Montague Reporter
“7/22, 8:47 am. Domesticated white pigeon blocking traffic in the crosswalk at Ave. A and First Street. Officer requesting ACO [Animal Control]. No response; message left.
12:53 pm. Report of female shouting religious-related speech n ear the gate on Migratory Way. Caller states that several people in the area were alarmed. Officers spoke with party, who had a positive demeanor but was advised to keep it down. Party just in a good mood spreading the word of the Lord. Advised that was OK, but not to confront other walkers.”
I want to meet that female.
And here’s the person in Mary Oliver’s Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way:
When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain,
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow.
Anything that touches.
Older cultures berate us, saying: So, you’re lonely, are you? You miss your husband, you miss having family close to you? That’s what happens when you don’t adequately honor family and community. That refers to you, childless widow, tramping autumn leaves underfoot, keeping an eye on your 9-year-old dog. Counting silently the years left to her.
In Elizabeth Strout’s The Things We Never Say, the main character, Artie, thinks about how he’d missed “this fact about every single person: that they held within themselves a vast, unknowable universe. And he understood that it could make a person lonely; people had to take and give to one another whatever they could. If it was not enough … Well, then it meant one just had to be a grownup.”
I don’t want to be a grownup. I get that people give and take as best they can, I get we don’t get all we want, our relationships are often wanting in one way or another. And in fact, Artie doesn’t fight for what he wants, he accepts his wife, neighbors, and co-workers as they are, won’t even share a secret he has uncovered that affects everything he thought about family; instead, he keeps it to himself. He’s grownup about it.
I wanted to shake him up (a great compliment to the writer). “And your dreams, Artie?” I want to ask him. “Your desires? Have you let those go by? And what about curiosity?”
Because if, as he feels, we hold a vast, unknowable universe within ourselves, don’t you want to explore it? Don’t you want to ask questions? Don’t you capture yourself living a life according to a script you don’t recognize, or perhaps recognize too well because you’ve been living according to that same drab, stale script for years? Don’t you want to do something about that? At least sit outside at night and see what yellow leaves look like as they float down to earth in a ghostly moon.
This morning I had a terrific breakfast with friends and made myself ridiculous by correcting their use of but. For example: Turn It’s a great time in our life but we are getting older into It’s a great time in our life and we are getting older. Or: This play (my play) is good but it needs a little more work to This play is good and it needs a little work.
I did to them what Bernie always did to me, day after day. Change but to and and make life feel more spacious. See how phenomena fall into the craziest combinations: I want some peace and quiet and the furnace isn’t working right; I feel good about my life and money issues are coming up. The but excludes, one coming at the expense of the other. But and—sorry, and and opens me up to the simultaneity of the most disparate things, to the craziest of partnerships.
Lights came down the dark driveway at 9:00 last night, which is a little late in our neck of the wood. Aussie ran down the stairs and barked fearfully. It was an Amazon truck delivering a package. I went to the door and opened it as a young woman was placing an envelope on the front steps. She started.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” I told her.
She laughed. Young, blonde, with headphones in her ears, big tattoos up and down her arms. I asked her how much longer she had to go.
“Today was my first day on my own, believe it or not, and I was running so late that someone came to pick up my packages for me. Soon I’ll finish and bring the truck back.”
“Will you be all right? Do they dock your pay?”
She gave the most beautiful smile. “Maybe. And I get to go home and feed my cats.”
Another female with a positive demeanor, spreading word of the Lord.
I go to Cape Cod for 6 days tomorrow. I hate leaving Lori in a house with a malfunctioning furnace as our nights grow cold, and I need a break badly (and—coincidentally or not—the place I’m sharing with friends also has no heat). I will not blog next week because I need to stop writing and instead stare at wave crests and foam, let ocean winds and wet bay breezes lick my face, sand crunch underfoot, Aussie running in the fog.
Anything that touches.
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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.
The Dogs of the Kiskadee Hills: Hunt for the Lynx begins a trilogy about a society of dogs after humans have destroyed themselves and much of the world. Living with their families and clans in the Kiskadee Hills, they’ve developed over generations a rich tradition and way of life, and have prospered. But now, an unknown killer is butchering the Kisdees of the Hills.