-2-
The finding of young garlic, small bulbs, green shoots, is on account of being a Sloppy Gardener. If you don’t dig up your fat bulbs at just the right moment after beheading their clusters of seeds nodding swanlike on a stalk, you’ll get more and more seeds, and more and more garlic and your bed will be too crowded to allow the bulbs to grow fat. But, you’ll have young garlic for ever and a day, as long as the world keeps turning.
And it’s Not My Fault I couldn’t keep up with summer’s garden. There was The Flood. And there was My Heart, marching to the beat of a different drummer.
Since Spring I’ve been in A-fib more often than not. Working in the yard I would get That Huffy Puffy Feeling and time in the lawn chair moved from equal to that in the dirt to twice as long. Also, bending over to pull a weed, or pick up a stick I would find myself light headed and dizzy. Again, the lawn chair; or better yet the lounger. Moments of pause. Finally Dr. Martins figured it out. In his office he took my blood pressure the old fashioned way, with a cuff and a stethoscope, nothing digital; and sitting a standing. The drop when moving from sitting to standing was pretty big. You’re orthostatic he said. So then we knew. Take it slow.
The finding of young garlic, small bulbs, green shoots, is on account of being a Sloppy Gardener. If you don’t dig up your fat bulbs at just the right moment after beheading their clusters of seeds nodding swanlike on a stalk, you’ll get more and more seeds, and more and more garlic and your bed will be too crowded to allow the bulbs to grow fat. But, you’ll have young garlic for ever and a day, as long as the world keeps turning.
And it’s Not My Fault I couldn’t keep up with summer’s garden. There was The Flood. And there was My Heart, marching to the beat of a different drummer.
Since Spring I’ve been in A-fib more often than not. Working in the yard I would get That Huffy Puffy Feeling and time in the lawn chair moved from equal to that in the dirt to twice as long. Also, bending over to pull a weed, or pick up a stick I would find myself light headed and dizzy. Again, the lawn chair; or better yet the lounger. Moments of pause. Finally Dr. Martins figured it out. In his office he took my blood pressure the old fashioned way, with a cuff and a stethoscope, nothing digital; and sitting a standing. The drop when moving from sitting to standing was pretty big. You’re orthostatic he said. So then we knew. Take it slow.
-3-
I’m going to have an ablation on January 5th, 2009, a Monday. The date is the anniversary of the failed revolution at the Winter Palace, 1905, a Sunday, commonly known as Bloody Sunday. Grandpa Abe was there and he was shot in the leg by the Czar’s army and limped for the rest of his life.
I take the day to be auspicious.
It’s the first day Dr. Peter Brady has available and I’m glad to take it. We (+Steve, Kitty Luna and RR) will drive up to Mayo on Sunday the 4th, which is the birthday of our dear friend Marcia (OBM) (Of Blessed Memory). Again, it’s auspicious, and whether or not there is a heaven the spirit of Marcia will be watching over us. And I like the 4’s. Today is the 14th. January the 4th. Marcia was nine months to the day younger than me. The human gestation period is not really exactly nine months, but Marcia may or may not have been conceived on my birthday, 4-4. Marcia died on 2-4, one month after becoming 53. I didn’t need to tell you that. You could figure that 2-4 is one month after 1-4. Bit, if I hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t have known she died at 53.
Bernie and Colleen (of the North) or Colleen of CR) and Steve and I have grown closer since losing our mutual friend. We were all friends before but now more so, as we huddle around the empty space that was Marcia, or the warm memory that is Marcia. The hole in our hearts that is the absence of Marcia. This is a hole in our metaphorical hearts. Our physical hearts are whlole.
For the second year since Marcia’s death we will (we hope, barring blizzards or freezing drizzle) take Marcia’s mother, Joann Davis out to eat. I imagine we will go to the Greek place again, on Mt. Vernon Road, and Steve and I will each order spanakopita. I had been imagining that we’d go out to eat on Dacia’s actual birthday and then continue north on 380 to Waterloo, and then pick up 63 straight north into Rochester, but Bernie works on Sundays, so hopefully, we’ll go out to eat Saturday night, the eve of Marcia’s birthday. It will be better that way, as Steve, Luna, and RR will be able to pack up and get on the road in the afternoon, and maybe not stop until Cedar Falls/Waterloo, where we might try finding Aunt Lura, or our friend Barbara or something to eat. Waterloo is almost half way. Actually, it’s 80 or 90 miles from here, and the Mayo Clinic as of our (=a different us: J3 and RR) last transit, is 196.
