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Tag Archives: the Doors

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

Holy Morning

03 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, awake, brother, Crystal Ship, headphones, James Douglas Morrison, morning, ocean, Ray Manzarek, son, sorting, sunrise, the Doors

Abruptly awakened
(charley horse and other reasons I rose before I was ready,
remembering a dream of sorting legos with my son and baby brother)
I dress in the dark and remember that I have headphones
and it’s the first time in weeks I can motor

down to the beach in cold flip flops armored in Carhart, otherwise
I crest the dune and come down into the beach and see a gull, torn.
Omen she is, she tells me ‘Ware, what you seek you will find here”
I take up the dare and keep walking, wiggling cold grains from my soles
giving up once I arrive at The Place.

I turn east and study the horizon with “The Crystal Ship”
absorbing me–that piano–one hand, now two
never heard anything so beautiful
god why can’t I do that
he croons effortlessly and the water has not come to hear him
It’s only for me and a wish of you, I suppose…
The orb rises behind thick clouds
I’ve seen the water mirror but not this morn
Small waves rise up and comb the shore though I cannot hear them
drowned out by Jim and Dionysus
(another flashing chance at bliss another kiss, a nother kiss)
Should I read what I wrote so long ago?

The trance is broken by dog-walkers, neighbors, sweet and kind.
Sweaty headphones off now for momma raised me right,
thou shalt not be rude to thy neighbors

I don’t need a reason why.
I am awake and alive
purple ink on my wrist
candle burning
it is morning
I am writing.
(rejoice. delicate.)

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?  

Blessed Commotion

29 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

Aztec art, birds, blessings, commotion, life, Michael Shannon, music, season, the Doors

gray morning 5:30
take it slow
purple ink on my writing finger
scribbled notes on junk mail
some important message needs decoding
something about Friday melanoma (again)

Michael Shannon sings with a band
I think he wants to be Jim Morrison
an Aztec frieze of fearsome teeth and feathers
neck bent, back bent, knees bent
hearing the secret, being the ceremony
sweat
becoming
apart
receiving
transmutation connection
high-five.

what feathers can I be on this soupy morning?
mmm. I shall wear a blanket of all of you,
an Aztec frieze of fearsome teeth and feathers
that I plucked when you invaded the sparrows nest
brown brood barely able to fly hiding on the shed nearby
neath the tree some might call a weed but full of green
shade and safe from blue jay, osprey
cardinal witnesses the catbird wanting to infiltrate
and the raven–I heard the raven’s feet touch the lamp
when it landed and croaked, wanting fledgling meat
vulnerable, but he was late to the show.

feathers for my blanket made of attempted murder
a witness, an empty nest,
red, blue, black, brown, white
Coffee on the way to the job, I’m late (again)

Upon Finding The Dragon’s Egg

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

amwriting, beach, dragon, egg, fear, Jim Morrison, ocean, pain, poetry, prompt, the Doors, weather

I awoke abruptly, squintingly, because the sun peered in my bedroom window, an alarm my body cannot refuse. Strange sun, Jim Morrison said in his notebook poem, and I opened my door after I put clothes on (but not shoes because no one needs shoes to walk from the balcony to the cool beach sand that was not far away.)  Strange sun well-riz on my right also known as East, the train of cool blue dawn retreated into the distance, laughing gulls squeaked overhead and moved on instead of making their usual mocking laughter from the breakwater that sounds like children a mile away calling out for help because they are drowning.

I walk barefoot on a beach where I found seashells in all stages of their lives tossed on the shingle by an uncaring sea, but all those shells and emerald mermaid’s hair wafting in the tidal pools are gone.  The Army Corps of Engineers came and did one heck of a job building up this little spit of land that had been slowly reclaimed by the ocean one winter storm, one summer hurricane at a time and now my feet trod sand the size of peppercorns instead of soft, creamy quartsy silt I fell in love with, all those tidal pools gone.  I am grateful yet disoriented. Strange.

So this morning I woke and walked and found the dragon’s egg. Should come as no surprise to anyone because the system that came from the west moved in and brought us a week of rain and a night of high wind, fearsome wind too early for hurricane but made us reach for our batteries and bottled water anyway.  I plucked the egg from the sand poor thing blown from her nest, abandoned, knowing that’s the worst thing I could possibly do but when did I ever abide by the rules, and I held it in my hand wondering what could I possibly do?  And then the shell broke, the creamy satin shell broke open and spilled out venom all over my hand and it hurt like the sting of a bee that begins slowly and takes over your interstitial fluids and spreads out and swells because it really, really, does not want you to be offending it yet you have by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are paying for your transgression. I held the dragon’s egg, seeping fluids hurting so much, but my pride kept me from screaming so I ran down and into the cold, cold water and submerged me and the egg hoping the pain would ebb.  The silken shell stuck to my hand. The venom came forth like a ginger lady’s tresses, Rapunzel-like, then dissipated in the brine. The shell dissolved and my pain dissolved too as I panted hopping foot to foot hoping not to step on a skate just going about his business.

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