Meters and meteors

As May fades away, I make my bed and a dog behaves badly

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Just get on with it.
Just get on with it.

This was my mantra this past week. My psyche wants to keep lagging behind my body, like a toddler entranced with the buttercups while Mom is striding toward the market. Get it together. Get with the program. Skip through cliches like jumping rope.

May is over. It’s a month I never think about, an afterthought month. In June, Dads and grads and the end of the school year. In April, spring’s really setting its tent posts. May is the culmination month, the result of March winds and April showers.

Mother’s Day. Memorial Day. May Day. I may or may not. May.

Summer

Summer surprised me, too, this year, arriving fully dressed and ready to ride while I was still smelling the spring flowers. Summer has never been my favorite season. But this year, it will be better. Maybe it’s because I’m getting serious about Bus Therapy. Summer is premier bus riding time.

Come on, summer

Come on, come on summer
You’ve been waiting for us—
Smirking under earth and planning,
Pushing spring’s shoots to mature.

I’ve been waiting, too, pregnant with spring,
Yearning toward sun, light flashing on water,
Festivals, grass, smell of charcoal,
Coconut oil on our bodies, torsos and toes.

Sailing and gliding, in boats, bikes and tubes,
Getting our hair wet with salt.
Playing hopscotch and stickball on hot summer eves,
Chasing each other til night captures our breath.

In autumn we harvest and store up for snow,
In winter, cocoon in our beds.
Spring pushes us forward, the sun arcing higher
To summer, our frenzy, our peace and our friend.

Meteors

I’m never seen a meteor shower. I have never even seen a shooting star. Seventy-five years on Earth and no shooting stars! Where have I been? In cities, mostly. And when I’ve been in places with vast starry nights—Washington’s Longview Peninsula; the old Kah-Nee-Tah resort, in Central Oregon; the Great Divide Ranch in Montana; Bald Peak in the Chehalem Mountains west of Portland—well, I was distracted by the mundane. Or I was noticing people. Or there just weren’t any meteors right then. I watched the stars, spread like diamonds on a jeweler’s cloth, but none of them ever moved for me.

The summer sky is not dark for long in the Northwest, far enough from the equator to have long, brilliant days in this season. So when you can find darkness, wrap its warm cloak around you. Sweet summer dreams.

Meters

I know, I’ve written about meters before, both the kind that keep track of electricity and gas usage and the type that measure our verse. But I have some more photos to share. As Peggy Lee sings, if you don’t happen to like them, pass them by.

These meter photos feature yellow.

Outside Fried Egg I’m in Love on Southeast Hawthorne. This is the yellow of egg yolks. . Fran Gardner photo

Just a bit of yellow but an interesting array. These meters (or is it just one meter?) can be found downtown near Southwest First and Main. Fran Gardner photo

Shoes

I’m still taking photos of abandoned shoes, too. Sometimes I see a singly, lonely one, useful if you have a peg leg. But often they are left in pairs for anyone to take.

Pairs of shoes in different styles. Fran Gardner photos

Lots of ladies’ footwear, too: heels and sandals . . .

. . . and boots and a single sneaker.

Fran Gardner photos

Dog on a leash

I see him often, a man with two dogs. The dogs always pause to leak on my neighbor’s parking strip while I’m sitting at my desk in the front room window about 7 a.m. One dog, the big one, is on a leash. The other one, smaller, mellow, does not wear a leash.

A few days ago, I was outside at 7, fixing to go write at a coffeehouse. It was Saturday, so there was no Worm Zoom writing session, as there is each weekday from 6 to 8 a.m., to tie me to the desk.

Worm Zoom is when Mason Currey, who writes the Subtle Maneuvers Substack, hosts writing time. About 20 of us agree to turn off our video and write for two hours. I scoffed at the idea at first, but it does seem that our combined energy makes writing richer and easier.

But on Saturday, Zoom free, I was outside on my wheelchair. As I passed man and dogs, the big dog on the leash lunged at me. The man pulled it back, helping it to sit, and started talking earnestly to it about manners. I, meanwhile, wrote a poem.

Two dogs

One dog on a leash,
The other is free.
Leash dog lunges at me.

The owner remonstrates, holding its head
Murmuring wisdom into its ear,
Soothing and smoothing, asking for obedience.

