May I say who's calling?

 

Detail of Anne Siems painting, Life Turn.  

Dear Calling,

The cat calls pretty often, maybe the most often- both the One and the Two cat are vocal, needy- but these are human words for humans.  Who knows what the cat is hoping to get from me?  At least I know it is a cat.

The other calls, well, they are pretty unknown.  I got a letter a few days ago, and the Caller said just leave it a few days and open it later.  I opened it now, and it came in the center of the mind I was reading about in a book.  I have been hearing another call for about 70 pages: start reading The First Bad Man too, it might belong with Surrender the Pink.  

(I started, it does.)

I guess a beckon is more it, anyway, not precisely a call.  The breeze I can see through the window beckons, the to-do list beckons.  But those are the easy ones; the Caller you can identify. 

I was looking on my jam-packed looking device and there were these beautiful diary quilts that a woman had made, was making.  That called too- run out and grab some fabric and start piecing!  That word, that wonderful word, piece, piecing.  It is full of the potential for making a whole.  What could be nicer than that?

Anyway, you can see that a call to make a quilt in the center of reading about a mind and whatever the hell is on the to-do list is making for a pretty busy day, and what I really was called to do was to contemplate the nature of whom the Caller is.  So much sifting to do, keep this, get back to that, existence is ludicrously dense, and then, in small instants, completely spacious and empty.

Oh, and don't forget, your song for today: Der Telefon Anruf.

Little Miss Sunshine's gonna steal herself some shadow.

Dear Princesses,

I was driving away from Los Angeles when I heard Carrie Fisher had died.  I always feel a bushel of maternal protectiveness for Hollywood damsels who become emblematic of what society thinks about women; living martyrs, consumed by our voracious appetite for symbol.  I did not love her right away, though, because I am suspicious of popular things, and I never want to read the best sellers, dance to the number one records, or see the big films until the hoopla has left the building. 

And so, I grew to love Carrie Fisher slowly: I saw her in Star Wars six years after it was released (see above).  I loved that she was a wise acre, I loved that she was a writer, and I loved that she married a musician for only a matter of months.  I loved that she crawled out of her own hell, over and over, because everyone does, or doesn't.  I loved that her fame was a hairshirt for her.  I imagined meeting her and telling her it was okay; she was all right with me, no matter what, with or without Star Wars and metal bikinis and addiction.  Yes, she was all right with me, just for trying to be herself in the first place.

Here are two songs to contemplate:  Carry on my wayward daughter, and she moves on.