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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: rain

August, Just In Time.

23 Sunday Aug 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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aunt, belonging, brother, cicada, family, Mom, neighbor, rain, summer, women

Late summer nights in Jersey the council of women would convene beneath the maple tree. Dinner dishes dried and put away, beach chairs snapped open, metal frames scraped to find level ground to sit upon, and after a while they did rest their bones. It was time for us kids to make ourselves scarce, the women were gonna talk. It was lightning bug time, so wandering off wasn’t so bad. And yet…

The women smoked, their cigarettes cherry red targets in the fallen night. When I crept closer to eavesdrop on mom and her sisters and maybe a cousin or two, because nothing could be cooler than whatever it was they were talking about, the chatter stopped. They swished ice in their tea glasses and waited for my boredom to lead me elsewhere or shooed me away, nothing here to see, ma’am, move along. There were no men here at the council, just me snooping and hanging out with my little brother. One woman’s voice frequently rose above the others, edgy, aggressive, often brought the laughter. I wondered who was wearing the admonishment tonight.
***
I padded down to the pagodas half hour before a cloudy sunset. No breathtaking palette here this time. The neighbors were chatting, seated level in their sandy beach chairs. A stray cicada came to inspect us, clearly wanting to bump into us but settled on singing its chainsaw song beneath the pagoda then flew away. One of us smoked. Two of us drank. I didn’t add much because I was feeling like a kid on a late summer night who should probably be off catching lightning bugs. It rained on us some though the sky was patchy, the water was surprising. None of us moved. I speak for the council when I say the little water was welcome.

Universe, Fingerpaints.

26 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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aliens, border, cars, children, dream, fingerpaints, fishing, Hoya, justice, life, music, ocean, peace, potted plant, questions, rain, son, sunrise, Universe, writing

I wake up at 0400, I don’t know why.

My Hoya plant climbs and changes direction all day, pushing out leaves that start out maroon then turn green, looking for something cling to, I guess, but I don’t know how. They don’t care why.

Somebody’s gorgeous, imperfect black Mercedes 350 D sits in the parking lot, and I don’t know who it belongs to. Should I do penance for coveting?

I had a dream and you were in it and I was awful to you. Should I apologize?

My son shivers under a pile of covers every few weeks and nobody knows how to fix him. When will we find the answer?

Who will tend our nerves and muscle, spine and hips, and tell them stand down, the money has come, go and get well, healthcare has come?

What does an unaching body feel like?

Where does music come from?

Why are those finger-sized fishes jumping out of the bay into the air?

Where did my pouch of flash drives go?

What will my next best writing look like, and who will tell me “Yes, we want this.”

Are you the one tapping on my window at night when it rains, sounding like somebody is dropping berries onto my windowsill from the roof in the middle of the night?

Who’s going to put all this stuff away, and wash laundry, and take the garbage out, and pay bills, and wash the car?

Does anyone else hate the fact that Greenie’s is gone and wonder what will replace that beach bar that the mayor said yeah that was nice but it’s time to move on?

How many children are still without their parents at the border and will they ever see them again?

Peace in our time?

Are aliens shunning us?

Who made the first fishing net?

I dunno.   It’s all just Universe painting, I guess.  Meanwhile….who can think with all this going on…  20180926_070410

I Want

21 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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give, memorial, ocean, pepperoni pizza, rain, want, wave

I want to stop dreaming about that place where I used to work. I don’t want to remember that place, their faces, and the stress I brought home.

I want to look inside every apartment here and see where their cats and dogs live, what books do they keep, what furniture they’ve arranged in this small space where they live in between here and shipping out.

I want a week of rain, overcast, gray, dripping. I want a week of rain all the time. Nobody else wants this.

I want pepperoni pizza, but it has to look and taste like the kind we had in Flushing, small pepperonis, cupping the grease, crammed atop the cheese, a flavor and texture found nowhere else. My brother knows what this means.

I want the job I applied for so I can see many faces and rise to the challenge of helping with a smile and you go away feeling like nobody else mattered but you.

I want to write about the National Memorial For Peace & Justice in a way that has nothing to do with me, but I can’t figure out a way. Yet.

I want to find my pouch of flash drives and SanDisks that I lost somewhere so I can recover memories, my crappy writing, my happiness, my sanity, my everything, but I know that’s not to be.

I want my friend back, and my Dad back, but only if they’re not angry anymore.