Could it be so easy, soothing our anger,
Telling ourselves “it’s okay, just sit there awhile.”
I want to forgive, just let it be simple.

Now, sit and ponder, remember your actions.
How could your motives be stronger, more pure?
Stop, stay awhile, examine your emotions.

You are so singular, so human, so fine.
Remember, remember your greatness.
And don’t be the dog that lunges.

Making your bed

In another life, one of the many I have lived, I never made my bed. I was a single woman. Nobody cared about the neatness of my bedroom. I got up in the morning and just kept going.

Then one day I started making it every day, and that changed things.

Search for “reasons for making your bed” and there are dozens or hundreds or whatever sites telling you it engenders discipline or starts your day right or makes the angels sing.

But the reason you make your bed is for you. Your resistance to making the bed is conquerable. Something you can achieve. Just a little effort that makes you feel good.

Even these days, when my poor balance makes it difficult to stand unaided, I’m able to toss a quilt over the blankets and sheets on my bed.

Quilts and duvets make the job easier. You don’t even have to square up the sheets and blankets below. Just cover them.

Extra covering

Remember bedspreads? Does anyone use them anymore? Those are coverings, often made of heavy chenille, that you had to take off at night and throw back over the bed the next day.

I once rescued a huge, heavy bedspread, at least queen size, from a thrift store. It was crocheted of fine cotton, sea-foam green. It must have taken years to craft it. I honored it as long as I could, but I never put it on a bed. And finally, I had to let it go, with a heartfelt apology to the anonymous woman who made it so long ago.

Another quilt

I recently finished another quilt using the High Five block idea from Sunday Morning Quilts byAmanda Jean Nyberg and Cheryl Arkison. That book is one of the best for ideas on how to turn mismatched scraps into something coherent.

The High Five block is a variation of the venerable Log Cabin design. Place a square in the center, then build out from it with strips of fabric. In this quilt, as in one I made last year for Stephen, my massage therapist, I diluted the effect of the High Five blocks with plain 5-inch fabric pieces. These come bundled in packs of about 40 and are known as charm squares. Adding them keeps the scrappiness of the quilt from becoming overwhelming.

There is no overarching design in this quilt. As is my practice, most of the beginning squares are little pictures—animals, birds, words, icons. I think the power of this quilt, if it has any, is color.

A new technique

Also, the binding is a first for me, sewn of mismatched strips in a neutral palette. I’m pleased with the quilt as a whole. No design, really. Just lots of color.

Nancy Stovall long-armed the quilt in a pattern of butterflies. The pattern was my choice, and not a good one, as the top is so noisy already you can’t see the pattern. The backing is cozy flannel, stylized butterflies in a pink, yellow and blue scheme, and the yellow thread we chose doesn’t make butterflies stand out there, either.

I folded the quilt so you can see the flannel backing (the butterflies) and some of the binding that used mismatched strips. Fran Gardner photo

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Long memories

I’ve stacked up so many memories in my 75 years. Such a long time. So much rich plowing. Behind me, the furrows stand gaping and gasping for seed, while I plow on. Am I pulling the plow myself, or guiding it behind a horse? Perhaps I am driving a big old tractor with a long, straight gear shift. Gears may be overworked as a metaphor. So what?

Dust

The gears in my tractor, foot on the clutch
That’s differential, the mechanics of moving.
These days we don’t care how things really work,
The magic of being is subsumed by the Web.

We’re all tied together, we creatures of being,
Breathing and blowing and snorting through dust.
Dust of our essence, dust of forgetting,
Dust of retrieving and living regret.

Dust under our toenails, dust in our joints,
We’ll never be clean, get rid of it all.
Like the grit of remembrance, dust keeps repeating,
Unkind, unforgiving in the midst of our woe.

A new review

I wrote a review of a best-selling novel by a Portland author, Emma Pattee. Tilt is a propulsive story about the first day after a massive earthquake destroys Portland. Annie, a woman who’s 34 weeks pregnant, is forced to walk from Ikea, out by the Portland airport, where she was buying a crib when the quake hit, all the way to the Willamette River. She’s trying to get to her husband, who she thinks is in Old Town. She encounters incredible obstacles and situations on her journey. Pattee’s prose is spare and sharp and witty and sad.

My brief review is at Oregon ArtsWatch. I recommend this book.

And, finally

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As always, I appreciate and love comments. Let’s engage!

—Fran