Confusionpalooza

Natalie Morales, Scott Creley and me at Poetrypalooza

Times of transition flummox me.  I crave escape into a decompression chamber to adjust to change, but that’s not the way life works.

Alan went back to Playa on Sunday and back to work on Monday.  Summer is officially over for us.  My elder son came in for a brief visit from New York and left again.  I found an old friend on Facebook, incomunicado for 21 years.  We met at a jazz club last night, over a beer, for a catch-up chat.  He lives a half mile from my mom's.  He was the free-spirited, artist, hippie, U of Cal type.  He’s a long time business and home owner.  Why do people always surprise you?

I fell off my bike yesterday with skidding sideways flare, as though I were sliding into home.  All the articles I carry with me in my baskets-- water, Gatorade, sun tan oil, a spritzer, my purse-- and accessories from the bike flew across the asphalt and fanned around the downed bike and rider.  It looked like a physics experiment.  

Here was the top half of my bell, resting on the dotted white line in the center of the street.  There were two AAA batteries, come to rest in the murky depths of the slime-green puddle.  The third battery was twenty feet away, on the sidewalk, next to an oil barrel.  My right side didn’t feel so good as I gathered my scattered belongings.

Yesterday, I could still deal.  I picked up my mom and younger son for lunch on the westside with the NY visitor son.  I faked it through the ueberlong walk-about in the giant Trader Joe’s on Culver Boulevard, a delightful excursion for my mom.  I faked it through calamari at Colombo’s last night and the drive back home at 1AM.  

Today, I feel sore and wince with every breath.  My ribs are a mess.  The right side of my body looks like it went through a giant grater.  Who knew my body could produce such lumpy expressions of cerulean blue and purple pink winter fjord sunsets? 

I wanted to blog about Poetrypalooza but John Brantingham beat me to it.  You can go read his blog (johnbrantingham.blogspot.com) for all the networking he is doing.  Think to yourself: ditto for Marta.  I wanted to blog about the Perseids and my moonless ride to Mt. Baldy in pursuit of meteors.  I wanted to do many things today and tomorrow, but the gods of good writing said, "No!"  My destiny is to stay home, finish my rewrites and hand them in to Sunny Frazier, my ueberpatient acquisitions editor at Oak Tree Press.