I want to write about those ladies and their kids playing in the ocean who clearly had other ideas about staying dry, but I haven’t figured out the right words yet.

My windows are open tonight, a/c off and fan still.  The air is cool, finally.  This writing thing is coming back to me, finally. The plan is to heat up a sweet potato and broccoli and some rice, NYPD Blue in the background.  The plan is to stay wide open to everything that comes to me, and to approach my bed tired, a prayer, and deep breathing, hoping to be empty so sleep will be full and lengthy.

I have a thing about people who are all about “I want I want I want.” I get aggravated by their “me me me.” But then, everybody wants.  It’s not wrong to feel a need and a want.  My wants and your wants may never meet, but I want to know and understand.  That’s where give comes along and lights a candle and puts “give” into motion.

If you are prepared to stand in the knock you over ocean, naked, then you are prepared for “I want, but let me give you what you need.”

Give someone what they need, and enjoy the wants you receive when it comes.

Never Satisfied

09 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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alive, birds, life, living, rain, Saffron Queen

No rain in sight.  I keep wishing for some more rain.  We had a little a few days ago. It comes down heavy and passes quickly.  Man, I’m wishing for a long week of overcast rain. I’m the only fool who thinks that way, I mean, who the heck wants a week of rain in the summer at the beach? Killjoy, they would call me. Meh, that’s all right.  I want rain.  And a very small part of me wants a thunderstorm because the light and the boom and the southern driven rain helps me feel alive.

The Saffron Queen loved watching the tube, especially creepy, twisted horror series. She loved a good horror flick.  She said there was nothing like a scary movie to make the pulse race, a jump-scare to make you feel alive.  I never did go with her to the scary movies she wanted to see. In fact, she never did go, either with her spouse or on her own.  I loaned her one of my few scary movies that she never watched, in favor of streaming what was already on TV. I had hoped we could watch it together, but she showed no interest.

I lean on the balcony rail and study the grass the landlord is desperately trying to regrow ever since he tore up the original grass two years ago. It’s never come back to life no matter how the groundsman seeds and waters and fertilizes. The robins are fine with it because they find worms aplenty. I watch the sprinkler that sends water so far and so high that if a tenant came out their door at just the right time they would be more than sprinkled and more than unhappy at being doused, but boy they sure would feel alive.  I look down the patio and see that all the plants have been dug up and tossed aside in favor of a cement statue area the landlord wanted. I wonder if he will replant the yucca and black eyed susans that the birds loved to balance on?

It hasn’t rained and it probably won’t rain to suit me today or tomorrow or the next.  The question is, why do I need to stand outside in a downpour to feel alive?  What’s wrong with being alive is enough, why ain’t that good enough?  Yeah… I’ll get back to you on that.

Rain, Wet, Random, Writing

29 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, family, rain

Ope! There she is. Told you she’d show up, didn’t I?  Acts like she never heard rain before. What a weirdo. 

I’m not sure what woke me. Could be heartburn, my hip smarting, or another hot flash, but I’m pretty sure it was the rain tapping gently on the leaves outside my bedroom window that I keep open just a crack so I can hear the world. I stuffed myself into yesterday’s jeans and a soft baja shirt that I’ve had forever (you know, from that time we drove home from Orlando) and walked barefoot onto the dark balcony to see the silhouette of the rain in the courtyard lights. The rain comes in waves, mostly gentle but when it comes down hard I love the sound of it on the roof, and I walk outside to witness its immanence, wishing I heard it on a tin roof, the roof we talked about, the one we wanted, the one I remembered when I was a little girl and sometimes wish for.

When we visited Mom Mom and Pop Pop, we slept upstairs in the beds their daughters slept in, brown hospital beds we approached on ancient tiles with patterns we don’t see anymore, barefoot creaky floors, we slipped beneath crisp sheets and ancient quilts, beds separated by a large window fan, the kind of fan that would kill a man if you stuck your hand too close and we learned and never forgot the sound of that fan that sounded like an airplane taking off that could take off your hand but they turned off the fan while we slept upstairs in the bed mom slept in when she was a girl.  And I heard the rain on the aluminum valances outside the windows and fell in love with the rain and the roof and the secret bed and blankets and quilts.

