8/9  

Dream:

From the dirt road,  I steer a car sliding into the drive sideways. As it slows I leap from the seat. Hearing my daughter’s cries echo deep from a half-full pale, I pull her out. Her head disfigured, eyes wonky, I clean and dry her,  worried about chemicals. As I finish,  the smiling girl enters, shining, followed by her brother and mother. Puzzled, the three  look at me as I hold in my arms the lopsided doll from the bottom of the bucket –so still, fixed and unreal.

Journal Entry:

 I used to just hang out with people and not worry about how I presented myself or what we were doing. We just did things together. I have lost who I am in all this.

8/10

Journal Entry:

8:30 am

My alarm was going off. No, it was a phone call:

“This is Karen from the Early Learning Center.”

My sleepy mind thought of a place I had applied to volunteer, but it was my friend from Marysville and my former working life. I started to explain my interest in volunteering which had to do with working with speech pathologists.

“I’m sorry did I wake you up.”

“Yeah, but that’s alright.”

“I knew it might be a risk calling so early, but I am in the closet trying to figure some  this stuff out.”

I was glad it was the Karen I knew calling me from a closet trying to figure things out. It actually made sense.

8/11

Journal Entry:

I am feeling so let down and patronized. Should I feel flattered? I should make what I want of the position.

8/14

Dream:

I was looking at a giant Ladybug Magazine with someone. Then I was riding a motorized tricycle through a dark neighborhood full of shadowy dangers. My friend’s dad opened the sliding glass door and I drove right into the house.

8/22

If I write

and write like a fiend

all I have seen, heard and done,

Leave not a crumb unfound,

All bound into the manuscript

Of greedy contemplation.

8/25

Multicellular Life

Every cell in my body cries out with a separate life.

How am I one being?

Am I a consensus of all these voices,

a conglomeration of the loudest calls?

I make decisions , but most of that process is subterranean

complex beyond my comprehension,

The “I” I use

a small part of a system

full of contradictions.

How to walk a narrow path

With such ballast to manage?

How to remain true to any values

when there are all these

competing clamorous mouths

that cry out from within to be fed?

Window

Jumping into a precarious situation

Balanced by creativity and action,

Leads to

Rough cream drapes

Two sticky kisses

Against lowered venetian blinds