Tuneless dissonance, but I persist in the quest for resonance

Help me. I cannot tune a guitar, and I forwent the purchase of technology because I wanted to learn how to do it on my own, by ear first. What a sorry sot I am...

But, I persist. Beh. Joyful headaches all around! 

I'm not even going to try being optimistic. However, I'd like to think it's not as sorry and hopeless as it feels. 

Mushroom Hike Pt III (Final Part)

Mushroom Hike Pt II

In which mushrooms are again a good thing

Remember when I promised you happy mushrooms? Well, here they are! Or at least, here are some of them. This'll have to be posted in a couple more installments.

The garden right before a cold snap (or the onset of Winter, we really can't be sure just yet)

Broccoli and lettuce. I'm not entirely sure it's a great idea to grow lettuce into late summer and early fall, it's just not really something you feel like eating at this time of year. 

My one actual tomato cage. It slowly fell over through the summer as the ground was too hard so the sticks weren't lodged in the ground well enough. 

Some green beans. Last time I checked, when I took this photo, they looked great, no frost bite or anything. However, that was yesterday, and it's been much, much colder since then. 

A couple tomatoes, my swisschard rows, some more green beans, and at the end, the cucumber plants. The Armenian at the end is dead, but the other one's hanging on. They were all a bit frost bitten yesterday, so I'm not optimistic. 

So there you go, a fall garden update. 

With a tight throat and too much self in the grayness, released

I like to let words speak for themselves, free from my own interpretations and feelings for them most of the time. What follows this simple introduction are some poems and poem pieces from an interview with Daniel Ladinsky in the October 2013 issue of The SUN.

(All are Hafiz as rendered by Daniel Ladinsky)  

Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly

Let it cut more deep

Let it ferment and season you as few

human or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight

has made my eyes so soft,

my voice so tender, my need of God

absolutely clear.

There is a beautiful creature living in

a hole you have dug, 

so at night I set fruit and grains, 

and little pots of wine and milk,

beside your soft earthen mounds, and

I often sing to you,

but still, my dear, you do not come out. 

I have fallen in love with someone who 

is hiding inside of you. 

We should talk about this problem, otherwise

I will never leave you alone.

With That Moon Language

Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to 

them, "Love me."

Of course you do not say this out loud, otherwise 

someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us 

to connect. 

Why not become the one who lives with a full

moon in each eye that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language, what every other

eye in the world is dying to hear.

Negative charge on negative charge

Underneath it all, I really do believe that life and the world are good. I believe this is all worth it, not so much that all of the garbage and static of life is worth it, but that fundamentally, living is worth it. 

One day at a time, even the days that do nothing but make the inside of my ribcage itch; even those days are worth it. The days where I want to do nothing, nothing but disappear and possibly melt into a ball of apathy and laziness and terror and quit thinking and caring and worrying and wondering about the future. I suppose that even those days are worth it. I've learned that on the whole, the good out-weighs the bad, even if the good is or seems to be so long and far in between. There's so much small good interspersed within the overwhelming bad. 

But today I don't wanna anything. I'm dragging myself through the sludge of hours by my fingernails, every cell quailing against every single responsibility and requirement. When did I get so self-centered? I want to change, but I don't want to change. I want to change, I'm so bored and tired and apathetic, and i really, I'd rather be happy and have fun, but I don't want to change because it's scary and it would require work and trying and I really just don't want to do anything. I'm bored, but I don't want to do anything. Even writing seems a little like a waste of time. I feel like everything's a waste of time, but I can't figure out what isn't a waste of time. Tug of war, I suppose. 

The thing is, I won't feel like this later, most likely. I might feel like this again, it's a possibility, but I won't feel like this later. Who shot me on Marvin's wavelength with the empathy gun or whatever it was called? Not fair. 

Ehh, it'll pass. It always does. But what do I do when or happens again? What do I do to prevent it from happening again? 

In Which I am NOT Excited by Mushrooms (believe it or not)

There are mushrooms in the van. You know me, I like mushrooms, I love them, I tend to go a little bit elatedly loopy whenever I see them. I'll probably have a post soon all about the magnificent mushrooms I photographed on our hike Sunday, and let me tell you again,  they were amazing.
But they don't belong in our stupid van, our much-needed storage area, full of clothes for the kids to grow into and an old typewriter, a sewing machine and my mom's old journals. Most of it's just junk, but there's definitely some stuff certain individuals would sorely miss. Mushrooms, on the other hand, do not belong in there. Nope. They don't go in there, decomposing stuff and poofing clouds of who knows what (spores) all over the van, where I'm hoping my flarging birth-certificate is. The birth certificate I desperately need for my Learners permit so I can actually drive in driving school.
But nobody cares that the sun window was dropped down into the van, leaving a wide open entrance for the elements and more spiders and I kinda think I heard squeaking when I tossed a shoe in the corner after I saw the fracking mushrooms and hightailed it out of there. Spiders, I can deal with; they're in my house, and I even feel a little bad when I squish them; mice are okay too, whatever, but mushrooms, those are on a whole other level.
I guess mostly it's a combination of the three, their whole is greater than the sum of their parts. I really don't know what to do short of cleaning the whole thing out in a bullet-proof hazmat suit (or whatever those are called) and sealing the stupid sun window shut forever.

Guitar Lessons and Driver's Ed.

Forget all you thought you knew
in the effort to learn

Empty memory
Empty mind
For you cannot fill a cup that is already full
or can you?

First the golfballs, you know,
Then marbles, sand, and beer.
Can you still fill it?
Or, as with everything,
is there infinite space always within?

Sore fingers
and terror.
Missing days,
but in the future it will all be the same.
Or not.

Too much homework and no money
But I'm preparing for the future, right?

Light-Catcher

The Fresh New Ending Of A Season (A series of portraits)

And the town is ours on this muffled cloudy morning,
Everything silent, so that a dog's howling is unnaturally loud,
heartbreaking and a little eerie;
A baby bird's chirping underneath a dumpster;
Earsplitting,
Sending the dog into a frenzy, so that I cannot investigate further.

The ground is damp beneath my bare feet, her paws
And we brush raindrops like jewels from long, bent dry-grass as we walk by.

There, a perfect brown aspen leaf on the sidewalk,
Raindrops collected in its hollow.

Further down, bright white flowers catch my eye
Among a lush forest of squash vines cascading over a wrought-iron fence.

Hello! The man across the street calls after my soft exclamation of wonder,
Hello! Is my answer, and we exchange how do you do's before continuing on.

(I write about walking and rain, nothing new, but never the same.)

September