We moved to a new building in the middle of nowhere surrounded by low mountains that afforded views upon meadows and ponds for the wealthy. I left my cubicle seat for the low, wide windows to watch the rain pouring down in the parking lot, heavy, jumping up from the asphalt up into wheel wells, cratering the ground, the sound of the heavy rain on the roof, I could not resist, I dropped everything to go to the window or the door and watch the heavy rain fall and hear its sound on us all while everyone faced their screens and typed things that mattered in that moment. I acted like a woman who’d never seen it rain before.

When the rain comes hard I want to see. I want to hear. I don’t know why, and maybe I don’t need to know why. I just know it comforts me. It makes me feel. It stimulates “being.”

Meanwhile, since the sun has risen in soggy boots, they are emptying the crazy dog-lady’s apartment of the garbage she left behind, one box and bag at a time.  My Aunt is fighting nature’s gravity. My neighbors wonder what’s become of me. And he asked me to write a sci-fi story and I will finish it or be damned.  My plants move and redden silently, my candle burns sage while I write in darkness into overcast light.  I am a fool. I make mistakes. I am imperfect and unlearned, but I am not giving up, not as long as I wear an olive drab shirt that says “Marines” in black that tells me to fight and a leather necklace with ceramic beads sporting Victorian roses which asks me to bring peace.  I will lean into furious rain. I will learn to love and let go of hate. I will write old things, probably, and maybe somebody will like it. My world works better when I am wet.

March 16 dreams

17 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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bird, dream, order, rain

Long walk through ravine
Deep in shushing dry leaves
Stegosaurus chalked on the walls
Whose hands made these?
*Calling the cops on a man who captured his wife
Put her in a collar and staked her to the ground
Call the cops but where am I?
What is the address? The address? The address?
Breathe.
But then she was gone, and I offered to clean up his mess
*Old sheds made of stone and dirt foundations
Sweeping dirt and leaves, broken glass
Because I wanted to help
Magazines piled and filed, labeled in boxes
But I wanted to help
Teaching my Littleson, crouched on the floor
What order means.
*Running outside in a light summer rain
Granite sky shifting,
Barefoot on driveway rocks running
Following the black bird but bird means small
Black creature too big to fly perched in a tree
I just wanted to see, but he is hid.
*His kiss was lipless and unpresent
No matter how hard I pressed
I put a condom on him that I pulled from my mattress
But he said
No
No
No
Like that Winehouse song,
so I left him and dressed and ran outside in the rain.
Barefoot in a dusty parking lot,
A mosquito riot, I can’t breathe.
A convenient store, they knew what I was there for.
I picked through magazines, listening to a mother not complain
About her baby who was trying not to die.

Wild Dream, Carry Me Away

17 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

dream, rain

Good morning. So I turned in early last night, another long cold night of listening to silence broken only by an occasional door slam or a little dog barking. If I listened really hard through the raining bells of tinnitus, I could hear through the wall of my neighbors, the rhythm of their talking. Real communicating about who knows what, but at least it was speech and not the chaotic sounds of television.

I woke. I sat up and looked out the window into what seemed like an enormous spotlight:  the moon!  So big and bright, could bright light be enough to wake me?  I felt a little disoriented and thirsty so I drank. I was tempted to take a picture of her, but it was cold so I curled up in soft socks, sheets, and blankets, ready to take on the remainder of the night.

The dream felt familiar. I know this one. The one where we are all running for our lives because something is coming, only this time it was not Godzilla or a tornado. This time we were running from a bomb that North Korea launched at us.  Most of the dream was running, the kind that you know you’re not going fast enough, it’s going to be a close call–if at all– no time to look back and make sure we’re all still together, the building, the concrete block of structure that offered “shelter,” would it be enough, and would it be in time?  We made it inside. We ducked and covered.  We rode out the terror of the bomb, the explosion, the world-ending noise, the vibration of the walls now falling down on us. From inside my eyes I could see the tip of the missile, its trajectory, the dull brown grass that surrounded us, soon to be obliterated. But this is how you know it was a dream, because there was no heat. No smoke. And we survived.

We dug ourselves out and left the shelter to see what was left. And it was all desert grassland, horses and cows running wild, free from perimeters.  LBFTs, and the ground opened up to a swarm of insects. They were not locusts, more like metallic black beetles of all sizes. Then it began to rain. We were running through the rain focused on our footsteps in the shaggy grassland.

