STORYVILLE

The way we, humans, use imagination and language to create stories is probably the most important of all human attributes. Without it we would still be clever monkeys but monkeys none the less, hooting from treetops and throwing poop. So where do they come from, how do they come together; stories?  
There are several chain franchise grocery brands in the Kansas City area but two dominate the business. Price Chopper and Hy Vee sell all the same foods, have great delis, offer discounts on gasoline purchases and have great service. Only their decor sets them apart. Price chopper paints with earth tones and colorful murals on every wall, giant bell peppers and huge still-in-the-husk ears of corn, farm-scapes with cabbage fields, tractors and red barns. Hy Vee on the other hand is sterile white, all the walls, displays, coolers, cases and checkout kiosks. My preference of course is to go with all the colors, not so much for color’s sake but at Hy Vee I have an unresolved fear that checkout will follow hospital protocols featuring checkout nurses with blood pressure cuffs, where my Medicare card is more important than my credit card. So I shop Price Chopper. 

Last week I stopped at the Price Chopper on 103rd street, at State Line. I only had a couple of needs but restocking my refrigerator with fresh strawberries is both time sensitive and a high priority.  I don’t know how they do it but regardless of when you shop or how much you buy, when you get to the checkout there are three carts waiting at every register. No matter, I don’t mind, you can count on the customers ahead of you to entertain. There will be a story in every transaction. This time it was the cashier.

She was a wiry little old lady with big tattoos on both arms, above and  below the elbows, short cropped gray hair and heavy frame glasses right out of the 80’s. Using the word ‘wiry’ is correct but inadequate. When those wiry people age, flesh between skin and bone melts away, in its place sinew stretched tight like rubber bands and age wrinkles bear witness to strong, tough experience. She was literally skin & bone but absolutely up to her task. What made her special was the way she moved, like a string puppet, Howdy Doody only three times the speed. Every action required motion at every joint in her body. Every move was quick and necessary to the need but she was extremely animated with fast, short, jerky, articulations. Turning from the register to look at the customer required she move both feet, shift her weight, bend both elbows, tilt her head and lean into the exchange. She was efficient, not missing a detail from double bagging meat to getting wine bottles into brown bags, from checking for mfg. coupons and asking preference on cash-back bills. Every move was spring loaded, separate from the one before as if she had to reset the mechanism. Somewhere inside that bony little body there was a main spring that was wound tight. She was something.

She took my canvas shopping bag, scanned my shoppers card, took my strawberries and checked them for spoilage all without looking at me. When we did make eye contact she stopped cold and said, “I bet you get the Charles Bronson thing all the time?” It stopped me cold, I was bewildered. “You know!” she said, “Charles Bronson, the movie actor.” After a moment I replied, “Yes, I remember Charles Bronson.” She went on as she slid my berries into the canvas bag, “I love him in all those westerns; you look just like him.” I conceded, yes, I liked him too. She pumped her elbows with a big toothy smile, “I bet people are always telling you how much you look like him.” She thanked me for shopping at Price Chopper, handed me my receipt and turned to the next shopper. 

Yesterday I stopped at the same Price Chopper, again for more strawberries. The little, tattooed lady was working the same register. Before I could show her my shopper’s card she said to me, “I know your name is Frank but may I call you Charles? It’s a great compliment you know!” Incredible as it sounds, it seemed we were life-long friends. She scanned my berries, checked the bottom for mold, bagged them and added, “I can’t get over how much you look like him.” She wished me a good, ‘rest of my day’ and I walked away. She made me think of the Italian traffic cop who directed traffic like a symphony conductor, guiding his orchestra through a complicated overture. I may never get the rest of her story but I can fill in the holes from my own imagination. I remember Charles Bronson for his “Death Wish” movies more than his westerns and I was sort of a fan. But nobody every told me I looked like him, not until I pushed my strawberries up the conveyer at Price Chopper and came face to face with what’s-her-name. I need to think of a famous, or infamous person that she resembles, even remotely, so I can return the compliment. But I really need to check her name tag the next time I buy strawberries. Probably the best compliment you can give someone just met is to remember their name. 

