Bramble
I took this photo on an early morning “walk” in my power chair. The image is not manipulated or cropped; it is as I took it. I am moved by the solitary blackberry vine, by the texture of the wall, by the crack that mirrors the vine. I didn’t find this photo, the Universe brought it to me. I am just the conduit.
Check in
Revisiting Mangoworld
When I first started writing on Substack, I shared my metaphor that building a life is like preparing a mango. Sliced and scored, the meat of a mango is popped out, fresh and ready to harvest. All you need is a sharp knife.
Find joy living in Mangoworld. Slice into your essence, score the flesh, pop it out. You are free! Enjoy the juicy bits. Compost the skin. Dive back into life renewed, rested, reenergized.
Well, sometimes I don’t want to go to all the trouble of slicing up my life like a mango. Sometimes I just want to put all the metaphors to rest. Just me on the sea of life, bobbing about on a raft—no, wait! That’s another metaphor.
I give up.
Pick a metaphor
Mangos, oceans, crows, thunder. Everything is a metaphor in Mangoworld. The real work lies in keeping them fresh and juicy.
I’m hoping you can stand the metaphors. Occasionally, I’m bound to go overboard. Stretching, I miss the brass ring. When that happens, I beg you to let it go. Remember the stuff you do like.
The mango metaphor is a way of approaching writing. I’d say “a way of teaching you to write” but . . . you already know how. Everyone knows how.
Shinichi Suzuki was convinced that every child was a musician. He set out to prove it by having crowds of them play on tiny violins. And he was right. The Suzuki Method showed that every child could play.
All it takes is practice. Writing is the same. Practice and intent.
As you explore writing in your daily exercise, you grow the ability to reach inside yourself. In fact, you don’t even have to reach. You just wait, your hand on the pen or the keyboard, and the words, the thoughts, the images, the flowing blood of your essence, will gush onto the screen or the page.
Truly, it is magic.
Minnesota road trip
Every journey is a seeking. Every journey is a quest.
The last big road trip I took was in August 2017. Five years already! Sixty-seven quilt shops participated in Quilt Minnesota. I visited maybe 16 of them in a loop that took me from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport through the city and its suburbs, up the state to International Falls and back down.
A long time gone
I had grown up in Minnesota and had not visited the state since Mark Gardner and I zoomed through it on our honeymoon, a large road trip in itself. In his parents’ station wagon, we traveled across the lower US, winding our way through Appalachia and up the East Coast, venturing into Canada, where we visited Nova Scotia and P.E.I. and saw a moose.
We dropped from Canada into Minnesota and visited the city of my birth, Duluth. That was in 1972 — 50 years ago. I remember the waters of Lake Superior were washing up muddy brown suds.
Mark and I found the Broasted Chicken drive-in in Shakopee, a small town southwest of Minneapolis, where I loved eating as a kid. It had a big rotating chicken sculpture on the roof.
Sadly, the broasted chicken place and its iconic bird were no more in 2017. Well, 50 years is a long time. Then, while tooling down US 10 near the town of Silver Lake, I found another big chicken, outside a place called Molly’s.
Inside, I had a great meal of barbecued rib tips and coleslaw, and fell into conversation with a very wide farmer in grimy overalls and baseball cap who asked me whether Trump had carried Oregon. I now regret that I didn’t follow up what may have been a chance to engage a Trump voter about his support for the then-president, as I have had fantasies of doing.
Small town life
Many of the quilt shops I visited were in small towns. Most of those towns retain the old-town architecture of brick buildings, often around a central square. A few of the larger towns have been ruined, at least at the on the outskirts, by strip malls populated by chain stores, fast-food restaurants and the like, the same businesses you will find in suburbs across the country.
St. Cloud in particular was marred by a gargantuan mall in the California style, complete with vast, mostly empty parking lots and xeriscaping (drought-resistant vegetation), out of place in lushly green Minnesota, where it rains in the summer.
Rental time
I set up my trip so that I only drove about 100 miles a day. I was coddling my right leg. I could still move it easily from the throttle to the brake, but it tired easily. Even with the extra care, my leg ached for weeks after I returned home.
My first rental car, a Nissan Murano, had some problem with the engine; it felt like the parking brake was on all the time. The whole car shook. I drove the car back to the airport and traded it for a Nissan Rogue.
Bad idea. I knew this right away when I couldn’t get any acceleration on the freeway. I had to stomp on the gas pedal. And one window was stuck open. I took that one back, too. Enterprise took pity on me—or got tired of me—and rented me (for the original charge) the car I really wanted but couldn’t afford, a compact red BMW crossover SUV, cute as a bug.
I drove that car all over Minnesota, from Minneapolis to Saint Cloud and on up to Lake Itasca, the headwaters of the Minnesota river and eventually the Mississippi.
I spent two nights in Chaska, a far suburb of Minneapolis, then a night each in St. Cloud, Brainerd, Bemidji, International Falls, and Carlton (close to Duluth, which I did not have time to visit), with a final two nights in Ramsey, a northern suburb of Minneapolis.
I drove through acres, miles, hundreds of miles of scraggly pine trees up to International Falls, where I lived for the first six years of my life despite having been born in Duluth.
