Pennywise OR Old hearts pounding pavements

She passed me on the run,

her soles were pink,

her socks were purple

and her shorts were black and white.

Her legs were tanned and bare

and her shoulders, also two – bare too –

and above it all, her light red hair

tied up in a bobbing pony tail,

keeping quick time like a coppery pendulum,

swinging and swaying –

tick tock –

tick tock.

But, alas, the time that the young woman kept

was time she kept not for me.

There were some wires curling out

of both her ears,

but there was no smoke nor fire

that I could see.

Still she hastened away from me

and as I reached down deep into my pocket

for my electronic device, I could find

no settings to tune her back in

to my much older wavelength.

And then when I looked back up, peering,

her pink soles had run keen out of sight.

Quickly I walked, at least for me,

I looked both ways at the corner.

I looked to the left

and I looked to the right.

No flashing pink soles

did I see bouncing up and down

nor down and back up.

No purple socks,

nor pendulum pony tail -

no nothing but cracked and empty concrete sidewalks.

So with my eyes still searching high and low,

and once or twice more low and high,

I stepped off of the curb.

Alack! I abruptly came to a halt

in front of a honking speeding, silver sedan.

The hurtling car missed me by ten or twenty feet,

but still my heart dropped, still pounding,

and when I bent to the pavement to pick it up I saw

that it was only a copper penny

lost carelessly in the street.

The penny had been darkened with age

and honest Abe was as simply speechless as I was.

But in these times, a penny is insufficient payment,

my heart too old for skipping beats,

my life flickering - not flashing - before my squinting eyes,

and not least –

no sight of her vanishing pony tail marking my time.

Her shoulders were bare,

her two legs were running out of my sight,

but her pony tail still beating steadily in my mind -

I wondered how could she have passed me by so easily?

I tried to put the penny in the meter

but they only wanted nickels and dimes

and at a quarter to two, or shortly thereafter,

it appeared that my time was finally running out.

No other choice did I see,

I had looked too many times in vain,

so I just put the penny in my pocket.

Tomorrow, after all, might be a rainy day.

Though if the sun comes around shining

there will likely be another woman running,

they come along like clockwork

but not quite as often as buses anymore.

Still it’s probably too soon or too late

to not step in front of one or the other.

Not the buses and cars do I mean,

though I certainly won’t miss their rumble and belching

when they’re gone.

But after all is said, something must be done,

and you’re finally ready to stop, look, and listen,

here’s my simple untimely advice:

Look to the right and look to the left,

and pay dearest heed to what is right in front of you.

Her soles will be pink,

her socks will be purple,

her shorts will be black and white,

and bare shoulders or not,

her legs will be running,

her pony tail will be marking the time.

Coming and going on the midnight train

All of my posts are personal in the sense that they are my voice and they say something about me. This one is personal in a different way. I am posting a video/slideshow of a day with Dawn and my very good friends. No great intimacy has been harmed in the making of this film. Well, if you know the people, there might be some interesting details to tell. But not without their permission - you could ask them - or me - for yourself.

I suggest that you click on the link to Alison Krauss's YouTube in a separate window and then the link to GaFrDaBe. You can listen to her and watch my little film at the same time. You'll have to work around the ads and the videos won't time out perfectly. But we did go down to the river. And there are other correlations. Or you could just listen to Alison Krause and watch her sing. You know - you might do both - apart - together - more - or less. It's up to you.

The four of us chose to become friends more than thirty years ago. We didn't have to remain connected - they have been living in Germany and Switzerland. I'm not entirely sure how our friendship happened - and continues. We did make some choices - but not all of them.

The randomness of the universe creates interesting possibilities. We saw them off on the midnight train. They had a sleeper car and the conductor shushed us as we waved and hollered goodbye through the open door window as the Amtrak Super Chief began to pull out of the Lawrence station heading west. Apparently the people in car 330 were trying to sleep.

Memories and mystery remain.