ANOTHER DAY OLDER

Once upon a time in Central City (there must be a story here) a little old man woke up Wednesday still tired from a busy Tuesday, barely aware of rain in the night but wet grass just outside his open window stirred a nerve and he knew. On Tuesday, the day before, just an hour or so before normal dinner time he was busy moving a stack of concrete bricks from his driveway to a more permanent spot. His son, unable to let anything of possible use go to waste had put them in the back of his pickup after work rather than see them buried or disposed of otherwise. He asked if the old dude could use some cement bricks and the old man fired straight back that he could, he would take them all as they were small, maybe 3”X3”X2” and a couple of pounds each. They were left over from a construction site, used to hold steel reinforcement rods up off the ground while wet cement was poured into the forms, maybe a couple of hundred, maybe more but time was short so they stacked the heavy little buggers on the edge of the driveway. That was two weeks earlier and it was time to put them in a more permanent place, no telling how long they could remain stacked against the foundation at the back corner of the garage. Before that he had taken pruning shears to limbs that had grown too long and droopy so close to the ground. They too had spent several days lying where they fell and soon the lawn would need mowing so they were dispatched but like the cement, only reduced to bits and pieces. Some would ultimately decompose in the compost heap, some would escape the premises in foot-long sections under a bag of trash in the barrel; the trash company doesn’t pick up yard waste so he hides it under legitimate rubbish. The larger pieces would soon go up in smoke at his summer solstice celebration. Before that came a necessary nap, maybe half an hour after lunch; 3 pieces of falafel, humus, half an apple and some V8, high fiber drink. But it was 4:00 p.m. and he needed to be in the city by 5:00 to help a friend feed the ragged people. Tradition has it Jesus did as much with just 2 fishes but it would take them 6 gallons of lentil/sausage soup, a small wash tub of summer salad and a couple of super-size, church kitchen pans of lasagna. He had become a regular volunteer at the Central City Downtown, Tuesday feeding. His buddy Mark had already prepared food, all they needed to do was heat things up and chop salad. Most of the organization was in place when they arrived at the park but several rowdy fist fighters had started some hostility near the serving line. A very large volunteer, retired State Police officer had intimidation down to a science and the scene was settled down except for his detailed warning to anybody with violence or disruption on their mind. His message in short was, any more disruption and all of the food would just go away in a heartbeat and all the hungry souls believed him, glared their disapproval at the potential evil doers. Dipping out soup into donated 12 oz coffee cups and fishing plastic spoons out of a Walmart bag was his specialty. The weather was perfect and the turnout for food was large. Some faces were familiar from the week before and the week before that and every face belied a story that would certainly take your breath away. But they weren’t talking much except for food related issues and thank yous. After 45 minutes of nonstop serving, the 2nd time arounders had made their last pass and that evening’s offering had been consumed. Shuffling empty pans, containers and folding table back into Mark’s car had become routine and the drive back to church was pleasant. They agreed that it was difficult to find consensus on how best to deal with damaged, indigent and otherwise wretched people but sharing food seemed above condescending rhetoric. Mark and the old dude had both noticed the sanitary disparity, how some souls were unapologetically dirty; clothes, hair, hands & face, belongings and others had clearly made an effort to be well kept. Judgement wasn’t the issue, just what one sees and it is what it is. Pulling back into his driveway the old man noticed the clear space where the concrete bricks had been stacked and remembered picking up the last few, exposing a colony of tiny ants, scurrying in the unexpected flood of daylight, chaos unleashed, reminded him of the homeless, moving their nest to a new, hopefully safe place, at least for the night, disappearing into the grass at the edge of the drive like transients melting into alleyways and side streets. He didn’t feel sorry for the ants, just understood that you don’t deserve what you get or get what you deserve. You get what you get, it’s that simple and that’s true for people as well as for ants. What we do with what we get is more complicated but unlike ants, we make excuses for the chaos and take credit for good fortune. His day had been full, beginning with a 15 mile bike ride, a shower, breakfast and good coffee with a dollop of honey waiting at the bottom of the mug. Before he knows it, it’s Wednesday morning and the grass is still wet from a shower that came through in the wee hours. At noon he will meet with a bunch of old men and if they are lucky, a good woman or two; they’re all good just some are better, to pick on Nietzsche and Freud or juggle preference between ouija boards and economics, whichever makes them feel better. Some think they deserve the good life they lead and others dare not take it for granted. Thursday will be a new day; that’s how they come, one after another. More than that would require too many excited electrons, not recommended. 

