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Sunday, August 28, 2005 |
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It's been a year. I'm doin' it. I'm takin' a sit-down bath tonight. And I'm gonna fill the tub clear up to my shoulders. Hot afternoon. Too brilliant and hot. The air moves a little in the willows. And in the wild roses. You can hear a little clatter of locusts. A wind chime ringing. A high flat metallic note, and then a low one. Apple sighs in dream. I wiped the tiles down in the unused tub--really well, I thought. And still a little dirt and dust, a bit of dead leaf, floats on the surface of the rising water. The duct tape I layered over the leaky built-in metal plug didn't hold. It balloons upward as the water finds its way under. The water will leak away. I'd fill it by stages, I thought. Two inches an hour. If it didn't leak out, I could lie down in the warm water by bed time. And still have water in the well in the morning.
The locusts make a click and rhythm in the heat just like the rainbird sprinklers in my old orchard. |
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Sunday Morning Gunter   9:36:55 AM  comment []
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 Now it's a category 5 and headed straight for Louisiana.
Please say a prayer for Aunt Judi.
From CNN.com:
Hurricane Katrina's winds nearly 175 mph.
Officials fear New Orleans is vulnerable because it sits an average of 6 feet below sea level.
Nagin said the storm surge would likely topple the levy [sic] system that protects the city. |
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Old dark houses. So many rooms. Enormous rooms. High ceilings. Dust. On the beds and sofas and tables were sculptures of objects--on the bed a polished wooden carving of disheveled bedclothes. On the tables, wooden dishes--not individual dishes but a single carved sculpture of a meal in progress. Were there wooden people? I can't remember. I don't think so. At the back through the weeds and wild overgrowth, a chain-link fence, and beyond the fence ... the White House? Surely not. There was a sub- or side-dream. A doctor (Richard Dreyfus) and his sidekick visiting patients in a slum. Doctor bounding up the steps to check on his good friend in a tenement, who had diabetes. Coming back out with sadness, because he'd found the man dead. He sat on the top step and wept. Parents in their late forties, maybe older. A large family. Many grown and nearly grown children. They were moving into the large dark house. Only now it was remote. One traveled days by off-road vehicle and then hiked and rafted to reach it. All the children were tough--they were happy and strong and filled with good humor and love. They couldn't wait to get out of there though and into the populated world. I helped them unpack in the empty old house with its high ceilings and huge rooms. I showed them around. I was surprised; the house had many more rooms than I had thought. I had brought my cats and I introduced the family to them and explained about feeding them and to be careful of accidentally shutting them in somewhere. The cats, too, were exploring and memorizing their new surroundings. The woman was pregnant. Too old to be pregnant. But was. The family was splitting up now. The father was taking half the children with him to the city. They were so excited. Or was he taking them all? The woman wanted to give birth alone. Always gave birth alone and unassisted. There was a little girl of 10 or 11 years old. She embraced her mother in farewell. The mother looked into her eyes. "I want you to understand," she said. "This is the last time we will ever see each other. I love you very much." They hugged and the girl ran off to join her father and siblings for the hike out. There were little subplots like that throughout the dream. The teenaged girls putting on community plays. One of them wild and staying out all night. The boy so inured to remote living he could hike for many days, catch all his own food, sleep on the ground, and so could go anywhere with confidence.
When they arrived at their new house the children ran around happily. No one in the neighborhood had expected them and two strangers were living in the house already, squatters. The father, it turns out, was pregnant as well. Hence the split, because he too always gave birth alone. |
