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Indigo Vales

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Tag Archives: memory

July 4th Memory

03 Saturday Jul 2021

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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dad, Independence, July 4th, memory, Rule-Breaking, Scary but Cool, The City

It was the No-Go stairway. Never, ever, go up those stairs, the last, highest stairs in our building. You better believe me and my brother did Go when we could get away with it, but we had to be lightning fast and super quiet in those echoey halls to get up and down before anyone caught us. Sometimes we sat on those stairs while waiting for Mom to come out of the apartment so we could go food shopping or maybe the library. Sitting was legal, anyway.

But one night Dad took us up those stairs, those No-Go stairs, and it was amazing to get to the top and go through that dark door that took us onto the ROOF! CAN YOU IMAGINE how emerging onto a roof at night, all secret-like, felt to this fairly sheltered kid? It was scary and rule-breaking and scary and cool and scary. The dark gravel crunched beneath my sneakered feet. It was warm but cool. The wall was too short to lean over so we had to stay away from it (scary) but we had a 360-degree view of the fireworks taking place around Flushing on Fourth of July. The blossoms weren’t too near and the crackling, booming was a bit far away, but I will never, ever forget the night we did a bit of rule breaking and had some (rare) excitement with Dad on the day we commemorate our own rule breaking that paved the way to Independence.

Yay Us! (Thanks, Dad.) ❤

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?

fog morning.

06 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Catskills, childhood, fog, memory, morning, ocean, poem?, Senses, silence

the kind of morning i wish would stand still
see what i see.
let me take in the silence
the scent
the gray
the cool soaking wet
let me hold you still
before it all becomes the day.

i remember waking and rising before everyone
and sneaking outside to sit on the concrete steps
shocked i could rise so early
that i could be so quiet mousy
elated that there’s no one to tell me
No
or
Don’t
a long green and white trailer nestled in the catskills
courtesy of grandma and grandpa
land of loud crickets, soft orange lights
strangers in pubs who are friends
a pool that’s off limits
and a basketball court where my dad actually bounced a ball.
so many tiny white spider tents in the grass
should i walk, yes i should walk and soak my socks
i’ll take them off
my tracks look like skis in the wet grass
the world was still and mostly silent
accompanied by tiring crickets
soon grandma will rise with her little slippered feet
and pastel house dress to make us toast with too much butter
that is life
and no one around to say
No
or
Don’t

sun please hold before you burn this fog away
fluttering flock of mourning doves say otherwise
the guy downstairs comes out for a smoke
the chemicals chase the ocean scent away
still, everyone is reverent this morning,
keeping quiet.
so far.

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.

Flue Rules

16 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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childhood, dad, Delirious, family, Flu, memory, Mom, the Doors

You should spell it flu and not flue because it’s the flu but you’re sick and don’t really care because when you’re sick anything goes…


You will remember tiny steel cans of apple juice you drank in kindergarten. You will remember clean, shredded towels that came from your mom’s apartment. You will remember Dad in his bed and his legs and everyone around him and the moment he departed and you will look at his picture right there young, smiling in a suit from you don’t know when, and you will remember tomato soup and grilled cheese tucked in on the couch, mom ministering.

You will sweat sweat sweat in your hoodie not wanting to breathe on the Walgreens employees who are tracking you in the aisles ‘cus it looks like you got stealing on your mind as you wander with your hood up but all you really need is a thermometer you can’t find (which you really don’t need to tell you you are farked) but you pay for little cans of 7-Up and saltines and cough syrup and the girl behind the counter who knows you says “feel better” and you give her thumbs up as you float away.

You will walk out to your car like a drunk, concentrating one foot at a time, conscious of every movement, planning your route back home sweat trickling down your scalp, beneath your breasts, body aching wishing you had someone else to take up this chore, but when you exile yourself you only got yourself to make shit happen, so you drive home like you been drinking all night, hoping not to weave and you make it back to “your” parking spot, you drag yourself upstairs gasping for breath, sipping water, fearing food and your bed and all you got is sitting sideways on the couch watching NYPD Blue.

You will cough all day and night and your neighbors will take out a contract on your life because the coughing is keeping them up but you haven’t slept a true sleep in ten days and you figure by now if someone comes in and strangles you on your couch it would be a relief.

Your earlobes will turn into golden raisins because you ain’t got water in your body. You will be a fool for not forcing water or broth or saltines, but it’s all you got.

You will wake up on the couch and wonder where you are. You will wonder at everything and not care about anything and pray for sleep sleep sleep.

You will have that song stuck in your head, that phrase, it won’t go away and you’re good with that because nothing really matters.

You will wonder if you will ever sleep again and who will do laundry and if you will ever eat again.

“Don’t you love her madly…”

You will desire rain, hard rain, wind.

