Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Holding onto Time or A Love Letter to the World

When I was 13 and at summer camp in Maine with three of my best friends I was having so much fun time was zooming by. One day I went into the empty cabin and held on to the metal bunk bed and said I'm going to hold onto time. I stopped and meditated and told myself this was what I was doing. I remember that summer so well. I played football and made linoleum cuts and orchestrated a cabin switch with the boys cabin in the middle of the night. Our counselor was so great she even came to visit me and Melanie with her psychiatrist boyfriend after the summer was over. We went to a diner somewhere. I remember he was telling us that he uncomfortable with the psychiatrist role.
I remember two friends from grade school Pat Devlin and Christianne Bachmann, they lived opposite each other and I would walk to school with them and we walked home together. I was the dreamer. I had a crush on Ted who lived at the bottom of the hill. I walked by his house every day with my dog. It was enough to walk by. I am still this way.
When things are going well I want to stop and hold onto time. We never imagine people dying or moving away. I don't. But they do and they keep doing it.
I have always liked grounded friends. I think it's because I am a kite scooped by the wind or caught in a tree. And many days I am a helium balloon. My friends need to be solid.

Valentine. I lay in bed wishing to tell everyone how much I love them. It sounds so silly but the next best thing is to meditate on this thought and make my writing and painting a love letter to the world.

Bill says put up road blocks to find my pepper biscuit basket. How about an ALL POINTS BULLETIN: missing oblong basket with red tea cloth. Dropped off at WPD filled with 12" pepper biscuits Thursday 11 AM February 18th, 2016. Any information about the whereabouts would be gladly appreciated.

Pat Devlin's mom made her scrambled eggs and toast and tea for lunch every day. They had a picnic table as a kitchen table and a schnauzer. They had two red cars a ford station wagon and a Volkswagon Bug shined to spotless. We were not allowed to touch them. She had an older brother who I never met and an older sister I rarely saw. Pat and I practiced our times tables in her room every day after school on a little slate. I think her dad was a fireman. There was a militaristic orderly and fearful streak in the family with a touch of paranoia. I remember her mother phoned and let it ring four times and hung up and did it again so the third time Pat would know when it was "safe" to answer the phone.

Christianne was from Germany. She was bilingual and everything was educational in her household. She taught me the German word for apple. When she went on a trip with her family they had maps and geography lessons afterwards. One day Christianne and I climbed around in her attic exploring and I had a terrible allergic reaction to the exposed fiberglass insulation. I remember turning red and itchy. My Aunt Gloria was visiting us. The one who loved animals and gave us our black cat Midnight. She was there when I got out of the shower. I showed her my lobster skin. I loved her. She died a few years later, found anorexic and starved in her apartment with many cats. She had a heart of gold and was gorgeous with flaming red hair and a keyboard smile.

This is what happens when I put paper under me upon waking. Unfiltered, unedited.

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