Sometimes I do,

but never forget.

Sometimes you have to pack up to get to a place to unpack your brain.

Even greatness needs a shoulder.

Photo by Kyle Terada

At 5:15 Sunday morning if you’re in the park with kids you aren’t checking out the elements, you’re part of them. Among the limping and squinty-eyed, beneath the birds who are still waiting to sing. There are those here who slept in their cars for the night, some who haven’t slept at all, and one motivated soul who went to bed early so he wouldn’t miss his A.M. jog. That guy is a jerk and the birds are cruel.

We are part of this. At Haggens Grocery (open 24 hours) humanity at 5:15 consists of the half-alive, half-dead, and half-stocking shelves. The airport and sketchy gas station are the only other things open. Everyone here didn’t start at the same time but we’re now all part of this collective grave-yard shift, searching for brown rice on aisle 5 and our brain in the deli. The meat and cheeses are not out yet and the newspaper is undelivered, but the bagels just arrived to warm the slumbering hearts of the freaks and phantoms.

And it’s early when you go back to the park to see the sun still only hitting the tops of the fir trees. Below, in the big shadow, lurks us.

Ski to Sea weekend in Bellingham, someone might get a free shirt. Just outside the city line we had visitors, the special kind.
No snow = no ski. Oh well, a modified course couldn’t stop the race.
We = homemade bingo board play, barn, free samples, kid parking hustlers, ice cream, athletes completed, I won.

Trying to regulate and relegate feelings can be a tricky business. Like I want to hang out with my ladies and feel everything on Tuesday, but then go to work or do dishes on Wednesday and feel nothing.  As if there is a tap I’m in total control of.

Things get strange when
one moment you’re home (the original one)
looking at the window of your childhood room from the outside,
& in a flash you’re talking to Ranftle or Billingsley or can’t remember Name.
20th reunion–> discovering what/who is the same/different. And I’m reminded of how big Mount Rainier and Teachers are. And it’s strange and beautiful to walk into the same gymnasium where at times I hid, at others I shined.
And seemingly hours later you go- there I go-     to sit in an ornate theater finding myself moved to hear David Sedaris describe crossing state lines to get a tumor removed by a stranger in hopes of feeding it to turtles come late Spring.
And then there’s Don’s.
You and I could say we had a strange weekend.