CORN CHOWDER

There I was behind a folding table with a cardboard box full of plastic containers, like the ones pasta salad comes in at the deli. They were filled with corn chowder or chicken & rice soup. Like everybody else on my side of the table, I wore rubber gloves. They seemed appropriate, handling food and all. Backed up in the grass of a down-town public park, a long line of volunteers doled out food to ragged street people on the sidewalk. They got a recycled plastic bag and fork & spoon, then they came to me. My job was to hand them a bowl of soup, whichever kind they wanted but only one to a customer. You don’t let them reach in to help them selves. They asked what it was, I tell them, they decide or shake their head no and look away. I put the bowl of soup in their hand and they put it in the bag. The box held 70 bowls of soup. 

At church a few days earlier our pastor’s husband let it be known he could use some help. I volunteered. He told me to meet him at 9th & Oak at 6:15 p.m. on Tuesday. In Kansas City 9th Street is where the down town ends, all that is left is to cross over the freeway and head down to the Missouri River. ‘KC Heroes’ is an all volunteer program that feeds the homeless, twice a week. By 6:30 the lawyers and accountants who work in the tall buildings have gone home and the streets are clear. The street people are always there but during the day, by choice or by chance, we don’t see them. Mark had prepared his contribution in the church kitchen, soup and mac & cheese. He was down stream in the serving line from me. 

At exactly 6:30, with no fanfare, not even a “Come & get it”, the lady beside me gave the woman at the front of the line her plastic bag and utensils. The woman turned to me with a gaunt look, I waited a split second, realized she wasn’t going to ask so I handed her a bowl of corn chowder and she moved on. They came all ages, all colors and all conditions. Some were courteous either by nature or on good behavior, others, not that they were rude but preoccupied. I realized two things quickly. The reason nearly 100 ragged people had organized into one gathering was for food and nothing else. Men were alone or in pairs while women stuck together or kept close to their male counterpart. It was clear they didn’t really want anything to do with each other. They all knew any misbehavior would bring trouble as a police car was just down the street with two officers watching every detail. Secondly, with a flash of insight, I realized the rubber gloves were to protect me. You don’t want any direct contact with any of them. A small fraction seemed clean enough but others were filthy-dirty. Rather than dwell on their dreadful plight it goes without saying, they were sadly, desperately in need. 

It should be no surprise but still, one’s place in the pecking order is just as important to the lowest ranking vagrant as to high rollers. Big, strong men who beg for food still have to posture and preen before their peers. Ironically, those big men typically passed on soup while women and lower order men were happy with whichever came up. 

The weather forecast was for storms in the evening. The sky had been threatening since before we arrived and a sense of urgency kept things moving. After the last person was fed and the line shut down, the wind shifted and I could smell rain. Everyone scurried to get supplies and tables back onto the bus, personal items back into cars and big, cold raindrops started to splatter on the street. Little did we know that an F4 tornado was on the ground some 10-12 miles to the SW, headed our way. Listening to the weather bulletin as I drove home I knew I was making distance between the storm and myself. A small town east of Lawrence, Kansas took a beating but the funnel lifted and the big city was spared.

I know it’s easy to judge people who end up so isolated and deprived. What must they have done to be in such dire straits? Paying it forward, the opposite of paying someone back for their generosity. You pay forward to someone who is in need. It’s about the kind of person you want to be. My Tuesday evenings are open so I will help Mark again, maybe I can put some food together too. It is so much better than throwing a few dollars at street corner beggars. You know that your little contribution goes and does what you intended it to do. I like Joseph Campbell’s quote, “Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows but we can choose to live with joy.” I can’t fix their situation but I can share something of what I have. Seldom does a day go by that I don’t think of my mother and her frequently shared observation; “There but for the Grace of God go I.” We are lucky it isn’t us who need a free meal. We’re all just one mistake and bad timing away from desperation.

SOPHIE'S TEETH

It’s strange how a word or a random coincidence can trip memory’s trigger. One’s mental plate is only so big and when it’s full, everything else gets put in a folder and filed away somewhere. Then something shakes loose and comes to the top like a bubble rising and it leaves me standing on top of the world. 

In 1972 I lived with my family on the west slope of Colorado. My little brother Wes lived with his family in south central Missouri. We were both teachers and it was summer. He was working toward a commercial pilot’s license and needed as many hours in the air as he could manage. His father in law was a commercial pilot and bought a Cessna 152 for him to fly, accumulate hours in his log book. The 152 is a two place, high wing plane with tricycle landing gear, designed as a student-trainer for low altitudes. We hatched a plan. They would bring only a change of clothes in a grocery sack and their two girls, 6 & 2 and fly from Missouri to Pueblo, Colorado, on the east slope. Heavily loaded, the little 152 didn’t have enough power to clear the mountains in the summer heat so I would drive over, pick them up, drive back . We would reverse the shuttle service when it was time for them to go home. 

