rocks, rabbit

 

missed out

 

Dear Somebody,

Did you do this?  Did you get a chance to be Somebody?  I didn't even have a cell phone in 2014, but, it would have been worth getting one just to use this (now defunct) app.  I send you this now, too late, too late! but I think you need to know about it anyway, because maybe you want to make something, do something like it.  

refused upon delivery

 

Dear Author,

I want you to stop giving me tragic heroines.  I want you to go back, recall every copy, and put the woman's name where the man's name is now.  I want you to redact all the actions of the female character, and replace them with the actions of the male character.  Do it.  And I don't want to hear from you until you have done it.

Once you have cleaned your mess up, I want to talk about the Damage You Have Already Done.  I want to explain to you, very patiently, that women who get their way in your stories do not have to be killed or punished for it.  That if, for example, your female character bops along for 200 or 300 pages, and then, Realizes What She Has Missed, you do not need to have her slip into the abyss rather than accept her 200 (to 300) pages of loss.  How about you have her, at the very least, ride off into the sunset?  Better yet, might you let her shrug her shoulders and start writing her memoirs?  Or move to a new town?

Or she could sing this little ditty, your song for today.

Did you ever? Or, A heap of superlatives!

 

Dear You & Everyone Else,

Did you see it?  The Northern Lights?  A few nights ago, after 45 years of wanting to see them, they came to me!  As usual, I cannot believe my good fortune.  I hope you saw them too, and if you didn't, I am sure their light shined upon you.

And that maybe should be the end?  That is sufficient?  I have communicated to you about them?  I have shown you the depth of my feeling for belonging to a world with a spectacle as grand as that?  No, as usual, I have sounded like a car that passed with its radio on very loud, or maybe a sappy greeting cards' message.  You might wonder, why do you do this?  Why do you try to voice, to talk, to write, to think, to paint, to draw?  And the answer is seeing the Aurora, but not seeing, so much as feeling it, and in feeling it, wanting you to witness it too.  Because the enormity of it might feel less lonely that way.  

Thinking all this, and of how to describe the Aurora to you, similar moments appeared:  a raft on a river in the rain, a field of dried grass, an empty, open doored and windowed cabin with a pile of cottonwood fluff in the corner, a whoosh of bird wings overhead, a gray sea that shimmered out forever, a booth at a darkened bar; and these two songs.  The first is a very pithy, plaintive version of what I am might be saying, and the second is so long, so repetitive, you might be droned into something like comprehension.

PS  It isn't without risk, you know, to try to say something.  I might, instead of reaching you, be repelling you with these whiney vocals and endless guitar riffs.  I am always circling, beating about the bush, barking up trees that are wrong, and if I should, somehow, blindly hit the target, I will not know.

egg carton

Dear Imaginative,

Pretend you have an egg carton and you want to put just one really good thing into each little cup.  What goes in? 

a heart shaped rock

a little ball of pink yarn

a piece of chocolate

a recipe, folded up

a leaf

a beaded ring

a pop top

a twist of seeds

a marble

a white owl's feather

a shell

& one 

more 

thing.

mountain and valley

 

mayday

 

Dear May,

It's May Day!  Get out your paper and scissors and crown yourself the May Queen, my lovelies!  When you are done with making the crown and all of the self-crowning ceremony, maybe make a Beltane Cake.  If you think, no, I don't have time for any of that, well, please, please don't forget you are my May Queen!