true, we have to hate evil; else we're sentimental.
but if we hate evil morethan we love the good we become damn good haters, and of those the world already has too many.
however deep, our anger must always and only measure our love.


william sloane coffin, credo.   

when we are intent on being, rather than on having, we are happier.  
and when we are intent on being, we don't take away from other people's being- 
in fact we enhance it.  
but when we are intent on having, we create have-nots- 
and invariably lie about the connection.


william sloane coffin,
credo. 

i just took a catnap. how was your nap? ok, idle know if i slept. you were snoring. i guess i slept then, i don't usually snore when i'm awake. 
i woke up and read the end of joy williams' shepherd:
    
       silence was a thing entrusted to the animals, 
   the girl thought. many things that human words have harmed are restored 
   by the silence of animals. 

she was inconsolable over the death of her shepherd. she would ask, do you love me? and the dog would leap into her arms. but the dog kept escaping by tearing through the screen door. she was taking drugs to calm her down that never calmed her down. her boyfriend chester said she would always stand and scream at the dog. the dog tore the screen and drowned in the ocean. 

then, again i thought about the fellow who was so in love with his pet bull who died 
he cloned him and was gored. 



 

mister loves his cherriot. when i turn to look he's laying beside it, waiting.

here's one of karin cassel's drawings, mushroom phoenix, the first of a book of drawings and poems she made with jesse, her partner. the book is playful, mystical, human-natural-alchemical. it's about individual transformation and transformation in nature, i'll say. i'll look more. i only saw it once before, when she was recovering from the fall before her last.

flower from mister to jasper.

what does it mean when your soles itch and crack and erode like patches of earth in a vacant lot unnurtured. am i missing something or do i have something extra, a passenger, an ill lodger in my soles. i take for granted these, and i have done things not gentle to these that carry me. i often think i'm missing something or carrying something i can't let go of. some ill education. i think maybe i'm just too crazy, but i'm crazy in a way that doesn't quite represent me. it's outside me, an outside me. something i carry, something that happened to me. i remember in the book something happened how he repeats the phrase so often it becomes meaningless, a mantra of discomfort, and ultimately the realization, that nothing happened, really, it was a phrase to keep things from happening. and it worked, it kept things from happening, while things happened around him, life, he observed in the phrase his life unlived. it went on anyway. without him in a way. obscurely led by him. this life called something happened. it could be like that with me. when karin died and my turmoil with r. subsided i felt an easement, i thought, i may have sustained damage, i may have damaged myself, but the word sustained is telling, what sustained me was soul, my sanity, and god knows the sanity of honey girl, and mister, and a host of dog friends on the way. and then i say to myself, and in here, you're not really crazy, you experience some crazy shit in this crazy paradigm, and you wend your way sometimes wobbly, sometimes clashing, sometimes in grace. yet deep down you know. you are sane.

                         mister balances like a flower.

moving in stereo.

 

Life's the same I'm moving in stereo
Life's the same except for my shoes
Life's the same you're shakin' like tremolo
Life's the same it's all inside you

It's so easy to blow up your problems
It's so easy to play up your breakdown
It's so easy to fly through the window
It's so easy to fool with the sound

It's so tough to get up
It's so tough
It's so tough to live up
It's so tough on you

Life's the same I'm moving in stereo
Life's the same except for my shoes
Life's the same you're shakin' like tremolo
Life's the same it's all inside you

Life's the same I'm moving in stereo
Life's the same except for my shoes
Life's the same you're shakin' like tremolo
Life's the same it's all inside you

 

 

 

                                         how do you fall? we fall in flowers.

oh mister every time i see you i laugh with joy. 

 how did you get soul cute?

 i was bone this way, gnome sane, ha ha ha.

hi.

locus solus. julia sent karin's art, and i will show something in a while. we talked of missing her and this morning i thought how a person is given out, dispersed like seeds in the loved ones.

mocking mourning short-eared eggs.

we were walking in the center of the point and mister was lurking under a tree and he stared out at me unmoving when i called like maybe i wouldn't see him if he pretended to be in a trance and then he could eat something he's not s'pose to. i saw julia coming over and called him again and we hugged and they hugged and he stared ahead again posing for pictures and then he leaned into julia and then flopped over. when the photos were done and we were talking he got into peeling the bark off a stick. the only point of this story is the story, of friends finding each other by chance in the green center of the point and hugging in pictures and gratitude.

in the fall we miss things,
things that are still falling.
things fall together as well as 
things come apart.

as we walked to wooded island to see the birders and the birds of course 
i thought of the missing birder karin who of course has been missing 
the birds herself for some time save the ones that appear in her window.
now she herself is missing.
i told julia i know she died and i miss her but i feel light. 
i felt her in my walks the day after she died.
i feel the light of her eyes now in the atmosphere.
if the birds were gone of course we would miss them
and so many are gone but we look for the ones here.

because our value is a gift, we don't have to prove ourselves, only to express ourselves, and what a world of difference there is between proving ourselves and expressing ourselves.

william sloan coffin,
credo.


i found this book on the way home too, at a sale on the sidewalk in front of vista homes, hard by the encroachment zone of obomaland. 

                                            a bird pellet on the bridge to wooded island.

They inherited the experience of countless generations, slowly acquired as the species extended its range westward... They furnish, too, an instance of one of the most important factors in migration- that is, the certainty with which a bird returns to the region of its birth.

Of this wonderful homing instinct which plays so vital a part in the migration of birds, i have no explanation to offer.


BIRD LIFE
by Frank M. Chapman 


i found this book at an estate sale at vista homes on the way home from the bird walk. i gave it to r., my bird girl.

we wanted to be with the birders today and think of karin here where she loved to be with the birders and the birds. the other karin said we should place a rock for karin c. we could visit and touch and speak to when we come. it's a lovely idea. the world of the spirit that she lived in is this world we'll keep coming to see.

mister looks for the birders. we enter the japanese garden and see a great heron
who he either does not see or ignores.

i carry him over the bow bridge and he sees some misty figures and runs through the water misters thinking my people my people. it's the crew that just installed the sprinklers and they become his people and we have a talk about how the nature sanctuary has changed and worry about the future of nature in obombaland. they say he wants to build a bridge from his giant 23 story illuminated tower to the island and we all sigh a collective sigh and mister lays down in the dewy grass the picture of contentment.

the past is present

 

Revived bitterness

is unnecessary unless
    One is ignorant.

 

To-morrow will be
Yesterday unless you say the
    Days of the week back-

 

Ward. Last weeks’ circus
Overflow frames an old grudge. Thus:
    When you attempt to

 

Force the doors and come
At the cause of the shouts, you thumb
    A brass nailed echo.

  

Marianne Moore

 

 

back home with lulu.

that stiff fellow with the series of dalmations just ran by.

 and little lulu sat and stayed and quietly watched them passing.