A lot of international Falls was as I remembered it from childhood — the house on Second Street, tiny Trinity Episcopal Church a few blocks away, even the sculpture of Smokey Bear and a couple of cubs in the central park.
Downtown, too, was largely unchanged. I couldn’t find the A&P near the train station, but the train station itself was there, on the road to Canada, just a block away.
The hospital that had been opposite our house on Second, with the Rainy River and Canada just behind it, is gone, and the paper mill on the river where my father worked has been replaced by a huge cardboard box facility.
In I-Falls, I took photos of the house where I lived as a child, literally a stone’s throw from Canada. I took a few photos in the Minneapolis area, too, where I lived as a middle-aged child (6-9). But I’m saving those for later.
The quilting road
The wonderful thing about quilt shops in Minnesota, and elsewhere, is that they are mostly of recent construction.
This is because the resurgence of the craft is relatively new. It dates to 1979, when Olfa introduced the rotary cutter. Suddenly, cutting little pieces of fabric was quick and accurate. Seams and points started to line up.
Being new, most shops have great bathroom facilities. Bless those Minnesota quilters, there was a new shop every time I needed a bathroom break.
All in all, I had a good time in Minnesota. I bought a lot of fabric and met some very nice people. I took my walker and two canes, humping the walker out of the backseat of that little red BMW many times a day. My right leg in its new brace got a workout from driving, and cruise control was definitely my friend.
Random observations
The coffee was surprisingly good everywhere, even in cafes and hotel lobbies, a far cry from the burned robusta I remembered from the Bunn carafe.
Motorcyclists — and there were many enjoying the summer (lots of bars had “welcome bikers” banners) — don’t often wear helmets. I asked a group who stayed in my motel why that was, and one of them rattled off all the states that don’t require them, including Minnesota.
Toilet protectors, so common in Oregon women’s restrooms, were rare. Most of the autos at Enterprise car rental are some type of SUVs (it’s the weather). In the North, trees aren’t allowed to grow as close to the roadway as I remember.
I was unable to find any Native American handicrafts — with casino income, why craft for tourists? And most people, while friendly, were reserved and politely incurious, which helps explain some of my and my family’s personality quirks.
This was the first time in many years that I had traveled by myself with no one to meet me at my destination. But everything went smoothly. I was able to get wheelchair help all the way from the airplane to the rental car agency. People were always ready to handle my bags, even at budget motels.
Along the way, I ate a lot of pub food, mostly burgers, and gained a few pounds.
I ended up sending a large box of fabric through the mail and taking a lot more home with me in my luggage.
Much of the fabric I bought on this road trip I later gave away when I started writing seriously on Substack. I had far less time for quilting.
That is okay. Our lives are in phases, and quilting, which I only began in 2015, was an intense phase that gave me great pleasure and solace, especially during the Covid lockdown.
Crow story
Rose Schnitzer Manor, where I live, has beautiful grounds — trees, plantings, a nature trail. Birds. Our executive chef, Andy, was enjoying nature when the crow buzzed her.
“I’m not sure whether that crow loves me or hates me,” she muses. It’s easy to see why she’s confused.
The first time the crow flew at her, it nearly collided with her. Then it dropped a dead snake at her feet.
The second time she saw the crow, it had rescued an unopened container of pancake syrup from the dumpster behind the building.
Andy watched as the crow carefully punched a hole in the foil with its beak.
Then the crow flew over Andy, dumping sticky syrup on her head. Still clutching the plastic, it nonchalantly lifted it to its beak and drank the rest.
Andy used some wet wipes to clean off mess her hair and blouse. It was regular “maple syrup,” not sugar-free. All the stickier.
Poem
I’ve written before: forgiveness is hard. And the hardest one to forgive is ourself.
I forgive. I forgive me. Who else need I forgive? It’s my reaction To others' slights, Sins, missteps, Cruel words, slanders— Or my imagining— That needs forgiveness. Lord, in your mercy, (Me in mine) Cover my concern With soft eiderdown. Hold me close, Safe from buffeting, Hardly living. Just breathing, Breathing softly. But, hey, I forgive. Isn’t that enough? Enough to say it, Maybe mean it? So hard to heart-scrape, To scrub out the sludge Of resentment and angst. Words not spoken. Words that hurt. Gestures of anger. Bright slashes Of malevolence. Where do those come from? I’m a nice person, aren’t I? Below the calm surface Volcanic bubbles Wounds never tended, Scars bright and fresh. Set my resentment On the farthest shelf, Close the door, Let it fester in darkness. Don’t think about it. Never think about it. I can’t stop thinking about it. Is there a way out? Forgiving, silence, prayer — What can dissolve The grime of my emotions? What can repair The slights to my heart? We know the answer. Forgive, forgive. So hard, so hard. The jagged, wild way.
Check out
Well, that’s it, folks. I’m all written out, wrung out, for the week. I already talked about writing and versified about forgiveness.
And a lot is going on in my non-writing life just now, not serious, just soaking up my attention.
The rest of the week is over to you. Use each day wisely. Remember to be in the moment. Remember to forgive.
—30—
Wonderful pics. I especially like the bramble stem.
You're brave to travel alone. I'm impressed.