I had a 1953 Willys Jeep station wagon that was powered by a Chevy V8, plenty of room for everyone. On our side we had 3 boys, 5, 1 & 1 (twins). It was a great vacation. One day in particular stands out. We packed for a picnic, put a small play pen in the back, loaded kids and drove 40 minutes to Ouray, Colorado, gateway to the San Juan Mountains. We were headed to a high meadow, west and several thousand feet vertical from Ouray. The first few miles were carved out of solid rock. Ore trucks from the Camp Bird mine drove that part regularly. After that it was a 4 WD two-track with switch-backs and steep grades. Slow going, the terrane opened up into an open basin, surrounded by high peaks. Yankee Boy Basin was a popular destination for tourists. Heavily mined in the late 1800’s, old portals with tailing dumps dotted every hillside, gully and outcropping. Wild flowers were everywhere, blue columbine, red and yellow Indian paintbrush, where springs bubbled up and spilled down everywhere. We stopped frequently, the kids played in the meadow and we took our lunch there. 

Rather than calling it a day we decided to take the road up the south mountainside to a smaller basin, higher elevation, Governor Basin. Above Governor Basin, St. Sophia Ridge stretches south from Mt. Ema to Chicago Peak. Above us maybe 500 feet vertical and a quarter mile distant, the ridge was eroded, leaving columns of black rock with narrow gaps between them, known as “Sophie’s Teeth”. 

We had run out of road but you can climb up to Sophie’s Teeth and look down on the town of Telluride on the other side. Wes and I left our families to entertain themselves and we set about to climb. At first it was a walk across loose, unsettled rock but the grade went steep. The loose rock gave way to boulders. We were climbing over rocks, up the steep face to the gaps between Sophie’s teeth. It took longer than we thought it would. I was better acclimated to the altitude than Wes but I had to stop often to catch my breath as well. The view was spectacular, literally on top of the world. You could see a hundred miles in 3 directions. We both felt awe and wonder, how insignificant we must be. It was time to head back.

The climb down was surprisingly difficult. It required you look carefully at each foot placement and hand hold. You had to test each move before letting go and shifting weight. An easy stretch put us out of sight from below but much closer to the jeep. When they came into view we were still above them, maybe 300 feet away. We waved and they waved back. We shouted but had no way to know if they could hear us. I had a great idea. Let’s sing them a song. Everything there made me think of the movie, “The Sound Of Music”, the mountains, the sky-so-close, the wives and little kids below. 

I coached him on the lyrics, ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music, with songs they have sung, for a thousand years.’ And, we sang, actually more like screaming with a thin hint of melody. When we got to the end we started over. Thin air, screaming out the song, we soon winded and had to catch our breath. We were laughing, ‘One more time!’ “To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over stones on its way, to sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray.” Stop again for a gulp of air but we knew the song had to finish at the end. “My heart will be blessed with the sound of music, and I’ll sing once more.” The heard us, couldn’t make out the words but recognized the melody. 

The ride home was interrupted by a stop for ice cream in Ouray. I can’t remember another outing with 9 people that nobody complained about anything, everybody slept well that night. Here it is 2019, all of the kids have grown up, moved on. I am on the cusp of turning 80. A friend in my coffee group once asked a hypothetical question, can you remember a time when you had a great experience with one of your siblings, as if it would be a difficult task. Without a thought I defaulted to Sophie’s Teeth and The Sound of Music. 

I love Google Earth. As I began this journal entry I went to my computer, booted up the satellite image, zoomed in and plotted our outing that day in 1972. I clicked on the spot as best I could remember, dropped a marker for the coordinates. (37.966671  -107.779853) You can see the shadows of Sophie’s Teeth. 

FALLING OUT OF FAVOR

Last night my smart phone died, or at least it’s playing dead. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a luddite. Remember the Luddites, workers back in England during the industrial revolution, (early 1800’s) who lost their jobs to machines. They organized, marched, protesting in the streets. It took roots in London, in the textile factories but it spread like a disease through the manufacturing industry. Since then, the trend has been for more efficient, more reliable machines and fewer temperamental, unreliable people. Since 1811 the name Luddite has referred to anyone who pushes back against loss of hands-on jobs to machines. Two hundred years up the line (2019), anyone who dislikes, fears or avoids advanced technology (technophobes), they are yesteryear’s Luddites with 21st Century updates. I’m not one of them.  

