Blooming

As in "June is busting out all over!!!!"

and

"Come on Dover, move your blooming arse!!!!"

Life is a whirl of seed swaps, tart baking, friend supporting, volleyball spiking, and- Lord help me, spring concert staging.

It's the hard knock life for me.

If you feel cheated by the small word count of this post, I ask you "what the hell are you doing inside reading blogs?"

Since I Am Spending My Words Elsewhere

That's write. I am living a small cyber double life, and it is taking its toll, as I shockingly neglect this blog. Wicked woman, where is your commitment to public displays of narcissism? And don't use the Facebook excuse- you haven't been constantly updating your status.

Regardless, I've used my allotment of original thoughts for the evening, but it is spring and I am overflowing with seasonal sap. So I give you selected bits from a cleverer bugger than me.

take it, ee:

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

~ ~ ~

Spring is like a perhaps hand
(which comes carefully
out of Nowhere)arranging
a window,into which people look(while
people stare
arranging and changing placing
carefully there a strange
thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps
Hand in a window
(carefully to
and from moving New and
Old things,while
people stare carefully
moving a perhaps
fraction of flower here placing
an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

~ ~ ~

may my heart always be open to little

birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young


and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

Success Is Counted Ironic

So I was not able to write into existence another year's worth of salary on-island for myself, but I was able to write into existence a salary for someone who by definition, must not be me- which is to say the island will have a new Island Institute Fellow next year for comprehensive planning. At least one application I penned was successful. The new Fellow will live in this house, will work on the committee I have been working for (in my spare time), will wear my title.

New blood will be good for the island.

I knew as I wrote the application that I was essentially displacing myself.

Tequila and the Truth

Seriously. I don't know why the CIA was fooling around with waterboarding when they could just put the tequila to 'em (ignoring the possible religious issues there, of course). They wouldn't only sing, they'd also dance.

Oh the truthiness happened.

After a pina colada, some number of tequila shots, and a rum and coke or two into the evening...

After a year of hemming and hawing, and multiple consultations (the friends, the father, the half brother)... I did grab the slender one by the hand, and pulled him out to the deck to figure out what was the what.

Sigh. It didn't take long.

I like making cake, we know that. So making a cake of myself should be no big deal. All a part of the human experience.

And the exchange lead to a pretty magical drive-home moment:

Nate: Morgan, are you crying?!

Morgan: Nooooooooooooo!!!! I don't cryyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! (sobs into her hands).

And then I crawled to my computer to gchat with Stacey, which is when I typed this immortal phrase:

"tequila-y is the craziest drinkest drubnk."

Indeed.

On Spring and Linear Equations

Have you been able to focus your attention? Spring and all?

Well, you are a better person than me.

I've been baking, cleaning, hiking, purloining daffodils, taking cuttings from my geranium, and planting seeds in pots. Yes, there has been work too. But not blogging. The puttering and wandering has been too good, and the latest social bombshell too bad. Living in a microcosm is pretty intense, and if I sat down to write about it right now, with grace, maturity, and a searching heart, my head would go kablooey.

So I am wandering through the forest courting lyme disease, marauding for the flowers the deer won't eat, and other things of high importance. Oh yes, getting my feet wet with spring time woods muck.

Did a smidge of math tutoring last night, which was beautiful- linear equations. When else is life ever so straightforward and dependable? Learn the identity of the pieces, the rules and relationships, and voila- you know exactly what to expect every time. How a mad species like humans came up with such a relaxingly sane system of thought will never cease to amaze me.

So easy to navigate, so satisfying to work through. Nice, neat, and orderly. In a short space of time you can find an answer and know it is the right one. Now, finding the x-intercept of a line may have absolutely no bearing on anything in reality, but hot damn, it is an absolute answer, nonetheless! And I will whole-heartedly embrace it for sake of having sooooooomething be absolute.

Algebra, cake ingredients, dirt (literal! not figurative). I am focusing on the good stuff.

Big Legacies in a Small Town

There's a haiku at the end.

...Wait for it....

Everyone has weeks of heartsick exhaustion. I suspect. This past week seemed as good as any to have one myself- I've had a head cold, I'd been traveling a lot, and I did not get what I wanted. The future looms all abyssal just in time for my 29th birthday. Also, didn't have time to stock the fridge, so feeding myself has been a bit spotty (those failed no-bake cookies? Hello, breakfast, lunch and dinner!). I get cranky when I'm hungry. It's one of my many endearing traits.

So. That said.

I have had to ponder life without the island.

I have managed to survive life without theater; life without boyfriends A,B, and C; life after the house in Little Deer Isle. This would just be another heartbreak. What is there to fear in that? I literally laugh in the face of heartbreak (at least while people are looking). My disappointments in life have generally been so minor, and the rewards so major- this one would not be inconsolable.

While I am hopeful that something might work out- that I will find some way to remain tethered here, to remain at home here- I am preparing for the possibility of emigration. Which means I am looking at my work in a new light- I am considering how I need to have all the ends tied up, so that I can leave cleanly, having created some sort of sustainable order. If I leave, I want to leave having fulfilled my obligations, and having done so relatively well, so that should people think of me, they will think of me relatively well. Yes, let's get on with the legacy building, shall we?

