperature is cool and the humidity is gone: you seem to have taken it away with you. I wanted bathtubfulls of rain to fall sideways or maybe a thunderstorm to impress you while you were here, but all we got was drips, sweat, and static electricity high in the clouds. Tomorrow night the rain will come, courtesy of a hurricane remnant. I feel like I owe you wild weather, Ms. Vine, that we could stand outside and ride and shout out the wonderful chaos. And also Krispy Kremes.

I made a grocery store run this morning and everything I wanted was not there: bagels, rye bread, white queso sauce for a nacho treat. There are little teardrops of grease on my turquoise tablecloth, remnants of the New York pizza you brought, and everything feels out of joint. I fall into the writer’s recollection of how food joins us, humans, in happiness and grief. 

Monday I expected Ms. Vine to come in to the room where I write and felt sad when I remembered.  Last night I felt parts of you still in my room. It was a long night with little sleep. 

Horseshoe crabs come to the beach to molt their exoskeletons so they can grow into their new lives as their ancestors have done for a million years.  We collect their skins and wonder at these ancient arthropods, some intact, some in pieces, but we rarely see them as they continue their journey in the waters. You brought one molt in and prepared it with everything that I love about you. I’m glad the Universe put it in your path. Jivey, may your journeys be as successful, contingent on rising with the tide.

Love always,
Mom. 

We Hardly Knew Ye

24 Sunday May 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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death, life, listen, neighbor, obituary

I did not want to see the attendants take his body away, though I knew it was coming. If I had waited just five minutes more, or checked five minutes before, I would not have witnessed the transition. But maybe I should have seen, maybe it was for the best that I saw the pattern of his blankets.

He was a character. That’s probably the best way to describe him, one all us residents would agree on. He said silly things, used conspiracy words, he played little games with conversation. He made us feel uncomfortable and cringey and weird, befuddled, and some of us downright pissed.

One summer weekend some kids were visiting from out of town, riding their bikes, playing hide and seek everywhere, including our balconies which he did not take kindly to. After he got no satisfaction from their parents he called the cops on the kids. The next day we came out to our respective balconies, he on his, me on mine, (we rarely stood next to each other except for that one time), and I called him out on it: I told him that was a shitty thing to do, calling the cops on the kids. He was angry and went back inside and … after a few weeks he went back to waving hi to me.

They told me not to loan him money anymore because he uses it to buy pot. I often wondered if his lack of filter was due to a head injury. He told me stories of his youth, that once he was in military school. His hair was long and gray and white and braided, then one day it was cut back short like a regular dude hidden beneath a ballcap. I liked it better the other way. He used to take short walks down the balcony, and I think half the reason he went out was to look for someone to tease or be a wiseguy with, not hurting anyone, just looking for someone he could interact with in his weird little way. He had no one else to talk to.

He left the world, he left us, he left everyone, by himself and that’s what bothers me most. I hope his transition, his dying was peaceful. I wish I could ask someone if it was so. I want to believe that it was.

Well, J, it’s someone else’s turn to look after you. I hope you don’t tease and annoy them too much. Take your ease, bro. I think you’ve needed it for a long time.

May today 2020

01 Friday May 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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flowers, hope, life, May, mourning dove, neighbor, prayer, quarantine

May
not mine, unclaimed by me,
flowers beside her door
and devoted mother,
guardian near the steps,
joyful colors
life in perilous places
Grace in troubled times
Humbled in your presence
flowers and feather
Amen.

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Strange Days Have Found Us (Again)

25 Wednesday Mar 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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9/11, COVID19, death, help others, life, never forget, strange days have found us, the Doors

September 23rd, 2001 was a strange day. Mom-in-Law urged us to go out and celebrate our wedding anniversary. We both felt rather numb and confused by the situation. We felt like this is no time to celebrate. We had a gift card for a place we’d been meaning to try, we heard the food was great, and Ellen was ready to babysit our son. Why the hell not, I guess. It was a most interesting evening at the Lobster Place*, a meal we’d never forget. There’s something wonderful and charming about being dressed to the nines and walking in to what was essentially a cafeteria, the only diners there. We ate fresh fish on plastic plates, tables draped in red and white-checked plastic, drinking coffee from plastic cups. We were out of place, it felt a touch surreal, but it was a good night in a terrible time.

It was hard to know how to behave in those early 9/11 days. Everything was uncertain in ways our Gen X had never seen. We were stricken, wounded, counting our living and dead, wondering “what’s next” and how do you go back to work after something like this? I wandered grocery aisles looking at soup cans like, “What am I even doing here?” It wouldn’t be the first time I felt that way. Every time I lose someone I love, it’s the same thing: Am I really stirring soup? Am I really folding socks? And why the fuck why?

In January I began to worry about COVID-19. I’d heard about it but had no idea how real it was going to be. It is March, and I’m in week two of social distancing which is hilarious because if I get any more socially distant I’d be in a pine box pushing up daisies. I have my books and notebooks and pens. There is an ocean out there that speaks to me endlessly. What more could I want? I don’t want to be bothered and I try not to bother anyone around me. I can be social when I choose but I am not a team player: I’d rather be home watching the game, shouting at your dumb play safely and ignorantly from the comfort of my home. And now all the weird things are happening, like I understand why the young people hit the Florida beach on spring break because there is only One spring break (and graduation) that may happen in our lives. Weird things like people hoarding TP. This isn’t the blizzard of ’77 when nobody could get to the store for a week because the snow was piled ten feet high. Weird things like being asked to stay home with the people we love, the children we brought into the world because we wanted them, and then complain and ridicule them endlessly on social media. Weird things like measuring the worth of our Greatest Generation against a woozy economy. I feel woozy about my place in the world. What I want, what I need. How to worry, when to worry, and dealing with the shock of people who say “I don’t care about Italy’s dead, I am with America first.”* It’s weird trying to manage how to deal with soulless people without losing myself in the abyss. And all that, the weird, the worry, the sorrow, is ok.

So it is March 25th. There are a lot of numbers out there ready to overwhelm. I hope to do more than wander from room to room avoiding social media. I hope to create and help in some small way where I can.
In the meantime, I haven’t forgotten.


*name changed
*trumpist who has 500K viewers

Lillies In The Vase

27 Monday May 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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blood, Buddha, color, flower, life, Lillies, meditation, poem, Saffron

Maroon lips, the blood we cannot talk about
Buddha robes, patient orange sit with me ten minutes straight,
silent
or thinking thinking thinking,
name your thought is it salty or sweet
Saffron savory, orange tang touch it with your tongue you’ll never go away unsatisfied
(are you less thinking thinking thinking?)
Pink pale prim fuchsia blushing from behind happy to share water with you
let us walk, step right. Step left. Step right. 

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