WHENEVER WE LIFT THE VEIL

14 of 100

March 24th

Idrisse is outside my window taking a cement squirm and trying to catch bugs. There is no doubt that this is the kitties favorite time of year. They particularly like the evening when the bugs come out, as well as the coyotes. Very difficult to get them in. 

I am feeling a bit better today. Taking it easy and getting to sleep on the early side has helped. 

Saying that the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Ketanji Brown Jackson are a shitshow is a shallow observation, but that is what comes to mind. What should not amaze me yet continually does is the shocking lack of integrity and thought (ooo, the breeze came up and brought that beautiful scent of citrus blossoms) on the part of the Republicans. The clarity of knowledge that the majority of Congressional Republicans are only interested in power and retaining it should not be ever surprising. Continually soul-sucking good will into dismay.

(Gosh, I am on an unknown quest to write complicated sentences today?)

April 6th

Yes, time does go by.

Amazing how I can have a thought in the kitchen and have forgotten it by the time I sit to write.

Many hours later.

There were storms here while I was in Palm Springs last week. My pomegranate tree had fallen over. My yardman came over yesterday and righted it, securing it so that it is unlikely to fall over again. I had some other work done, so I walked around the backyard checking it out at my leisure (yesterday I was frantically writing my yoga class while they were working and distracting me). There are many blooms on the tree already. Last year, I got three or four pomegranates, this year it seems to be producing much more.

I can see McCoy out in back, trying to chase down a bird or a butterfly without success. The backyard is a crazy jungle.

Despite my mother's constant assertion that there are no birds anymore, they are quite noisy in my backyard. I do hope they are enjoying the greenery as much as the bees, who are in abundance in my yard. Lot of food for butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds. 

It is getting up to 95 this week. That will be good for drying clothes as we still don't have a dryer. I took Janet for a walk around 11:00 and the heat was uncomfortable for her at that hour. I guess I will have to wake up earlier to get her out. She's pretty tired when she gets home from dominoes, so it could be hard to motivate her then. However, we knew the heat was coming.

The flies are back. Damn.

When you get back from sitting in a public place for a long time only to find your clean t-shirt has an oil stain right about where your nipple is. Great feeling.

7 April

I should be writing my class for tonight. It is another hot one here, 93 now and expected to get up to 97 in the next two hours. It is raining in New York. I have to keep my trees from drying out. I am pleased to report that my Japanese maple, which I thought I had killed, is coming back. I believe I already told you that the forsythia, the black tulip magnolia, and the fig were all doing well.

Quite often on a day during which I am writing my yoga class, Fox will try to sleep on my small desk, which I need for my reference book. Since my friend Debee, in an act of amazing kindness, took it upon herself to take most of the odds and ends and half-empty boxes all over my studio floor and pile them in a corner, I can actually lay out my mat and try things on as I work through them. That sentence did not go as planned. Fox can lay on the floor was my point. Not as good as sleeping on my desk and creeping limbs onto my keyboard, but something.

I remarked on FB that had I a gun, I would like fire it into the air in celebration of Justice Jackson!! Best news any one has had for an age. Now, if we could only get Thomas replaced we would be getting somewhere. He can, at least, be close enough so that when I get up to go into the kitchen, he can quickly try to trip me. It's a good thing Janet doesn't move around quickly nor terribly often nor without her cane as he can be hazardous. His nefarious behavior is mostly centered on me.

I ran across an Emmylou (it hurt to write that name as I so miss my Emmylou) Harris compilation. Her version of the Loretta Lynn hit, Blue Kentucky Girl, has been my earworm. Could be worse.

IT IS ALMOST UNBEARABLE

that people are so different from us

whenever we lift the veil

on which lilacs are shifting

and their eyes are still there

among the gyrations and flattened

slantings of their spirits, as if

spiraling upwards through time

until they hit us and our cups

runneth over, though clear

is the liquid and bitter its taste

to our narrow tongues. And

we rejoice only for a moment

and joke for the eternity in which

we know we will never dart about

happily, for the view we lift is

our own skin, a tarp in the wind.

— Ron Padgett, How to Be Perfect, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2007

SMELL SOME COFFEE

 13 of 100

March 23

We were hoping it was just allergies, but I have a cold. 

Janet has a blood test appointment in a few minutes. She can't drink or eat anything right now. She generally doesn't like to get out of bed if she can't smell some coffee. I can relate. When I lived in Brewster, it was the smell of Martha's first cup wafting up the stairs that got me moving. 