This is what I have been stewing on (beyond the obvious scheming to make ends meet after August) this afternoon. Have been having a hell of a time finding photos of myself "with other people" for the Institute's Island Journal. I only take pictures of myself when I am alone- when in company, I am the photographer. What photos my friends have are probably not at all appropriate for the Island Journal. So this left photos at the school. There are approximately six pictures of me (or really, with me in them- there is a difference), spanning the year and a half I have worked there. As we scrolled through events, and I continually didn't show up, there was the refrain- "oh, but you weren't there were you?" More often than not, my response was "yes, actually, I was."

Well, I wanted to do the seeing, so should I lament not being seen?

I walked home to my own journal after the staff meeting- I've spent six years with this particular journal (I juggle them), nearly to the day- and it is almost ready to be retired. As the evening moved on, and the sun began to sink ever lower, I decided to run an errand- something to give me a tangible reason to get out of the house, to wander at magic hour. I gathered up my Netflix; I penned a quick "thank you" note; and then it was out onto the deserted street, in the hour of the deer. I didn't see a human soul, walking when the sane world sees to supper. This April day has been blustery and cold, but filled with light- it could be March, it could be November. I would wish it to be part of an unending autumn, not a presaging of summer. I don't want the pace here to pick up, I don't want my contract to end.

At the Post Office, I slipped my mail into the outgoing slot, and wandered to the store, to belatedly erase my name from the UPS whiteboard, then headed up the familiar walkway to the church. I thought I should probably clarify a few things with the universe. Communication is important, so I've read.

Having set things straight, it was on down the tree-canopied lane (now rutted with wash-outs), and out onto the open expanse of the field- startling the inevitable deer, tails pink in the thickening light. Unafraid of mud season, I exited toward the road by the power station, such as it is, and came to a piece of public art, such as it is. A large rock, it is impaled all over with small propellers at wild angles, backed by a very large propeller. Many of us scratched our heads last year, as one island resident labored away at this project. It was to be a memorial to his best friend, a man who had basically founded the power company. I didn't think much about it- being a newcomer it didn't make a whole lot of sense, sticking a bunch of propellers into a rock. It was of course, the Dark who enlightened me (ha ha ha), as it was his father skewering the boulder:

"It's all about the pain in the ass of trying to move forward when all these little minds are working against you in all different directions"

I paraphrase, but that was the gist. Yep. Gaining consensus is a pain in the ass when you know you're absolutely right. Like much public art, this had faded to the background for me. It wasn't something I'd thought much about or looked at since. But today- drawing out the walk, pensive about what feeble legacy I would be leaving (tape a pinwheel to the stone for me!)- I realized that this man had gone ahead and stuck propellers into a glacial erratic.

As in, it will probably take another ice age to move it anywhere. Regardless of propellers and righteousness, minds small and large.

And at that, I laugh-
Rock joking with me at night.
Nearby, deer scatter.

.

The Journey is Sublime

I'd only been back from Iowa about 36 hours when I had to turn around and leave the island again to chaperone a field trip to Portland/Westbrook. Given that the chaperone/student ratio was 4:6, I figured I could duck it, but in the end, I just bowed to my advisor's expectation and got on the damned boat.

The morning of the departure, I was attempting to fix no-bake cookies I had ruined as an offering for library hours (can I just not not bake?), responding as cheerfully as I could to the news I did not get the award, and finishing quarterly reports. In the light of all the work that needed to get done before I could step out of doors and head to the landing for the 8 a.m. boat, I was glad I hadn't really bothered to unpack from Iowa. I would just throw a couple of things in, and hey presto! I would be on my way.

Yeah. Don't do that.

Oh, I had underwear. Socks, even. Just no pajamas. Also, not so much with a coordinating outfit to wear to a matinee kids opera. On the up side, I got to drive an Expedition. Now I hate gas-guzzling ridiculously large SUVs as much as the next person. Normally I would glare at the driver of such a vehicle, and judge them silently for their compulsive consumption of the earth and her resources. I would laugh at their attempts to park in Portland. But, I am also a little woman with Little Woman Complex.

I suddenly like big vehicles, when I get to drive them.

So, aside from the cries and yelps from the back seat, where three of my younger students were engaged in the never-ending arguement that begins with the scream "so-and-so touched me!", I was in a pretty blissful place. Occasionally a song would come on and they would all sing together like seraphim:

"What's going on the floor, I love this record baby,
but I can't see straight any more
Keep it cool, what's the name of this club...
I don't remember, but it's alright, alright... just dance..."

or alternatively

"No one knows what it's like...
to be the bad man...
to be the sad man..."

And it was about the time on the way back home, when the arguing stopped on a dime, so they could all chime in on Behind Blue Eyes, that I knew there was a point to my going on this trip. It wasn't a big point, and epiphany or anything. It was just that I got to have the sublime experience of singing The Who while driving a stupidly large vehicle on I-95 with a clutch of little boys piping up from the backseat. And this song was not from my generation or theirs.

Classic.