flower synergy

I am caught up in the gardens I pass every morning... watching them unfold as the days warm... this little race between Mexican Primrose and Prickly Pear flowers... a wonderful synergy... I'm wondering if the Primroses will still be in full force when the wet-year-cactus-blooms finally open up??? Will this be a tag team or a collaborative display???

rambling thoughts

so... I'm almost at the end of my walk... 3 minutes from work... and I pass the newly landscaped apartments next door... and I notice, placed neatly at the base of each of three consecutive newly planted shrubs, a chimichonga... one of those flash-fried but-not-browned so-you-can brown-it-yourself models... three actually...

as I walk the last block, I'm amusing myself with possible scenarios... figuring a neighborhood dog will take care of them quickly... hoping that's not the point, with strychnine hidden within... it happens around here occasionally... even wondering if they might not be chimichongas at all, but rather rawhide mimics for dogs to chew on...

I wonder... where, exactly, could you report a "suspicious chimichonga" anyway?...;-)

the next day, they are still there.. and the next... they survive the weekend, and rain, and begin to blister... proving it is possible for an unbrowned microwave chimichonga to be any more disgusting...



each time I walk past them, I think I ought to photograph them... but I don't...

it's been nearly three weeks... I'm a little early yesterday morning and I stop and do the whole 6 photos, one near one far of each... and this morning... they are gone!

and I walk on... once more amusing myself with interesting thoughts about how we try to make order of things... in my "sensible" mind, I think "random toss from a car window, timing pure coincidence"... in my "synchronisity" self I think "is there a reason they remained just long enough for me to photograph them? are they gone now because that was the point?"... entertaining the wilder thoughts... "terrorists... lard bombs"...;-)

wire as metaphor

the first curiosity this morning...
a little ball of wire.
And thinking of the
morning routine
I am trying to fine tune,
I think of the wire
as a metaphor for
habits.
Wire can be very useful,
hold things together for us.
But it can also bind
so tightly that we strangle.
It is even more beautiful
when old and rusty, and
always shows evidence
of its previous forms.
But if we bend it too
many times it
breaks... the uses
of wire...
and habits...
and a few blocks into
the reverie...
another wire curiosity...

elms

I've always loved elm seeds,
especially the sound
as the wind skitters them
along the sidewalk...
and the way the light plays
when they are in motion...
and the patterns they form
as they snag along the ground.

I remember they made great
mudpie toppings,
and play money...
They are agressive,
hopeful plants,
rescuers of land after fire
(but a pain in the garden.)

landscaping

parking lot
subsidized apartments
I guess it's really the
same idea
as the expensive
potted patio gardens
but this one
volunteered

sideways glances

The wisteria is blooming,
on the warmer side of the street.
Truly beautiful.
I took the trite shot,
for the same reason
folks climb onto the bus
that joins the traffic jam
at StoneHenge or
that particular spot along
the Great Wall.
It is beautiful.
(But the luggage tag
is more intriguing.)

creepy

I know it's just
ponderosa pine needles
stuck in the grating
over an old
trash can alcove...
but it's creepy...
firing old synapses...
maybe synapses older
than any of my own memories.

flagstone

the sidewalk and divider are repaired...
but the pattern is different from those
on the other blocks...
someone new?
a different mold?
a different supplier of dyes?
for whatever reason
we now have a neighborhood artifact
of the history of our street.
our flagstoned concrete differs
because some guy blew up
the sidewalk with a monkey wrench and
haste

cause?

I pass this "mistake"
every morning...
and every morning I am
puzzled... by what
string of by now non-apparent
circumstances
led to such a strange little
"mistake"...
such a long lived short cut

effect... and cause

the effect...


and the cause...

well... unless you want to call it
the city crew who strung the flags...
or the subcontractors who
turned the spiggot too fast
and lifted the sidewalk right up
out of the mud...
or whoever ordered the sewer relined
in the first place...
or circumstances which placed this
sidewalk above pipes buried over
60 years ago...
whatever the cause,
my sidewalk is gone
for awhile

poser

I suppose even a shrub
can have an identity crisis

rain soundtrack

it's raining hard...
I get out the seldom used rain poncho
and leggings...

I'm an unusual New Mexican
to possess such things

as I walk, I turn on the iPod
wondering what will be the first words out
on this very rainy day

dylan

if it keeps on rainin'
the levee gonna break

Watched a BBC special
hypothesizing drought as the cause
of the Mayan downfall
11 million people stuck around and died
trying to change the weather
with ever more bloody sacrifices
or so a Texas scientist posits

they are draining the campus duck pond
to clean out all the stuff kids slid across the ice last winter

took the ducks exactly one day to exit this drought

my iPod soundtracks this image with dylan...

"my sense of humanity has gone down the drain!"

I'm on two projects right now
both require me to animate
snakes
I'm seeing them everywhere ;-)

March 12 - Ants

spring
reminding me
others walk the underside
of my sidewalk

Old Scar -March 13

I first lived in this neighborhood
around 1971... moved here again in 1978...
been here ever since...

I walk through parallel universes on this street...
I still see the trees that grew here,
a pair of arbor vitae...
trimmed to form an arch...

now a pair of matching wooden curiosities.

drink

Just a little gutter irony...

hands

My husband's grandmother...
born late in the 19th century,
grew up on a Webster County Missouri farm.
Helping a careless brother chop firewood,
she lost the first joint
of her right index finger.
She had dainty little hands.
After she died, I found a dozen pair
of beautiful little kid gloves in
her top drawer.
I have very small hands too.
Thinking they might fit me,
I discovered
a tiny wad of cotton...
tucked into the right index finger
of each right hand glove.

trash day

walking through the historic district on the edge of campus... trash day, city cans on wheels, neat stacks of recycling, boxes from new shoe racks, organic milk, and FedEx evidence of online shopping... nothing in between the sequential driveways but dry leaves and the occasional twig...

my neighborhood, a mile further up the hill, is not a bad neighborhood, we've got the wheelie cans and stacks of bottles and cans and newspaper... but we're closer to Central Avenue... old Route 66... workin' girls and alley biz... and we've got a lot more stuff in between our trash cans...

stuff in categories...

discarded Bic lighter, rolling papers, butts, empty Skoal cans and American Spirit packs... Jack Daniels miniature, Smirnoff label, Bud can, Corona cap... bits of tail light reflectors, greasey bolts, squashed metal fittings, chromed plastic slivers, shimmering auto glass crumbs... spent condoms and rubber gloves in bright colors... chards of a Tom Waits song...

and this little cloud of cardboard butterflies... someone in a hurry to get to the contents...

time tick

iPod over ambience,
blues and campus bell tower
mingling in my left ear
I untangle
Westminster 9 o'clock
from the words of the song,
"time bomb tickin'"
damn! I'm late for work!

not

not.
do not.
barrier?
or jumping off point?

coil

at first
I thought maybe a can...
an empty tomato sauce can...
but it wasn't quite right...
the arch and ridges perfect and
beautiful...
maybe a roll of copper tubing
caught in a perfect squash...
every element in sync with
the final form

grease

I'm 5 years old and
my teacher sends home a disapproving report
to say that I am making faces out of my letters
drawing noses on my "a"s and ears on my "x"s
caught up in that quirky moment
when the random little squiggles suddenly
look back at you.

tempting

Apparently not tempting enough...

peace

peace

collaboration

Straight twig, Flat sidewalk, unidirectional sunlight...
in collaboration... a beautiful curve emerges in the implied absence of all three.

A

a little stake in the ground, near the campus duck pond... what is it? evidence of a plan? the grave of the elusive "A"?