-4-
I’ve been blogging since before there was a thing called a blog, or a personal computer. I write the way I talk, when I’m lucky, and I’ve been talking for nearly 57 years, which is to say, since before I was one. I will be 58 in 3 and a half months. So, yes, I’ve been talking for nearly 57 years. It really is true. Some people are tired of this talking I’ve been doing, by pen and by typewriter and by computer and right out of my mouth, and some people like it. If you don’t believe me you can ask my mother if it’s true and she will verify that she that she said to me “You could make sentences before anyone. I got my teeth late (after two). This combination led, in my teen years, to orthodonture.
There are those who say to me shutup shutup shutup already, but mostly those are not my friends. Mostly my revelatory nature, the outpouring of the words of my heart through my mouth gives permission for the other, for other people, to open their mouths and their hearts. My ears are as big as my mouth and I will listen listen listen to your heat’s song.
That’s actually a line from a song that Steve sings. In the olden days of The Singing Peace Movement, [now?], about a quarter of a century ago, when there was a peace movement full of song, Steve would , on occasion, gather us together in a circle. Reach with your right hand onto the heart of the person to your left. (Yes, across your chest and theirs. You have to skrunch together to do this.) Take your left hand, cross your chest, and hold the left hand of the person to your right. Then, all together, sing:
Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song.
I’m going to have an ablation on January 5th, 2009, a Monday. The date is the anniversary of the failed revolution at the Winter Palace, 1905, a Sunday, commonly known as Bloody Sunday. Grandpa Abe was there and he was shot in the leg by the Czar’s army and limped for the rest of his life.
I take the day to be auspicious.
It’s the first day Dr. Peter Brady has available and I’m glad to take it. We (+Steve, Kitty Luna and RR) will drive up to Mayo on Sunday the 4th, which is the birthday of our dear friend Marcia (OBM) (Of Blessed Memory). Again, it’s auspicious, and whether or not there is a heaven the spirit of Marcia will be watching over us. And I like the 4’s. Today is the 14th. January the 4th. Marcia was nine months to the day younger than me. The human gestation period is not really exactly nine months, but Marcia may or may not have been conceived on my birthday, 4-4. Marcia died on 2-4, one month after becoming 53. I didn’t need to tell you that. You could figure that 2-4 is one month after 1-4. Bit, if I hadn’t told you, you wouldn’t have known she died at 53.
Bernie and Colleen (of the North) or Colleen of CR) and Steve and I have grown closer since losing our mutual friend. We were all friends before but now more so, as we huddle around the empty space that was Marcia, or the warm memory that is Marcia. The hole in our hearts that is the absence of Marcia. This is a hole in our metaphorical hearts. Our physical hearts are whlole.
For the second year since Marcia’s death we will (we hope, barring blizzards or freezing drizzle) take Marcia’s mother, Joann Davis out to eat. I imagine we will go to the Greek place again, on Mt. Vernon Road, and Steve and I will each order spanakopita. I had been imagining that we’d go out to eat on Dacia’s actual birthday and then continue north on 380 to Waterloo, and then pick up 63 straight north into Rochester, but Bernie works on Sundays, so hopefully, we’ll go out to eat Saturday night, the eve of Marcia’s birthday. It will be better that way, as Steve, Luna, and RR will be able to pack up and get on the road in the afternoon, and maybe not stop until Cedar Falls/Waterloo, where we might try finding Aunt Lura, or our friend Barbara or something to eat. Waterloo is almost half way. Actually, it’s 80 or 90 miles from here, and the Mayo Clinic as of our (=a different us: J3 and RR) last transit, is 196.
-4-
I’ve been blogging since before there was a thing called a blog, or a personal computer. I write the way I talk, when I’m lucky, and I’ve been talking for nearly 57 years, which is to say, since before I was one. I will be 58 in 3 and a half months. So, yes, I’ve been talking for nearly 57 years. It really is true. Some people are tired of this talking I’ve been doing, by pen and by typewriter and by computer and right out of my mouth, and some people like it. If you don’t believe me you can ask my mother if it’s true and she will verify that she that she said to me “You could make sentences before anyone. I got my teeth late (after two). This combination led, in my teen years, to orthodonture.
There are those who say to me shutup shutup shutup already, but mostly those are not my friends. Mostly my revelatory nature, the outpouring of the words of my heart through my mouth gives permission for the other, for other people, to open their mouths and their hearts. My ears are as big as my mouth and I will listen listen listen to your heat’s song.
