I do not cease swimming in the seas of love,
rising with the wave, then descending;
now the wave sustains me, and then I sink beneath it;
love bears me away where there is no longer any shore.

Al Hallaj

The wedding is in 3 days. I have that feeling you get when you know you’ve forgotten something BIG but your mind won’t give it up. It’s hiding it somewhere waiting until it’s too late before revealing what it is. And here I am sitting around watching the butterflies floating around the Jupiters Beard with a million flapping wings in my belly.

I made a most beautiful jacket to wear over my dress.  I got all Project Runway on myself and hacked a pattern to my own specifications and then started hand sewing wavy seams around the hem and cuffs and then added a binding around the edge. I wanted to add some beading in but stopped myself. I might do it later. The fabric I used had been tucked away for a couple of years waiting for this jacket. A creamy ivory silk brocade.

Is it officially Autumn yet? Peaches are done, that’s for sure. I’m always a little sad when the peaches are done.

I’m back in my crooked little house, living my crooked little life. This was the view this morning from the way back deck/ lair/ yoga deck. You can just see the blue plastic pool where my little Kale Chips Ahoy was bathing his dinosaurs.

This morning I bustled my daughter’s wedding dress. I had no notion such a thing existed but it does. It’s called a french bustle and it was easy to do and made me look like some kind of genius seamstress in my daughter’s eyes. Priceless.

We tried the fat baby’s suit on him and he looks like the hulk when he’s already bust out of his clothes.

I enjoyed my time in the big city but it’s nice to be home where I find things like this….

in my bathroom.
Along with lizards and nasturtiums.

Also people go to the grocery store in their pajamas here.

My phone tells me it’s 102 degrees at this very moment and for once I believe it. When I opened the back door this morning it felt like I was walking onto the surface of another planet, leaving the space/earth ship after a hearty breakfast of helium filled pancakes.
On this here space/earth ship, the pancakes are made with helium. Never seen anything like it, they tasted good though I was hungry less than one hour later. Chinese helium filled pancakes.*

After breakfast I made my excruciatingly slow descent into the cold pool and swam until I felt shaky. My patient did laps around the pool and house. She’s doing very well. What a marvel these bodies of ours are!
They can be cut open and sewn up like cloth and be better than new.  I feel so lucky to have one.  A horse body would be cool too but then I couldn’t wear dresses.

For lunch, the patient treated us to PF Changs take-out. She ordered on-line then I drove to the restaurant, parked at the designated take-out spot and was just dialing the number on the sign when the waiter appeared at my window and said my order was ready and did I want a complimentary beverage while I waited for him to bring out my order. Life in the big city.

*Let me know if you want the recipe. Here it is. Gluten free pancake mixed with hemp milk and one egg, a tablespoon of grapeseed oil and a mashed up banana. whip vigorously and pour into a hot greased skillet. Flip after a couple of minutes, cover and cook another few minutes, take cover off and behold, a balloon shaped pancake.

My plum tree bore a handful of plums this year and them all up at the top, unreachable by me. I would take it personally if it weren’t for the fact that we are now a barren desert. A dry brown crackly place. We’re all dry, dusty and stat icky and water has become as dear as it always should have been.

There is a lizard the size of an alligator living in our bathroom. There are nasturtiums growing in through the walls. The nasturtiums will grow and flower with or without water. They need only air and dirt it seems.

In other outdoor gardening news. I planted rapini and spinach seeds early this summer along with a tomato seedling. The rapini and spinach grew gangly on long weak stems and then quickly died and the tomato has looked poorly since about day 2 though it is loaded with small mean looking fruit hanging amidst dry dead leaves.

I have planted other things that appear to be thriving. All in pots I water regularly with all our wash water.

That is the happy news.

How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River


how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.


Barbara Crooker




Wedding plans continue. I’m so thrilled it will happen soon. I can’t imagine how anyone plans for months on end. I don’t think I could stand it. I’m more of a let’s do it right now kind of girl. So is my beautiful daughter. 
We are so goofy happy around here.

I’ve been making malas. I made a beauty for the monk but forgot to get pictures. He wore his every day we swam in LA and his tassel faded and got all fluffy and he started sewing it and adding to it and I know next I see it, it will be some beautiful thing. 

Here is the one I made for myself.

It’s a beautiful thing. I love wearing it. 

Namaste

The sweet peas are almost done blooming, it’s hot and sunny and I’m learning to tie knots. I started on Sunday and have been struggling through you tube videos and maddeningly complicated illustrations. It started with the Pan Chang knot which I spent hours studying and trying to knot before I decided to start on something simple, like my shoelaces. I borrowed some books from the library to work my way through.
Like tea, there is a whole rich world of knots.

Looks simple right.

There are grand babies involved in every day life and now, a wedding to plan. My daughter is taking the plunge. SOON. It’s all wedding plans, all day, every channel. I’m so over the moon happy for her I could cry.

 if you find yourself making a pot of beans and collards and composting all the waste, while wearing a pair of purple harem pants with elephants printed on them that your neighbor brought you back from Cambodia, and a Heisenberg t-shirt (Walter White) and flip flops and you are living off the grid so you are washing your dishes (in a galvanized tub) and yourself (in a horse trough) and using your washing up water to water your garden and your listening to janis joplin and stringing beads and doing yoga on the deck in your backyard and you smell like patchouli from the cannabis infused lotion you wear on your wrinkly skin.

This could happen to you without your even noticing it.

My last day in Denver we went to the Museum. It was, like all of Denver, a wonderful surprise. We split up so we could each see what we wanted to see. I went for the Daniel Sprick portrait room. Oh my. These portraits look like photographs at first but then you realize their paintings and then you scream! What?! I was mesmerized.