A Morning for Wonder

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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brother, morning, ocean, rain, son, sunrise, wonder

I awoke to the sound of the sky changing color.  I almost set my alarm clock to give me just 15 minutes more, but instead I swung legs over the bed and dressed in the dark, eyes half-glued shut.  My favorite weather app tells me it will begin to rain in 8 minutes, and I decide to wear my hoodie instead of a rain jacket, it’s warmer after all, and what does an app really know, anyway?

I believe the sun lured me out of bed this morning with a little dare. He said, “If you come for a walk I will show you something that will make you glad.”  I hustled down to the sand looking for ocean and there it was, right where I left it. I turned east, looking for Juliet, and the sun let a few wide bands of gossamer, in rose, come through the clouds. I stood still, and I know for sure the sun said, “See? Aren’t you glad?”

I trespassed ten steps through Werner’s sand (you know he loves his fences and his signs), keeping my eye on the sunrise but it faded rapidly.  The 10th street stairs haven’t been repaired from the hungry bite of hurricane Matthew. When did this graffiti arrive on the hanging wood, and why hadn’t I noticed it before?  Six large flocks of crows flew past heading northwest. I wonder why.  And it begins to rain.  I think of the chores I have this morning, and the spell of the sun is broken.

I am typing in a dark apartment waiting for the bathroom to warm up.  My hoodie hangs from a hook on the door, soaked.  It sounds like a creature has come to live in the ceiling above my kitchen. Perhaps he or she thought it was a good time to move in while I was gone. Meanwhile, in the back bay, the soaking flag clings to its white pole trying to escape the cold rain.  A mountain-sized bee has been sounding the bay, but it has gone quiet now.  No other sounds but little laptop typing, no light but what the sun can give behind thick layers of gray sky. I wonder if I will feel a door slam soon and will I embrace it as proof of life and let it go with a smile, or will I greet it with rolling eyes and gritted jaw, proof that I just can’t let things go.   I wonder when I will reply to my brother’s email, another ocean I must cross. I wonder if my wax plant will continue to thrive since I had to give it a new place to grow.  I wonder when I will finish reading that book, and what will I do with the notes I’ve been taking, or will I leave it unfinished because I never want it to end?   What will I do with the word “transformation?” It’s everywhere now, unleaving me like the soundtrack for Red October that’s been playing in my head for weeks.  Well.  I couldn’t ask for a better sound in my head while getting things done.  My son would approve.

Gifts From Pain

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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death, dog, pain, rain, sorting

Somewhere out there a red doberman’s bones rest in the deep woods. He lies beneath the mouldy-scented earth made from ancient maples, oaks, and silt from the overflowing creek.  His master put a bullet in his brain and buried him there. Last night I wondered if he leashed him to a tree to do the deed?  I wondered why he taught his dogs to taunt and terrify a caged raccoon, how could this sport be justified?  My father held me while I cried so hard. And then I wondered why he came to my father’s funeral when he assured us he would not because he does not attend those kinds of things. Yet in he walked with them, the aged Con-Ed gang, fugitives from a ghost gallery, clinging together, this group of men whose names I heard all my life. I wonder if he remembers his dog in the middle of the night.

The whales came early and the wind has returned. Ten knots and rising.  The rain is apparent on the roof. Sunrise two hours ahead.  I played with a black doberman and his buddy the red on the beach today, then I lay in bed for hours tonight curled in a ball waiting for the pain to stop, then suddenly asked myself what kind of dignified woman just lies there and takes it? How is lying there hoping the pain will stop anytime now wise or mature, like it’s my job and responsibility to suffer? Or all those nights I couldn’t breathe, stubborn in the belief that me and my clogged bronchi would fight through it without need of a chemical and everything would be just fine. I mean, oxygen isn’t that important for good sleep, am I right?  I have a right to breathe, and I have a right to sleep without pain. (Oh, and the list doesn’t end there.)  Tonight I couldn’t sleep thinking about dignity, the first time I heard that word and what it means to me now. It’s hard to sleep when the walls are breaking, when the past is shedding, flowing away into a cold, rainy, beautiful night, so I got up to write.

Somewhere out there a broken bone is mending, the body sleeps in a cozy and needed bed of opiate. I asked him to feed his mind/body/soul with all good things for healing. He hears me in a fuzzy kind of way, and I know the rest is up to him. I wonder when he will hear the word dignity and truly heed its meaning and make it his own.  It’s not a despairing kind of wonder, because I know it will fall on him the way things fall on me in the middle of the night. So. I will take two Tylenol, my own advice, then see what kind of day I will make for me. Damn that wind is high.

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