March 31, Sunday, The Year of 2024, At My House on Orcas Island, Washington

a long title for a small life

I have been working on this newsletter for three consecutive Tuesdays. I have not sent one newsletter out in that time (perhaps obvious to you). Each Tuesday I have put a few good words down and, at the end of my writing time, it hasn’t felt right to send off to the internet, and I kind of despise the internet, so I sit back and trust that there will be another day to write a newsletter. There will be. But now tomorrow is April and I have sent only one newsletter this month and I try very hard at the minimum to finish two a month, what a silly rule, but now we are here, March 31, Sunday, The Year of 2024, At My Home on Orcas Island, Washington, and I would very much like to finish my newsletter from long long ago. 

I went to church today. Afterwards, when asked what I did this morning, my friend P. said, I didn’t know you were Christian. (I am not! I said.) And another person said nothing but it was all in her eyebrow. I think she is confused about gays going to church. But gays like beauty and there is a beautiful Episcopalian church on the water with, even better, a labyrinth in the courtyard. (Gays like labyrinths.) I guess I wanted to see what it was all about. I wanted to sing some hymns. I wanted free coffee and maybe a church sugar mama. The hymns were fine, the old ladies were sweet enough, and I think I’ll go back to Dance Church next week. But it changed the rhythm of my day and, in terms of old muscle memory, I feel better prepared for the week. I’ve done my pew duty today, a routine which has been more prominent in my life than most other things, if you were to look at it as a whole. Church felt old and familiar. Thanks, Church.

I am doing *well more than I am not. When I feel I am not okay, I cry in devastated heaps and A. asks, Could this be PMDD? And I pick my up tender-self and cry even more. We all have big griefs. I hold a lot of it in and tell people that I am doing well more than I am not. I don’t even know if that is true. I don’t have a name for grief or for the absence of grief in a moment, or the river of both, but the sky is beautiful out my window tonight. The frogs will be whistling in an hour. 

There are these moments lately where I feel so shy, distant, turtled. I feel nervous about inviting people over, but once they are at my house I want them to stay forever. My friend brought her baby over and he didn’t want to leave, partly because of the tractors and pigs, but he also liked my house. His mom, my friend, told him it was time to go to their house but I wanted to say No, no, stay. This can be your house, too.

I want a different culture or a commune or to wake up. There was no time at church to pray for things like this.

A. told me that the capitalists wants us to give up, to think that the situation is too big for one person. Or to perhaps know that it’s too big. Ah I know it, I know it. Here I am, palms up like I am receiving communion, on my knees, looking for something else. This can’t just be it. 

…

I hear the frogs now. I think they are whistling; A. thinks it sounds like barking. I wonder if they are doing nicely, down there in the pond. According to the internet, which I sometimes enjoy, frogs chirp and scream and grunt and peep and beep and cluck and croak and quack. If you want to hear what my frogs sound like you can listen to #22 on this playlist, the Pacific Chorus Frog.

It’s a nice playlist. If you’d like, you can let me know what frog noise is familiar or which one you like best. If you’d like, we could sit here and watch the sun go down past the Nutt’s house, my neighbors who spin wool, and discuss the color of the sky, which is all types of purple tonight, but only tonight and tomorrow it could be silver with slivers of pink, and discuss the sound which is all frogs plus other things, which perhaps I am not noticing, but you could.

Love,

to even the strangers,

me!

…

*Well: Interpret as you wish, I am not sure what well is. I am alive, my therapist would say. I am going to retire soon, my dad would say. The children haven’t peed down the slides today, my co-workers would say. Good!

Photo: duck eggs in cups of dye because I went to church today.