So my I-Phone is dead. Last night I made a call and left a message. Shortly, my ringer setting (ahuuuga) snapped me back to the reason for my call but when I went to tap the button, there was no button to tap. It was ringing but the wrong screen was up, the one to enter a pass code. As it continued, ‘ahuuuga’ after ‘ahuuuga’ I kept pushing buttons and tapping the screen to no avail. Nothing worked so I resorted to curse words I reserve for frustrating situations. The phone defaulted to its recorded message and the screen went dark, all was silent.

I’ve been in conversations where smart phones have been scorned and maligned but those critics haven’t abandoned their Twitter or FaceBook feed yet. By now the smart phone is literally a pocket computer. You can do anything on the phone you can do on a tablet or laptop. I haven’t succumbed to smart phone addiction but I use several of its apps more than I thought I would. I check doppler radar to see where rain clouds are and I use the calculator in the grocery store to compare prices per ounce or pound, use the calendar and clock functions. In a pinch, I take pictures and send text messages not to mention several other apps that I fall back on. But I can go to town without it and shut it off when I don’t want to deal with it. I know people who can’t wait until they implant computer chips in their foreheads. Then they can up and download data by just thinking about it. I’m not one of them either.

This kind of internal dialogue, if you let it keep unfolding results in big, loaded questions. How would we fare without our smart phones? I leapfrog that scenario to an even bigger dilemma; what if electricity goes away? A year on the planet without electricity, how about that? There would be a myriad of short range solutions but in the end (1 year) no transportation, no batteries, no ATMs, no fresh water;I don’t even want to think about it. 

This kind of navel gazing is good mental exercise but it doesn’t fix my I-Phone. I have an appointment with my Apple mechanic in a few hours and I go there with great expectations. I understand that my device is just a short lived machine. Whether it became obsolete or died of a hacked motherboard, I will be reaching for my check book. But the check book is outdated, or nearly so. Even my credit card is falling out of favor. Yesterday I was in a carry out restaurant, waiting for my lentil soup and falafel. A dude at the register passed his smart phone over the scanner and transacted business. I can’t do that, don’t know if I want to. I may have to cough up a ton of money this afternoon for a new smart phone. How about a phone app that gives you 20/20 vision. Being able to read text on a 4” screen would be so cool. 

WITHOUT A HOOK

I play with words, have been for so long I can’t put my finger on when it began. I play with words like my kids used to play with matchbox cars. One car was not enough, they needed a tool box full of little toy cars, trucks, busses, ambulances, tractors and wagons that fit their little hands. They needed them all. It if wasn’t in hand it was parked strategically in a special spot on the carpet or the hard wood floor. On the floor between beds in the twins room I put down roads with masking tape, used wooden blocks for houses and barns. In the kitchen you could hear motors and highway sounds coming down the hall from upstairs. Then there was a cookie tin full of matchbox cars for outside in the dirt. The standard posture for playing their game was lying on your side, one arm propping up your head leaving the other to move the cars. Those motor sounds were wonderful. It meant they were not drawing on the walls with magic markers or any number of other cute but dire diversions. 

I don’t have to keep my toys in a cookie tin. They are part of my operating system, inside my head. My vocabulary isn’t all that grand but as a writer, it is adequate for my need and I default to the thesaurus when the cupboard is bare. Therein; my vocabulary has grown slowly over half a century. But: . . . always the ‘But’. I read once that ‘But’ is not the conjunction as we’ve been led to believe, rather it is an acronym. The letters B, U & T stand for, “Behold the Underlying Truth”. So if you ask to borrow money and I say, “I would like to, but: (behold the underlying truth) you won’t get any money from me.” But with age, cutting straight to the truth, comes memory issues. The inability to come up with the right word or expression compounds with age. Sooner or later the words or phrase they do come to you but just the same, if you can’t have the word you want, the word you own, when you want it, it’s like fishing without a hook and it certainly does make one feel like you’re losing your edge.