My songs this morning toggled between Sweet Soul Music (Arthur Conley), Caravan (Van Morrison) and What A Little Moonlight Can Do (can't tell what the version is in my head but Nancy Wilson will do fine).

Vera is crouched next to me on the small footstool, probably waiting for me to feed her some more. 

I heard myself "ummming" quite a bit in class last night. Then again, sometimes I think I am fortunate that I can put any thoughts together. Writing is much easier than thinking on your feet.

Later

Today would have been a fine day to make some inroads into the many paths of activity that are my constant. However, once I got back from taking Janet to her appointment and then to today's dominoes location, I couldn't really do much save for eat lunch and try to rest. It's only 9:00 now, but I am feeling a bit feverish, just slightly hot, and if I want to beat this cold, I should just brush my teeth and get into bed.

I have been listening to Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age. Children, I am here to tell you that it is a very long book. Debby Applegate, the author, does such a stellar job of being thorough and interesting, that one finds oneself not thinking about the actual lives lived here, the working girls, the corruption all around, the disgustingness of degradation and men paying for and getting what they want without much to answer for. I am only halfway through at 8 hours. 

At any rate, to bed with my slightly feverish self. Hopefully, I will feel better in the morning and not have to cancel my class.

TELEPHONE CALL AND MAKING BREAKFAST

12 of 100

22 March 2020

As you will see, I started this post back in January and couldn't really get it finished. Nonetheless, it stays relevant (as if any of this is relevant) so a real time me will join you again subsequently.

January 20, 11:50pm

Recently, the question "What do I think I am doing?" has been on mental rotation. I am not sure I asked myself that at more appropriate moments or phases in my life when I could have maybe turned the tide towards a more successful and secure life path. Still, it does obtain as I move through the days of caregiving and unburdening myself of a life's worth of gathering burdens. I will return to this question as we all proceed.

"Did his soul change every time it achieved a new insight? The very definition of a soul was immutability. Perhaps the root of his confusion was the conflation of soul and knowledge. Perhaps the soul was one of those tools built to do exactly one specific task, to know that I am I, and was mutable with respect to all other forms of knowledge?"

— Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads, Farrar, Strauss, and Giraud, New York, 2021

"Today, urbanites must feverishly maximize their economic potential just to maintain a small flat in Hoboken, Somerville, Hackney, Korea Town or Belleville. The economy of the sixties cut us a lot of slack, leaving time to travel, take drugs, write songs and rethink the universe. There was a feeling that nothing was nailed down, that an assumption held was one worth challenging. The meek regularly took on the mighty and often won — or at least drew. Debt-free students with time on their hands forced the Pentagon to stop using drafted American kids as cannon fodder and altered the political landscape of France.

The tightening of fiscal screws that began with the 1973 oil crisis may not have been a conspiracy to rein in this dangerous laxness, but it has certainly worked out to the advantage of the powerful. Ever since, prices have ratcheted upward in relation to hours worked and the results of this squeeze can be seen everywhere. Protesters today seem like peasants outside the castle gates compared to the fiercely determined and unified crowds I joined in the sixties. Our confidence grew out of a feeling that large sections of the population — and the media — were with us and from what we saw as the inexorable power of our music and our convictions. In our glorious optimism, we believed that 'when the mode of music changes, the walls of the city shakes.'. And we achieved a great deal before the authorities figured out how to capitalized on our self-destructiveness. Right-wing commentators still spit with anger when they contemplate how fundamentally the sixties altered society. The environmental and human rights movements and the theoretical equality of the races and sexes are only the tip of a huge iceberg. Ideals that remain our source of hope for the future took root in the sixties."

— Joe Boyd, White Bicycles: Making Music in the Sixties, Serpent's Tail Press, London, 2006

14 February

Finding the mental and physical space for writing has been a bit of a challenge these last weeks. The mood has been up and down, but not terrible for any length of time. The longer days and beautiful, warm weather help quite a bit. My insomnia has abated so I am waking up at an earlier time, even if I do just stay in bed to listen to an audiobook and Nina's purring by my head.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled musings and meanderings. DId. you know that there is a Meander River? One in Alberta, Canada, too.

Lordy. I have the Carpenter's version of Superstar floating around in my head. 

This was the first comment: 

Karen was the best of all time. Pure vocal talent. No auto tune, no stage show or dancers needed to make a show. She reaches inside you and grabs your heart ❤. We need the 70s again !