You won’t be able to breathe for a long time, but when your breath returns it will be unbelievable.  You will be able to lie down and cough often, but maybe not so much, but a dream will slip in and that means you’re not crazy anymore, or less so, anyway.

You will be able to speak in full sentences with your brother without gasping for breath (not like before when you told him “I really have to go now, sorry.”) You will take a little bag of garbage out.  You will sit upright longer than you have in a long time, the fog of flue receding. 

You will return to Walgreens to buy some frozen veggies (covered in cheese) and toilet paper. You will apologize to the counter girl for not speaking to her earlier as you were afraid to spread the flu and kill the world.  God bless her pretty cotton-candy blue hair.

You will sleep and dream.  You’re still not poised to journalize, you’re still not ready to make gourmet meals or walk five miles, but you’re in the 4th turn now and headed for the finish line, tissues filled with phlegm in the garbage can, one load of laundry done, and your bed made of clean sheets.

The flue no longer rules you. How will you celebrate? How will you give thanks for the sweat and ache and loneliness and perseverance thru a shitty flu?  

Hallows Eve 2018

31 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brother, candy, change, childhood, children, costume, dark, Halloween, hallways, memory, parents, sister

It is said that today, this evening is when the veil between the worlds is thinnest, those who have passed may walk among us.

Today I think about the recent talk I had with my son in the waxing hours of night. We talked long about my Dad–his grandfather–who we both love and miss. He had questions and worries and pain and I answered best I could, and those answers said aloud reaffirmed my beliefs. It all felt right.  Perhaps he went back to sleep, but I stayed awake then slept in the middle of the day, my heart ringing with memory.

This morning I close my eyes and remember Halloween of the past, when me and my brother were kids. Mom got us our costumes at the store, but I do not remember which one. The cellophane came unglued from the cardboard boxes they were packed in by the time we got home.  I am 100% sure I tried mine on and played with it before Halloween and got yelled at.  We lived in a large development, apartments galore, and you would think we would come home king and queen of Halloween candy, but no. You would be wrong.  Mom told us every year we could pick one. ONE. apartment house outside our own to trick or treat and that would be it for the day. Oh? Did you not know that we only trick or treated during the day? Yep. Too dangerous at night we were told. So we donned our paper-thin costumes, slipped on our masks, and knocked on our first door.  It was exciting! Neighbors answered and tucked candy into our plastic pumpkins, a ritual that was wonderful outside the usual nod as we passed each other on the stairs, and I got to peep inside where they lived!   One year I was Lady Liberty, another Cinderella, and my brother was a Firefighter and Chewbacca, if memory serves. Most neighbors gave us a good haul, and some slipped us pennies instead of candy. Our marauding ended at the kitchen table where Mom let all the air out of our tires: She picked through every piece of candy and threw out just about half of it because she said it didn’t look right.  In those days there was fear of razors in candy apples and LSD on paper candy, so anything that looked open she tossed, no negotiating, THAT was the real horror!  We clanked the pennies into our matching glass piggy banks which have gone I don’t know where…  I used to eat candy corns color by color, first the tip, then the orange, then the base, one small bite at a time, because I’m really not sure why.  And once we used to have a contest to see who could make their candy last the longest, and I think we both hit the “Thanksgiving” target.

One thing we don’t remember is Dad being with us.  It was always Mom shuffling behind us down echoey dark hallways with us.  I’m pretty sure it’s because Dad was working, or he was sleeping because his shift was in the middle of the night.

Dad moved us from the city filled with apartment complexes where Halloween candy and pennies and neighbors and friends were abundant to a field in the middle of nowhere, darker than hell and nobody around.  Trick or treating became dead to us because there was no way Mom and Dad was going to pile us into the car and take us into “town” where the rest of the kids were trick or treating. Halloween died when we moved upstate.

When I became a Mom we used to keep a bowl of chocolate treats for kids who might come to visit us on a route that is used for fast-moving traffic. One kid came. Probably the best part of Halloween was Mike making elaborate costumes for the kid–he was Halloween king of the cul-de-sac!  Okay, maybe the giant tarantula the guys stuck up on the roof was pretty cool, too. Cool but icky as it bobbed in the breeze.  But that’s Halloween, eh?

Last year I had a bowl of candy ready but no one comes to this apartment complex. Nobody came so I gave it all to the realty office across the way.  This year I have nothing to offer but hope and protection for anyone who comes by.

My how the times change.