I have a word today I want to play with. I like to think I own it but frequently have trouble pulling it up. Can you imagine Roy Rogers reaching for his six-shooter but it gets stuck in the holster and the bad guys wait for him to finish his draw before they open fire. Right! Maybe I don’t own it after all. Today’s word is ‘Anecdotal’. Great word, maybe even necessary when weighing in on someone’s argument. Anecdotal is an adjective that refers to evidence or the weight of an example with its role in a cause/effect situation. It is what you remember or heard someone say but it only has a frequency of 1. An example would be; someone’s grandmother drank whiskey and smoked cigarettes every day, all of her adult life and lived to be 103. It questions the harmful effects of smoke and drink as they relate to long life. That example is ‘anecdotal’.  Even if the story is true, a single occurrence that has not been tested cannot substantiate a universal truth. I hang out with a small group of pretty heady characters who meet regularly. We watch documentaries and educational programs that deal with history, philosophy, economics and human behavior then discuss the issues that have been stirred up. My unofficial role in the process is the “Gong-master”. When someone defaults to an anecdotal argument; “I am the way I am because I ate worms when I was little . . . .” I raise my hand and everybody knows I’m about to “Gong” the violating anecdote. 

Anecdotes can be simple examples intended to entertain or clarify through story and not as evidence. Retelling how Uncle Al dropped his drawers at Christmas dinner; that’s an entertaining anecdote. Sometimes when I summon one word I get another. I’m reaching for the word, ’anecdotal,’ and what does my brain send down to my mouth; ’coincidental’. I don’t know how that works. Other times I just hit a dead end, like fishing without a hook. I hope this writing exercise will help imprint ‘anecdotal’ in my recall. 

As I’ve been typing, another word came to mind. I didn’t need it, had no use for it, sort of like when the cat brings a dead snake in the house for your approval.  The word is ‘Vroum’. In past years an auto maker, car company used ‘Vroum’ as their buzz word in their advertising campaign. It suggests excitement and high performance, makes sporty cars even more appealing. It was good marketing but I like other cars sounds better. Back in the 1970’s my kids taught me ‘Rrrr-mmm’ and ‘Uummmmmm’ and they were as good as it gets. The underlying truth here is, that I am being anecdotal and it doesn’t prove anything. Still, the other underlying truth is that it's for the sake of story. My 4 year-old twins are in their 40’s now but they would agree; Rrrr-mmm-Rrrr-mmm, Uummmmmm.

SWEET SPOT

         Edna St. Vincent Millay was quoted, “It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another, it is one damn thing over and over.” It’s a great quote, not only because it takes the familiar axiom and turns it inside out but also her sense of irony redefines a journey most of us take for granted. Are we plunging ahead with our own muscle or being dragged along like puppies on a leash? What appears as a myriad of  vexing problems may be no more than human nature’s tendency to lose its way in the moment.

         If you live long enough you grow old, it doesn’t matter how many years it takes. You can deny and pretend but when you can no longer leap from the back of your pickup truck and hit the ground running, you know. When you accept the world as it is, broken and you're not the one that broke it, and that nobody can fix it, when you accept that you know. Still, there is an up-side. If you get lucky and things go well there is a sweet spot between Edna’s “That Damn thing” and senility. I’m in that sweet spot now. 

         I don’t go to many funerals. I know that people need closure, whatever that is, maybe just more human nature for me to push back against. We function simultaneously on two different levels. First is the shallow, self aware, “I think I think.” This is where you decide to spoon your soup up to your mouth rather than sup it through a straw or choose not to jump off the cliff even though you know someone who did, or you buy a new car, sell the old house. The other is deep, reckless, free flowing, “I feel. . .” In one mode you are the archer’s bow, in the other you are the arrow. If you mellow with age, pray that you do, the feeling of one’s own trajectory surpasses the power rush through the bow. That thoughtless moment, no longer outbound but inbound, if it’s sweet you be grateful and think less of closure. 

        I don’t know a great deal about Edna St. Vincent Millay, a Pulitzer Prize winning writer. Seventy years after her death we still find her name in print, her poetry is timeless. She was a beauty, red hair in trail, always pushing the envelope, breaking rules, wrestling with that “One damn thing.” she died at age 58. I doubt she ever got to the sweet spot. Again, I don’t know; so many things I care about but don’t know, I don’t know why but I want to put Edna St. Vincent in league with Georgia O’Keeffe, both ahead of their time, both outrageous feminists. One crafted words on a page, the other with pigment and a brush. I am more familiar with the latter, always stop to see her in museums and galleries, visited her home in Abiquiu, New Mexico a few years back. I feel confident she found the sweet spot. At 98 she was still painting, still feeling magic that dwells only in the moment. I don’t think she cared one way or the other about Edna’s, One damn thing. I began this with an Edna quote and I’ll end with Georgia. She said, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.”