As if. Vietnam! Nixon! Bad haircuts! Cocaine culture which still haunts us to this day! And worst of all, the groundwork for Reagan. (That said, the early to mid-70s had great music. Best era for the Grateful Dead.)

The butterflies are feeding on the Meyer lemon blossoms. McCoy is bug hunting.

This is a far superior version of Superstar. Leon Russell, Eric Clapton, Bonnie Bramlett. And for those of you who want to waste more time, here's an article about the song.

Wherever my train of thought was going, it has been utterly derailed by a telephone call and making breakfast. I will to my writing of my yoga class and leave you to ponder.

And just for the record, I thought Crossroads was a piece of garbage. I found it so infuriating and will never pick up another Franzen book unless I am stuck on a desert isle or an emergency room.

THIS FOR THAT

What will I have for breakfast?

I wish I had some plums

like the ones in Williams's poem.

He apologized to his wife

for eating them

but what he did not

do was apologize to those

who would read his poem

and also not be able to eat them.

This is why I like his poem

when I am not hungry.

Right now I do not like him

or his poem. This is just

to say that.

— Ron Padgett, How to Be Perfect, Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, 2007

ALARM FOR CHANGE

11 of 100

I set my alarm for a change, giving myself some sleeping in and cuddling Nina time. As I might have remarked on before, it is rather amazing what you can get done if you start a bit earlier. I managed to get Janet showered (she does that on her own really), fed, dressed, and our usual walk taken and still get her to play dominoes somewhere near the appointed time. I was in a hurry to get over to Christina's so that I could finish my shift dress to wear to Palm Springs this weekend. I also managed to pull weeds and do some watering.

Tomorrow is my second-to-last yoga class for this session. I like to have an idea of where I might be going before I sit down to work on my class, but so far, I haven't come up with much. This is where I miss my studio terrifically. Were I still taking several classes a week, I am sure I would be bursting with ideas and new tips from other teachers. 

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned to Cindy, my training instructor, that I sometimes doubt myself when there are pupils are are not following my instructions. Cindy replied that I should just do me and if students didn't like it, they could leave. This was great advice and has also pulled me down the rabbit-hole of what is "doing me" ... This is not a bad thing, but not something that can be answered quickly. And given that I am historically loathe to even be "seen," brings up a number of worthwhile issues. For instance, how much bliss-ninnyism or poetry do I want to share? How much and what do I believe or experience? If I were being all me, I'd probably ask them to pray for Ukraine every practice. I know I don't need to rush this, yet it does creep across the mental activity laundry list.

Writing about Ukraine is still beyond me. My dear friends Eric and Kate have been visiting Ukraine for years, documenting the stem cell research and therapy at EmCell. They have many close relationships there. Here's a podcast about the last American to get treated at EmCell and get out of the country.

I need to sleep so I can get up and do it again. (Also forgot to take out the trash.)

OF SPRING AND YOGA

Richard Scarry, dontcha know ...

 

10 of 100

March 20th, Vernal Equinox

Today is the birthday of one of the very best friends of my life. She is not interested in me anymore, hasn't been for decades, but I think about her so often. J is a bit older than I am and I learned so much from her. We were very close for very many years. In my immaturity, clumsiness, and pig-headedness, I lost her as a friend. This is a major regret of my life. 

My Saturday morning yoga class was extra good yesterday. It's always good. This particular class just spoke to my condition a bit better. I don't know that I have ever mentioned it before. In response to the covid shut downs and the closure of our beloved Kava Yoga, one of my fellow pupils in teacher training offered to have class for the other pupils and teachers to have a practice in his large garage. That was almost two years ago. Now it is six of us. I have been less reliable as an attendee, but now that I am teaching again, the Saturday morning class is necessary to help me have some kind of practice as I am not good about a personal practice of my own. Plus, the group has grown very tight and I have some new friends. 

The practice is usually very challenging as I have lost much strength without a regular practice and everyone else, even Cindy's daughter Ashtynn who joins us, is much more flexible and a more experienced yogi. (We seriously wonder if she has any bones.) I do the best that I can. There's also the factor that I am very overweight and 13 years older than the next oldest person. Sonia and Steven rotate as teachers. Their classes are interesting as they were both dancers, but never easy for me. I am working up the mentality to teach a relaxation class.

