Small Story Sunday

There are very few places today where you can sing as loud as you want.

My sister and I were brushing shoulders as we reached to fill our plastic containers with strawberries from the neighbor's garden. I was surprised to find so many ready, red, ripe. June this year brought with it a lot of rain and very little sun; "A low season, a real pain in the ass.." The Farmers trail off as they walk through wet fields, gathering moldering hay into piles with rakes and tractors. They lean down with matches and gasoline, watching as their march, april, and may turns its atoms into ash. One thousand dollars in ten minutes.
But nothing can lesson the sweet of the first strawberry of summer, and my sister and I are almost dancing with our hands, happy to be outside in cut off jeans and flowers in our hair (weeds from the ditches but we don't care, they are orange, blue!) - we lift leaves to reveal each fruit, a tiny world caught up there, and in each seed another tiny world. Each seed must lead potentially to another, and I am almost dizzy for a moment with the weight of it all. Picking one, I hold it in my hand and for a moment, I hold one thousand worlds. --And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

Tomorrow I lose my wisdom, teeth. I think I sentimentally attach to things and dates and places. (Don't we all? Maybe I am being selfish with that analysis..) Anyways, they have spent so much time with me; hiding snug along my jaw line somewhere, waiting to make their move all these years. For some reason I think that I will be different tomorrow, after the surgery. I really do. I'm clinging onto my last remaining physicality of childhood. No more ducking around the question of adulthood. As of tomorrow its a Statement. A downright Assertion. My friend Michael, who is currently 100 miles from the Oregon-Idaho border, assures me that I am being overly sentimental. He assures me of a lot of things actually, whether or not he is aware of it. Primarily, that it is possible to live a life like the ones we read about in english class. (He walked to his current location from Canby, by the way, and he plans to continue on until he reaches Nebraska.) I guess the lives we all read about in English class all have one thing in common: A climactic point where the protagonist addresses a challenge or solves a question.
Tomorrow this protagonist does one of these things, or both.
To dentistry, friends.
Cheers.

Drawing a Blank

I'm still alive, I promise.

Congratulations to the Graduates whom I love. Namely Bai, her best friendy Kayla (who is joining me at spu next year!) and you too, tyler! 

Sister of mine, you are such a stable, hardworking woman. I love the way we talk with each other, your ability to forgive my nerdly jokes, and the way you care about your family. Your a bombshell, one of the prettiest girls I have ever known/seen. I wish you would come make your life with me in Seattle but you have things to do, other places to see. I am so excited to hear about the FFA adventures that are coming your way this year. ah life! love! ces't la vie!

Small Town Wave

A crane fly is climbing across my computer screen as I type this. In the spirit of summer I opt to let it live: there is a Mr. Crane Fly anxiously awaiting her return somewhere out there, I'm sure. This fits in smoothly with my midnight conversation over the last several hours. Dear Friend on the trampoline, that was really nice. But you seem to just have your heart set on that Mrs. Crane Fly, don't you? We are so different.
Its too bad that for all either of us know, She is out there climbing across someone else's computer screen tonight.
And Dear Friend in the driveway, I know I just needed to listen to what you were saying. And I did, I did in the spirit of summer and the type of me-to-you connection we keep up over the 300 miles that usually span the distance between my bed and yours. For the next three months we've simplified that number to a prime three. I don't think that equation works out correctly, but math was never our best subject.
Either way I pray that God sends a few of the right things to say in my direction - however let me be anything but super-fixer-upper-friend. I'm a James Taylor type Handyman, give me your situation and I'll give my two cents and a year-long down payment.

And who wants that?

And who wants to read a blog that starts and ends with ungrammatical conjunctions, strangely hyphenated nouns, and loosely-tied-sentimental-metaphors?
A Mr. Crane Fly, hopefully.

Last year's poem.

(Found this on some paper scraps initially supposed to be used for kid's scribbles at a past church service today. going to write it on here so I don't lose it in the summer -moving-mess. Looking forward to: sunrise hike at little Si in a few hours.)

Oh, how the leaves have to burn before they
 fall
        fall
                fall
But you don't weep for the leaves on the tree so please. don't. weep.
for me.

Driving past the road between your house and mine,
watching as the clouds fill up the sky.
The sparrow spins the heron beats his drum,
Sing! the last lingerings of the sun.

This year ghosts have haunted
the corner of my eye;
Too dark, subtle shifting for the daylight.
There is something in the way they move..

.. I know I have no time to lose
But when I turn my head, they're gone gone gone again.

Midnight Revelation

There's a window, and there's God, and there's me.

But I am very lucky, I think, because this window has a latch and Someone already opened it for this brown-eyed girl. And the outside air just smells so good.