As always, I am open to a conversation. If you leave questions in the comments section I will try to answer myself - there or in a private message.

As I go down to the river to the river ...

GaFrDaBe

Now let us have a little talk with ...

The morning had broken a clear blue and I stepped outside to put on my gardening shoes. There were sunflowers and moonflowers to thin in the front bed and weeds to pull. The sun was warm and rising higher into the sky. In time I began to shed my extra flannel shirts. I mostly kneeled in the soft soil, pulling up plants and tossing them into a five gallon bucket. I was in no hurry and I didn’t feel alone. Gardening can be an easy time to think about people that I care about.

And then I recalled a young woman from the other day and a conversation unfinished. There’s rarely time for more than a word or two while she’s working at the coffee shop. We were talking about loneliness – about someone that she knew who was learning to live alone. She told me that you can always talk with Jesus.

Now I haven’t spoken much in my native religious tongue in a long, long time. There is too much dissonance in my mind between the words and the tunes. I would just rather talk with a barista close enough to touch – but actually just glancing into each other’s eyes from time to time. Her very audible voice almost sounds in my ears before it reaches my mind and then lodges in my soul. I think that I still have a soul – whatever you want to call it. And then, that morning in my garden, there she was, close in my mind. You should know that I have a mind full of memories. And some of the old songs still resonate.

And then - then there was this. I only remembered just the one line from somewhere within me. A deep bass voice singing up from the depths: “Now let us have a little talk with Jesus, and da da da da dah.” And then I supposed that what happened after was only a bit of randomness. It wasn’t as if it was the very next instant or anything like that. But a yellow swallowtail landed among the moonflowers almost close enough to touch. I could have spoken my heart’s desire in that moment. It might have been a prayer. The wings of that yellow swallowtail beat almost in time with my heart. I didn’t feel alone.

Then the butterfly and whatever possible spirit fluttered off and I eventually finished my tasks for the morning. After lunch and a nap, I would walk to the river. And on my way home, I would stop at a coffee shop and have a little talk with a barista. I’ll give her some of my extra moonflowers if she wants them.

So sing it again for me, Willie. And thank you for listening. Sometimes the people who listen to what I have to say are the next best thing to a Great Spirit or a Creator of the Universe. These are merely the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart, after all. And perhaps I’m imagining things - but not that yellow swallowtail butterfly. If I lift up mine eyes, I see patterns of beauty and life enduring – if not forever.

I don’t feel alone.

YouTube - Willie Nelson sings ...

Watching a mobile in a coffee shop

The shapes, the colors.

I was watching as you turned your attention.

And then the wind blows its breath.

The light catches the face of a card

hanging from a wire bent just so.

A face.

It’s just a cutout cardboard image –

a reproduction of a painting –

a portrait of a woman reading.

She’s not looking at me.

She wasn’t looking at the artist

when he was painting her a hundred years ago.

Maybe it was longer.

Her eyes turned down.

You turned your attention.

I couldn’t see behind your eyes.

A shape, a color.

What thoughts dance between us?

Cardboard cards dance in the wind,

the light catches your face.

The woman reading on the postcards,

cut out in rectangles

without one fluttering an eyelash.

An eyelash catches my attention.

A shadow on the wall or one lightly on your cheek.

And then I turn towards you for a moment.

That’s all it was ever going to be.

There were colors.

Shapes.

You turned between the counters in the afternoon.

That you saw me once in a hundred years

will have to be enough.

I might remember that your hair

was pulled back in a braid just so.

I drank iced tea.

If you have time, give Colin Hay a listen - just a YouTube away

Reading women mobile - YouTube - 1 minute

Ice water is future tea and other circular nonsense

 

I walked into a coffee shop and found myself sitting on a bar stool at the counter.

‘Weren’t you here yesterday? I said to the older man with a big nose and a ruddy complexion.

‘That was your former self,’ he said.

‘Well, who are you now? I said.

‘Actually, I was wondering almost the very same thing when you walked in,’ he said.