My own yoga class, taught at the Town City Hall, the very room where I received my best Thespian award in high school, is going well. I cannot schedule anything on Tuesday and Thursdays which are the days I teach. It takes me a good three or four hours to write up a class. I have a small group of students who seem quite dedicated to my class. Some of them were quite dismayed that I am going to be gone the entire month of May. Sometimes I wonder if it is worth it, given how little money I make.   

That's it for today. I am heading to my cousin Christina's to have our Sunday sewing afternoon. Janet is not yet out of bed. I need to make breakfast (at 11:52) before I go. I slept in this morning, but with a purring cat on your head and one curled next to your legs, one wants to enjoy that.

IF I CAN GET BACK

9 of 100 (lots of catching up to do)

March 8

March 19

My Meyer lemon tree is so happy to have more room (took out a rosemary bush) and fed to boot!

These dates do not reflect the number of times I have sat down to write and didn't even get as far as the date.

That said, at least three people this week have said they missed reading my blog. Here I am making an effort, notwithstanding Fox's attempts to put the kibosh on my endeavors by encroaching on the keyboard with his tail. Admittedly, he does have a difficult time managing his tail. Both Janet and I step on it regularly. He and I got in a tangle yesterday when I stepped on his tail and he tried to get away, nearly tripping me. He could be a health hazard. 

My desk is not that big. There is barely room for a paper processing pile, a lamp, and a book pile. Fox finds it necessary to sleep near me, making one area or another quite crowded. 

 

I was pleasantly greeted with a gentle admonition from Sonia this morning that I should at least give some gardening updates. Honestly, I haven't really been serious about gardening for almost two years, since Oona's remains were left on the neighbor's yard, courtesy of coyotes. Fuck you. I hate them. I was very much into my garden at the point and was cheerily on my way to get some evening work in when I was informed by the poor kids nextdoor about my most beloved and still much missed kitty. I think about her every day, even though I love the ones I have now. Some level of my ambition was punctured. I think of it every time I walk out the front door and across to the larger flower bed.

However, as I alluded, I did have the trees dug out from the grass, fed them, and am trying to water them more often. The backyard smells so good, it is probably illegal in many places. After a large crop of tangelos, I will have an even larger crop come autumn or so. The pomegranate has yet to flower, nor has the brown tiger fig, but they both look good. 

The wisteria was quite beautiful this year. I do need to get it trained upon the wall.

I am trying to do a bit of gardening every day, even if it is just watering or weeding a bit. Perhaps I should revisit my writing in this way and see if I can get back into the groove. 

I could write more but it is almost midnight and I don't want to sleep too late. Besides, Vera is sleeping somewhat uncomfortably on the footstool, waiting for me to get into my proper bed so she can get down to her serious night's sleep.

MANY LEMONS LATER

8 of 100

30 January

"Yet it seemed indulgent to wake one who slept so peacefully. He wondered at the simple human trust in sleep: how easily it was betrayed. One was consigned there to a world which derided far more than the laws of time and space. Again and again one encountered morally dubious — tricksters and faithless lovers who rejoiced in the old anarchy of things. So often one fell asleep Hell and, waking, dared not sleep again."

"Louisa wondered how far this man was victim to his own career. What would he have been like, for instance, if he had been put to sea rather than the cloth. Switch his canonical black for a captain's blue and he might swagger to devastating effect. Either way, he was clearly not himself yet."

"If history shows anything it's that a great deal more than memory is required to avoid the recurrence of calamity. It requires — I think you will agree — some spark of insight into the darker operations of the human soul. And for that we shall need a more luminous exercise of the imagination than your naive materialism has on offer. Speak to me from your best self, dear heart. Recall your glassy essence."

— Lindsay Clarke, The Chymical Wedding, Jonathan Cape, Ltd., London, 1989

The cats! The cats! On the positive side, I woke up to a purring Nina tucked into my arm and nestled against my face purring her contentment this morning. Vera was comfortably stretched out on my side. This is an excellent way to doze your way into wakefulness [']]]]]]['p; (that was Nina on my keyboard) until you finally have to get up. Cat cuddling can set the mood for a decent day.

Not so much for me however.

I am in a bit of a meltdown over my brother's visit (welcomed) for my mother's birthday (95) and a bit of a needed get-away to Palm Springs (desperately). But this means that besides my usual trying to run around and keep things together I need to up the organization and stuff ante. 

