Aliens

This world is so hot, sticky, and alien. The air breaths on my neck causing my hair damp and limp  to form a small knot resting on my nape. It’s never quiet, something howls or sings in the night. Last night I caught a tiny lizard in the house with a cup and paper, the same motion of arachnid catching as the Midwest but for a completely different creature. There is no equivalent to a lizard in the Midwest, they inhabit more space here than mice, but mice might be the closest example. They are reptilian mice. Every time I go outside they skitter from the porch by the handful. I am fascinated by these alien creatures, these little dinosaurs. Keeping lizards is exotic where I’m from, requiring special heat lamps and a mister to simulate humidity. I’ve never owned one but it seemed complex visiting the lizard keepers of the Midwest. It’s weird to think of them outside. Breathing this air. Thriving.

                My cat shares this sentiment. The other night he let out a cross between a moan and a howl. Awwwwoooo. Awwwooooo. This was similar enough to his car song for us to look at each other, concerned. It is his call to the unfamiliar. We found the cat in the hall with something rubbery and limp dangling from his mouth. Awwoooo. Awwooo. Look at what I’ve hunted, my strange alien prize. Before we could grab it he swallowed the lizard in his mouth.

A thread

I’m having a hard time with the reality of my dog’s surgery next Thursday. He’s 14 but healthy enough to go under anesthesia. The surgery is small, the surgeon’s hands skillful, but I waver on verge of nervous and pleading tears all day. Please. Please, don’t take my dog. 

I never thought my 14 year old rescue dog would outlive my dad, but he did.

And this dog, this rescue mutt from Texas, shepherded me through the sickness, and the long shadow of grief as my constant companion.

I see my dog and I think of my father, frail but skin yellowed and stretched too far over the center until he looked a bit like the moon. Think of that last hug at the hospital, the goodbye that wasn’t supposed to be forever. Crying and trying not to cry. 

Holding my father in a hug like maybe I could hold him to Earth.

And failing.

I think, I’m not ready for my shepherd to go out like that. Not ready to drop him off for that final goodbye that isn’t supposed to be a final goodbye. The threads of this grief are tangled, coiled so tight into a dark tapestry, that little as I am I cannot reach my arms around. It blankets everything in the shadow of loss.

I cannot lose my dog because my father died. Because there should be a limit on how much the universe can take before it owes restitution.  

In the still moments I get lost in the profound grief, I’m submerged. When the sand and seaweed settles sometimes I can look up through the grief and once again see stars. I missed them in the dark. There’s so much distance between the ocean floor and the stars. I miss him. I miss her. It’s easier to miss her, she’s still alive. I move cautiously around Iowa City, as if she might appear behind any corner, I skipped Pride. I scatter when I think I might see her.

Sand Mandalas

I’m curled into my new lady-friend on the couch. After two months of the exhaustive weekend shuffle between sleeplessness at her apartment and mine--a shuffle from which I still occasionally wake up unsure of where I am, disoriented and reaching for phantom light switches from the other apartment--amid this chaos girlfriend still seems premature. We exist in that space between intimacy and strangeness. I know the pitch of her voice when she’s trying hide her rising anxiety, but I only learned two weeks ago her legal first name. It still feels weird on my tongue. 

Through My Grandmother’s Eyes

I’ve been writing a lot about The Land. This is by no means my definitive Blog About The Land. I’m still processing my experience. Some of it I’m going to keep for myself. I learned that, to keep things secret, sacred, and safe.

This was my first lesson from Michfest.

But I wanted to put something out there from my trip to my grandmother’s home.

Borderlands

Borderlands

Sunlight streams down on verdant hillsides after two days of cold rain. Respite. All of Mount Vernon flocks outside to lay claim to little patches of sunlight before the sky turns again. My dog looks at me with more than just pleading, actual urgency, in his big brown eyes. “Big park or campus?” I ask. I know the answer will be both. We are getting out of the house. It is decided. Herding dogs know how to care for the broken-hearted, the wandering, and the lonely. That’s all me. I need shepherding.