It’s a travel Sunday for me, starting with a cab ride to the airport at five a.m.
Happy Fathers Day to all the dads out there who are spending their day in a more sane manner. Every time I travel I think of my mom telling me before a visit – We’re coming to see you, dead or alive! Well maybe you had to know my mom to get how funny that is.
Thank you Alanis for being grateful for all kinds of weird shit.
Thank you to the airplane Gods for safe flights. Catch you on the flip side.
How about some Josh Groban on a cold and overcast February Sunday morning?
Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won’t be long
Til he opens his eyes, opens his eyes
Where is that simple day
Before colors broke into shades
And how did I ever fade
Into this life, into this life
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I’ve known is lost and found
I promise you I, I’ll come back to you one day
Morning is waking up
And sometimes it’s more than just enough
When all that you need to love
Is in front of your eyes
It’s in front of your eyes
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
Sometimes it’s hard to find the ground
Cause I keep on falling as I try to get away
From this crazy world
And I never want to let you down
Forgive me if I slip away
When all that I’ve known is lost and found
I promise you I, I’ll come back to you one day
Where has that old friend gone
Lost in a February song
Tell him it won’t be long
Til he opens his eyes
Opens his eyes
My morning has been spent catching up on stuff. I don’t feel like being any more specific than that because it’s Sunday morning and Sundays are made for being vague and brain-dead. It’s a new rule I made up just now. My best rules are spur of the moment nonsense meant to rationalize whatever I’m up to. Or not up to. So feel free to borrow them, break them, forget them, or adhere to them strictly. I’m pretty open on that.
Yesterday morning I drove W to the airport (five o’clock in the morning…here am I…driving out to the airport, wishing I could fly….) (apologies to Leann Rimes and the song Blue). I have discovered that making up my own song lyrics is a great way to stay awake while driving. But only when there’s no passengers involved in the creative process.
W is off to Ontario once again, this time on a rather sad mission, to wrap up his responsibilities for his brother who left this world quietly on January 3rd. He fought the good fight, but it was a long and tiring one and I’m sad but thankful he was able to give it up at last. I truly believe he is in a better place now.
We were talking on the way out there about how you get to an age where the people you know and love start leaving this world on a rather regular basis. I guess we’ve reached that age. I don’t mean to sound callous or uncaring, but I remember whenever I talked to my mom and she’d rhyme off a list of all the people she knew who had passed away recently I’d get annoyed. I suppose it’s a necessary evil of living so long yourself, but I found it an uncomfortable subject. Maybe I need to get used to it. The alternative I suppose is to not be around myself to witness these sad events.
So I’m on my own again for a couple of weeks, and the first thing I did to celebrate that was to blow up the microwave. There is something about me and microwaves that defies compatibility. I really thought this one was a keeper, but there you go. It did last longer than its predecessors so that’s something. Although not much to brag about I suppose.
There are still things to be grateful for, although having to buy yet another appliance of indeterminate life span is maybe not one of them. The weather is mild, it is gently snowing, the house is warm and quiet. My neighbor is shovelling our driveway. How incredibly thoughtful and kind that is. This insane cold bug I caught days and days ago seems to finally be loosening its grip on me. I must say I will miss the sexy deep singing voice that came with it, but not the breathy nasal part or the part where I cough up my lungs between verses.
Here’s a Sunday morning song and a virtual drive in the snow. I don’t really get the lyrics to this one, but then nobody really gets mine either. So, watch out, the world’s behind you. Maybe that means nothing at all.
Sunday morning
praise the dawning
It’s just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It’s just the wasted years so close behind
Watch out the world’s behind you
There’s always someone around you who will call
It’s nothing at all
Sunday morning
And I’m falling
I’ve got a feeling I don’t want to know
Early dawning
Sunday morning
It’s all the streets you crossed, not so long ago
Watch out the world’s behind you
There’s always someone around you who will call
It’s nothing at all
Look what I found in my tree this morning. I thought when I opened the back door he’d leap down and run away, but instead he just lurked there for a bit pretending to be invisible.
After a prolonged staring contest he decided to come down. Slowly and carefully.
I expect this is what lured him up there in the first place, although I’m pretty sure it’s empty and the birds have flown.
It didn’t look this high from the ground up. When he made the final leap, again I expected him to take off running (I’m pretty scary, bare feet in the wet grass, pointing and shooting). Maybe I’d make a great wildlife photographer since nothing seems to be afraid of me.
Strange back yard adventures are exhausting and require a time out and a lie down beside the tiger lilies to catch one’s breath and decide what’s next on the morning agenda. Or maybe he was just curious to see what the crazy lady was up to now. Nothing much, I went back in the house because my coffee was getting cold. My little back yard intruder got bored and wandered off too. But not before gazing longingly up into the tree again. Maybe he’s just casing the neighborhood for bird houses and feeders and the odd squirrel hangout. He’s in for a surprise if the magpies return. I’m sure they’ll make it quite clear who was here first.
There is something orange in the long green grass. She stands at the kitchen window, barefoot, still nightgown clad, looking into the backyard at the long stretch of overgrown garden that they’re going to turn back into lawn. The grass there is now almost a foot high, tall enough to sway and ripple in the breeze. The coffee pot gurgles and sputters beside her and outside the orange thing leaps.
Well, it really was no springing bound and barely fox-like. The second attempt at a hurdle ends in an ungraceful galumph. But kudos for getting out there and trying to act like a normal cat, she thinks. It can’t be easy.
She has noticed him before in her yard just passing through, looking like a short and rotund fuzzy orange blimp. The fattest cat she has ever seen. This jumping thing is new. There must be lots of creepy crawlies in the long grass that need pouncing upon and he’s giving it his best shot. Surging vault number three. But this one appears to have done him in. He sits and nonchalantly gazes off somewhere in the distance to give the bugs the impression that he no longer cares.
She pours her coffee and leans on the counter cradling the hot mug in both hands, takes that first invigorating sip. Watches the cat pause, consider; perhaps in this ones case, catch his breath.
Suddenly a magpie flaps his way overhead and lands with a squawk on the flat board on the top of the fence. He turns around, stomping his little bird feet, and then he gawks down at crouching orange thing in the grass. Cocks his head. Waits for what will happen next.
The wait is not long. There is no spring left in the cat’s repertoire this fine morning. Perhaps he has had previous altercations with magpies and does not fancy another one at the moment. Or maybe someone just called him home for breakfast. Either of these reasons, or some other mysterious cat notion, gets him up and off and running. Okay, more like lumbering, but moving away from the bird at a pace that’s faster than his normal calm meandering.
The magpie squawks some more. Where are you going? What kind of cat runs away from a bird? Hey! I’m talking to you! And then he takes to the air and is off in search of better less lame adventures.
All is quiet in the garden plot. She was going to get out there this morning and weed whack that long grass to start the process of getting it ready for sod. Maybe today, maybe not. There’s no hurry, really. She tops up her coffee cup and turns away from the window.
You can take a break, give a guy a break.
Break it to me gently.
Break a leg.
Break a horse.
Break the connection.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back.
But don’t break in, and don’t break out.
I’ve broken up
I’ve broken down
A heart
A promise
The silence
But never a spirit
Or any bones.
How expensive,
When you add up all that shattered china?
The pieces are worth nothing.
That’s why it’s impossible
To put a dollar value
On a broken dream.
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Breathing Space 
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