Yesterday, Patrick and I moved a friend out of the mountains in Wrightwood down to the cool beach city of Ventura. The hardest part of the day was all the driving as D had her move entirely together so packing and unpacking was easy. We had a lovely Mexican dinner (California style) and a great drive back through the Santa Clara River Valley just at magic hour. The hills were all green from the January rain. The citrus trees were laden with fruit, just like my tangelo. The Meyer lemon has plenty of buds so there will be many lemons later.

A REASONABLY COHERENT INDIVIDUAL

 7 of 100

29 January 

At least I am reading again. This does not mean that I am able to pay attention and get through one thing at a time. At least I am turning to an actual book more often than the last several months. My book group met on Thursday. I did not manage to get my critical disdain for Jonathan Franzen's Crossroads adequately expressed as Sh mounted a worthy rebuttal to anything I was trying to express. After a while, pressing my points nearly seemed unkind, so I kept my critique to myself. And we picked Zola's Nana for our next book. It has been a few decades since I last read it, so I am looking forward to it.

I went to dinner last night with R & L. Their son J even hung out with us quite a bit, which was extra nice (at 17 he has a busy social life). Unlikely our usual carousing evening, we kept it look key. L was pretty burnt out after her week (she's an architect), and I was so tired from not having slept the night before that I nearly cancelled an hour before my scheduled arrival. We don't see each other that often, so I rallied. Quite lovely and I got home early enough to be able to get up for yoga this morning.

I have been a will-o'-the-wisp today, unable to focus on much of anything save for watching bad tv with Janet. If I get hooked into a cycle of home repair shows, I can get lost for quite a while. And although it was not a particularly nice day, Janet was game for her walk this afternoon. So, there are two of three accomplishments for the day. Perhaps posting will be the third.

I took a bath this afternoon, although that is usually a progress-stopper. I pulled out The Chymical Wedding from the shelf, something I had run across a review for in an old New Yorker and subsequently purchased (several years ago). It's not as if I don't have five or six books "under construction" but I do like to be in the middle of something so that when I finish one I don't have to get into another one; I am already there. Very mythologically based. I had no idea that "the chymical wedding" was something related to the Rosicrucians, another group I know almost nothing about. 

I am not far into it, but I am already enjoying the writing and language, something ABSOLUTELY lacking in Franzen. There is a certain John Fowles, The-Magus,-The-French-Lieutenant's-Woman-vibe here which suits my current mood. This book won the Whitbread Prize for Fiction in 1989 so it is likely not trash. 

"But once you've stepped out on to the wire it seems paltry to think of the net below."

"...escape-artist of the moral universe..."

" 'But such a day . . . . such a day," he sighed. "Time has no business here at all.' "

"Like most of my generation I'd grown up with a dangerous illusion: that once you were adult you were also, by a kind of evolutionary osmosis, a reasonably coherent individual. A person, no less."

— Lindsay Clarke, The Chymical Wedding, Jonathan Cape, London, 1989

I HAVE BEEN LIKE YOU

 6 of 100

Abuliton flowering maple that I planted in my front garden patch two years ago.

"Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.

— John Edgar Wideman

27 January

Today is Hallelujah's birthday. She lived next door to me in the dormitory my first year at UCSC. Laurie, her real name, was a two years ahead of me. Her older brother had been in the first graduating class of UCSC which just opened in 1966. Laurie was a French major as there wasn't a formal thing called Medieval Studies, although she could have invented one there. I was always amazed at the piles of real French books in her room. She was once subjected to repeated listenings of one side of Europe '72 when I either left or slept through leaving the arm of the stereo in the position wherein it repeated indefinitely. I think I scarred her for the rest of her life.

Responding to the word scuddle, my friend Sonia wonders  "Is there a word for being busy with things that are continually undone? Like building sandcastles too close to the water..." I thought dishwashing might be it. 

The weather has been nice here. I am not doing much to enjoy it given that I sleep through many daylight hours and then spuddle around. Productivity time today will be even shorter as I have book group at 4:30 (it is 2 now). I can see the cats enjoying the overgrown backyard. Wish I could give you all some tangelos as I have many.

Another night of not sleeping for hours. I can doze just fine, but as to falling into a deep sleep, it takes hours. There I was waking up at the crack of 11. Although I staid in bed with my iPad, I did some emotional support work with two friends that are going through some tough times. I don't think that counts as spuddling.