That’s actually a line from a song that Steve sings. In the olden days of The Singing Peace Movement, [now?], about a quarter of a century ago, when there was a peace movement full of song, Steve would , on occasion, gather us together in a circle. Reach with your right hand onto the heart of the person to your left. (Yes, across your chest and theirs. You have to skrunch together to do this.) Take your left hand, cross your chest, and hold the left hand of the person to your right. Then, all together, sing:
Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song.
Listen, listen, listen to my heart's song.
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.
I will never forget you, I will never forsake you.
-5-
FG wants to talk about my metaphorical Heart, and why it broke. Actually, it was my idea. No, I got it from somebody else. Who? Whatever. It's a logical thing to think about if you live in a realm of poetic logic.
But now I think my metaphorical Heart is fine and that there is actually something that happened to my physical heart that caused its beating to become irregular.
Of course, metaphorically, I have always been marching to the beat of a different drummer, so that part of the diagnosis is no surprise. And of course, I am , and have always been a Bleeding Heart Liberal, at least. So why shouldn't my heart be broken? Dan Bern, singer-songwriter, landsman (from up the road a piece) and a hero of mine, sings “Don’t let your heart get broken by this world,” but I think mind already was before I heard that song. His probably already was too, or else he wouldn’t have written a song like that, to cheerlead himself, and me , and countless other, on to functional normalcy, with our broken hearts.
Heartbreak is a normative human condition.
Heartsick make woman beautiful, Jun-San the walking Buddhist monk said, after trying to do something about Margaret. Jun-San is a woman, but she said that her Japanese Buddhist culture didn’t actually have a word for nun. So she said she was a monk. I think the translation is actually something like Cloud Person. Don’t quote me on that. But on the World Peace Walk to the UN 2nd Special Session on Disarmament, in 1982, run on Indian peace pipes, and Japanese Buddhist drums and chanted prayers, and fueled by roadkill and spilled wheat off the back of a truck on Highway 81 in Nebraska, not to be confused with the Great Peace March of 1984, in which you had to pay upfront to walk along, people started falling in love, especially after the Toronto branch hooked up with the San Francisco to New York branch in Buffalo, after crossing the Peach Bridge connecting the USA and Canada. In cynical moments I would look back at it as the Piece of Ass Walk. Or, I would look back and call the whole peace movement of the last quarter of the previous century the Piece of Ass Movement. After Buffalo, when I asked what she thought of all the romances busting out in the wonderous New York upstate air thick with the scent of flowers Jun-San said “is great, make many peace babies.”
FG wants to talk about my metaphorical Heart, and why it broke. Actually, it was my idea. No, I got it from somebody else. Who? Whatever. It's a logical thing to think about if you live in a realm of poetic logic.
But now I think my metaphorical Heart is fine and that there is actually something that happened to my physical heart that caused its beating to become irregular.
Of course, metaphorically, I have always been marching to the beat of a different drummer, so that part of the diagnosis is no surprise. And of course, I am , and have always been a Bleeding Heart Liberal, at least. So why shouldn't my heart be broken? Dan Bern, singer-songwriter, landsman (from up the road a piece) and a hero of mine, sings “Don’t let your heart get broken by this world,” but I think mind already was before I heard that song. His probably already was too, or else he wouldn’t have written a song like that, to cheerlead himself, and me , and countless other, on to functional normalcy, with our broken hearts.
Heartbreak is a normative human condition.
Heartsick make woman beautiful, Jun-San the walking Buddhist monk said, after trying to do something about Margaret. Jun-San is a woman, but she said that her Japanese Buddhist culture didn’t actually have a word for nun. So she said she was a monk. I think the translation is actually something like Cloud Person. Don’t quote me on that. But on the World Peace Walk to the UN 2nd Special Session on Disarmament, in 1982, run on Indian peace pipes, and Japanese Buddhist drums and chanted prayers, and fueled by roadkill and spilled wheat off the back of a truck on Highway 81 in Nebraska, not to be confused with the Great Peace March of 1984, in which you had to pay upfront to walk along, people started falling in love, especially after the Toronto branch hooked up with the San Francisco to New York branch in Buffalo, after crossing the Peach Bridge connecting the USA and Canada. In cynical moments I would look back at it as the Piece of Ass Walk. Or, I would look back and call the whole peace movement of the last quarter of the previous century the Piece of Ass Movement. After Buffalo, when I asked what she thought of all the romances busting out in the wonderous New York upstate air thick with the scent of flowers Jun-San said “is great, make many peace babies.”
(to be continued . . . . . )
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