‘How about if I join you?’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he said, as I sat down on a bar stool at the counter.

Together, we lifted our empty glass and asked the barista for our refill of our regular currant iced tea.

‘Weren’t you here yesterday?’ she said.

‘Anything’s possible. Have we met? I said.

‘That’s what you said yesterday,’ she said as she set a full glass of iced tea on the counter in front of me.

‘Was I with anyone else?’ I said.

‘Well, it looked almost as if you were talking to yourself.’ She smiled.

That smile. I remembered that smile. Some things are unforgettable. Like her smile.

And that’s when I suddenly realized where I was. I was sitting on a bar stool at the counter at my regular coffee shop drinking my regular iced tea. Or the currant iced tea. Iced tea is iced tea, after all.

The bell over the front door dinged and I looked up from where I was drinking my iced tea to see who it was.

I laughed.

I saw a man with a big nose and a ruddy complexion coming through the door who looked a lot like me. I wondered if he knew who I was.


Card Mobile - Women Readers - May 2017 - Aimee's Cafe and Coffee House - 1 min video

One man's wondering view from the counter at Aimee's

What do you say to an eight year old girl?

What do you say to an eight year old girl?

You’re swinging alone on the swings at

New York Elementary School.

Not too high, just slightly back and forth,

slightly up and down.

You have an old man’s stomach.

Kids are running around.

Balls are being kicked,

bounced.

A boy dodges this way.

Another slides on the ground feet first.

A girl’s shoe laces cross over and skip.

They’re making up most of the rules

as they go.

And then you see a girl running towards you.

Her coat is unzipped, 

flapping.

Her hair is flying.

She’s a blur.

And then she’s sitting in the empty swing 

next to you.

She tells you, go higher.

Go higher, she tells you.

You look for words.

You try to tell her,

It doesn’t quite make my stomach lurch,

It doesn’t quite make my stomach queasy,

but it does quite make my stomach uneasy.

She laughs at ‘uneasy.’

Quite.

Then she kicks her feet and swings.

Higher and higher she swings.

Her coat flaps.

Her hair flies.

She’s a blur.

And then you pull on the chains.

Higher you go.

You can’t bend your knees,

the ground beneath your feet is too close.

But you pull on the chains and go higher –

still higher you go.

What do you say to an eight year old girl?

You say woo.

Woooooo.

Woooooo.

Woooooo.

The secret of happiness?

I was walking through South Park on Sunday afternoon. The sun was shining. The temperature was so close to what you would expect near the end of April that you would have to say that it was perfect. It wasn’t windy – to speak of.

But the Roosevelt Fountain wasn’t working as it should. It wasn’t burbling. Maybe it was clogged with leaves or something. And so a middling pool of water had formed around its base. Maybe at its deepest it was three inches deep.

But two little kids were enjoying life as they found it – wading and splashing in the pool. One little girl looked up at me as I approached and smiled at me. “You have to take your shoes off," she said.

I didn’t stop to explain to her that happiness is not as simple as that. Something is clogging up my brain these days and the normal fountain of my mind isn’t burbling the way that it should. I just walked on.

But when you have your health, and you can manage to ignore the climate changing cars spewing their exhaust on Massachusetts St., and you can overlook the selfish folks and their greedy interests in high places, and you can try to forget about the sad cardboard signs along the sidewalk ahead of you that indicate that life is passing some people by, all that may be left for you is to simply enjoy life where you are. And sometimes you will just have to take your shoes off.

It’s not as if we grown ups have much more power than that little girl to make the whole world all right again. We should do what we can do. But then perhaps it’s time for us to pretend that we’re youthful again. We might just feel the feeling of the fullness of water around our toes. We might feel the happiness we can feel in the moment.

And maybe next week, we could venture off the sidewalk and try walking on the green grass in our bare feet. Who knows? It might not be very much happiness, but that little girl probably knows something we’ve forgotten.

You have to take your shoes off.