My friend Laura in Texas is facing the loss of her first kitty who she found on the eve of her wedding. Sully has ended up being a part of my life, too, as Laura has posted many pictures of him. He has developed a cancer of the mouth and even I can see from the pictures that he is not getting better. Having lost more than my fair share of beloved felines, my heart really goes out to her. 

Another friend is breaking free from an ungrateful and abusive relationship. I have enlisted the truck and help of my friend Patrick to get her moved. She was fortunate to have a reasonably priced apartment fall into her lap with none of the usual rigamarole of credit check, first and last month's rent, and such. She has been trying to get out of the relationship for awhile and the stars lined up to grant her an easy transition, as easy as these transitions get.

Black tulip magnolias, tree planted last year.

You Think This Happened Only Once

and Long Ago

You think this happened only once and long ago?

Think of a summer night and someone

talking across the water,

maybe someone

you loved in a boat, rowing.  And you could

hears the oars dripping in the water, from

half a lake away, and they were far and

close at once. You didn’t need to touch them

or call to them or talk about it later.

— the sky? It was what you breathed. The lake?

sky that fell as rain. I have been like you

filled with worry, worry — then relief.

You know the wind is sky moving. It happens all the time.

— Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time, Norton, New York, 2008

SPUDDLING ALONG

 

5 of 100

January 26th.

Know the feeling? I have a constant low grade episode of spuddling going on. I mean well, but just not getting very much done. What I am really enjoying these days is sleeping way too late, nearly every day. And when I do get up, I don't get active for quite a long time. There are newspapers to be perused. There are games I need to play. By the time I am sufficiently awake, it is 2:00 and therefore time to get Janet dressed and on her way to our daily (almost) walk.

Rather than belabor my failures, I will share that I have been sewing, albeit, not well. I made rosemary asiago cheese bread. There are fresh Veneto tangelo cornmeal cookies with dried cherries filling my mom's belly. I began to reorganize and take stock of what is going on in my bedroom closet. The room is still a mess, but I didn't really get focused on it until this evening.

And, in the spirit of trying to get to sleep earlier and hence getting up earlier, I will make this missal short.

WE CALL IT AGING

 4 of 100

To carry on the codger conversation of yesterday, my whine of the day is groceries. Specifically, why are not baggers routinely given even a cursory lesson in bagging groceries. Common sense is the main principle to be considered. The nice fellow who was ostensibly trying to help me chose to put wet and heavy and things in a paper bag when I had a canvas shopping bag equally convenient. I had to ask him to rebag things, which he was willing to do, but he still managed to botch that. See, this shows how old I am. And also crotchety and likely to remain so.

I seem to have sleeping sickness. I turned out the lights around midnight, falling asleep, readily enough, to Cocaine and Rhinestones. I woke up at 11:25. There were telephone calls and texts, but I have amazing dreams in the morning as I am sleeping most deeply then. And it feels so good, particularly on a grey rainy day without Sol's inspiration to move. 

Not much got accomplished today, but I did get Janet out for a walk, notwithstanding the cool temperatures. I did some reading and a couple of smaller chores, but I need to stay on the progress-making path. Getting my reading mojo back is one of the larger goals of the year. Looking for those small victories.

Meanwhile, Big Bang Theory's laugh track echoes through the house.

"Beneath the surface, the progressive sixties hid all manner of unpleasantness: sexism, reaction, racism, and factionalism. It wasn't surprising, really. The idea that drugs, sex and music could transform the world was always a pretty naive dream. As the counter-culture's effect on the mainstream grew, its own values and aesthetics decayed. The political setbacks of the coming years grabbed the headlines while the dilution of ideals happened more quietly, but nonetheless vividly for those who noticed."

— Joe Boyd, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s, Serpent's Tail, London, 2006

Yep. And just look how all of that peace and love turned out.

IMPERFECT

The gradual wearing away leaves us alive

but unintelligible. We call it aging or growing up,

ruined by love, broken and marooned by sex.

Seeing a resemblance to the three-speed Raleighs

that are the best bikes of their kind ever made,

but the factory’s closed and the ones that turn up

at the Goodwill are so rusty I decide against them,

continuing to desire and grieve. Time runs out

for the objects of my longing. We are out of focus

and we are fresh. Like the eroding wonderful kore

which more and more looks like something natural.

My boyfriend asks why I am laughing (as if I had

done something unfitting) and I have to explain

that I am happy to be painting the river

and dipping my brush in it at the same time.

— Linda Gregg, The Sacraments of Desire, Graywolf Press, St. Paul, MN, 1995