All Your Birthday Are Belong To Us

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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birth, life, memory, mother, pain, period, sister, tough shit too bad, woman

you would never believe how big you can be
until your bellybutton turns inside out.
you would never believe how much pain you can take
(your mission, should you decide to accept it)
until you accept it, knowing
the pain train was coming,
ready to deliver a full body-blow
that you’d forget it like nothing,
all that stretching and bursting a shadow
a breeze on a mountain you left below
like the chat you made with the guy who
tattooed “always” on your tender skin
or the reason you put it there.

you would never believe how much you can figure out
curled up on a towel in the dark,
a hard plastic piece in somebody’s endgame,
you become your own mother
when you figure out the gore will stop when it’s ready
and not a minute before
like it does sometimes
so sweat it out, sister,
allow yourself a whimper, walk the floor
you ain’t dying though it feels like you’re birthing the whole damned world
tonight.

you would never believe that the body can shut off the faucet
a freaking morning miracle that you can breathe pain-free now
the clot-o-rama paused
courtesy of healthy organs the doctor said he would never remove
because you are fifty and want a reprieve
but you get what you get and you don’t get upset because
there are one hundred more birthdays waiting to burst through
before this is done.

The Day Begins

15 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, attention, begin, clock, cobwebs, coffee, lists, memory

20180115_105535

When one is well-slept, watered, and fed with good food one can get organized. The home falls into place, the body falls into place, then the laundry calls and the writing gets moved to the side again. There have been more “again” days than productive writing days, and I suppose that’s how it was meant to be. Things are as they are at the moment, not forever. I made two substantial lists, neither one has a due date. They’re written in pretty green ink, the most pressing tasks of household and writing are highlighted in pink or blue. No exclamation points, no post-its, no self-defeating deadlines. Just lists of things that need attention, and the slow simmering surety that they will be attended, and attended well.

I began the morning caring for my plants, then caring for myself with a cuppa joe. The pink clock ticks loudly, sometimes too quickly, and I notice myself running to keep up with her, an act of self-defeat. Slow down, fool, that clock is 10 minutes ahead and you already know you’re working in good time.

Breathe. It all comes back now, everything that’s been out of sight, out of mind, that deserve better than being kept in cobwebs. Time to bring things back into the light, back into the sky where the cold air breathes. I will hold you, one by one, attend you, one by one, memories, writings, and you.

Jim Nabors

01 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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childhood, choir, don't give up, holy, Jim Nabors, memory, mother, music, passion, poem, power, sing, tears, voice

Jim Nabors has left us. I am glad he is in peace. I can’t say that he’s the reason I wanted to be a Marine. It’s too complicated for that. (It’s certainly more complicated than the unyielding call of the jets flying over the warehouse where I toiled.)  His most recognizable character, Gomer Pyle, was simple in nature, kind of heart, which seems antithetical to being part of the war machine. He was part of my childhood thanks to Mom and his voice… oh. Jim Nabors’ voice.  I learned about passion by his voice alongside Andy Williams, Johnny Cash, Cher, Barbra Streisand, so many more. I heard his voice sing the hymnals I recognized from church, and it moved me, a girl of impressionable age.   Jim moved on, and I am grateful to the internet for sharing his performance of Impossible Dream (The Quest).  I dare you to listen and not be moved and reminded that the world is the life and we are stewards of it all, and our voices are holy. Our voices are holy.  (don’t waste it all.)   He is with my mother now, who introduced me to black and white TV. Shazam, and Golly, and Surprise.

Oh, by the way.  Tell me how you feel after reading the lyrics to this song. How does one bear it, how will you learn to bear it, where does your strength come from to sing those notes he sings effortlessly the power of that poem, to find the will, and the will, and the will to do anything at all, in those years that I didn’t know I had any power at all, little girl? Jim’s song seems effortless. I will never write or live or be as effortless as the victory of his voice… but it sure does give me something to strive for.

I may or may not stop weeping on the sound and the voice of his memory. And that’s just okay.

Cicada, For The Record

04 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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aunt, autumn, cicada, memory, mother, summer

Cicada serenade crickets high above wet dawning grass

Morning plant watering, windows open,  twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder where you are as your magical vibrations call to the other

Buzzsaw driven by season, scaring northerners who never heardasuchathing.

Cicada crashed into me last morning two feet from my door, then crashed into another door then flew away muttering cicada curses having lost foothold on branch and song, weakening in season and song.

I open my door again, barefeet cold, morning no-wind. I see your black, bug-eyed body prone on the gray balcony, and I wonder if you are alive. Something tells me you are alive.

I remember baby food jars that held your carmel shells, the scent of your moultings strong in my nose, magicked by the Lampyridae flittering away in Aunt Betty’s yard, two and four horsepower–

three sisters sitting in broken-webbed lounge chairs talking women things, shooing us away, cigarette tips glowing in the dark–

Black cicada mumbled on my gray balcony. He crept his way towards the edge and fell down to the grass below, silent, Juliet unknown.

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