Waaaaaaah!

okay,

okay,

okay,

sure, 

fine,

yes,

okay, 

yes,

yes,

fine,

sure,

WHAT?

DON'T WHINE?

Waaaaaaah!

happy weekend

love

kj

An Optimist Speaking from a Dark Place

I am not happy tonight. I have just watched a story on Syria and I had to turn away from seeing four and five year old children covered with blood, crying, on stretchers dying from bullets and bombs. And on Facebook I follow a site called Occupy for Animals and it tears my heart: the way bulls are treated so they can be tormented and killed for sport, the Dublin City Council's automatic killing of any dog who is found to be a pit bull or close to it., monkeys who, well, there is no need for you to cringe from  a cruelty I won't describe. 

For the record, if you can bring yourself to follow Occupy for Animals, you will feel pain but I'm sure you will also come to recognize when something is very wrong and you may then in your own way take even one small step to stop it, worldwide. 

I just heard Mitt Romney say that control of guns won't impact senseless killings, that people who want to kill will find a way. Yet I know that in countries with strict gun control, like England and Japan, there is virtually no violence from guns and the murder rates are far less than in my country.

I try not to be political here on my blog. I suppose someone may think I am jumping into that arena, but tonight politics seems to me to be a stupid tiny piece secondary to why human beings have not evolved in all these years and decades and centuries. How could we possibly justify the maiming and killing of children in any circumstance? The abuse and neglect of animals? What is in our DNA that does not allow us to learn at the same rate that we advance in technology, in science; we, who are so resourceful and compassionate on an individual basis, who rend our hearts to protect one beached whale or one lost child?

Sometimes on my blog I am sure I come across as happy lucky. Most of that description is true at least some of the time. But even good fortune, my luck of the draw to be born into a caring family with the ability to feed and nurture me, can't protect me from a reality that I sometimes wish I could ignore. 

These are hard times. Life can be hard. The older I am, the more awareness and the more pain I have knowing that bad things should not happen, should not be allowed to happen. 

I do my part. I know I'm not alone in that. Call me naive, but I will die one day still not understanding why abundance and generosity and compromise and honor for every living person and animal and creature and tree is so damn awful hard to get to. Tell me it's because of greed or survival of the fittest or something else, but I see too many good deeds and good acts and good people to believe that the mess of the world has to be so. 

WTF?

love

kj 

One Morning

 i have just spent four days with my family in Provincetown. It was great. In a two bedroom not spacious space, four adults and three little boys ages 1, 3, 5 walked and bobbed in the ocean, swam in the pool, shopped, ate, played games, found shells and crabs and this morning snails, strolled and chased. 

This is one morning starring JB, Drew age 3, me, and the bay.

We did things together, we split up, we ate chocolate and ice cream and bought dishes and earrings.We went to the beach and to the pool and met up for a street side lunch. JB and I got to first greet and then this morning wave goodbye to the ferry that carried our family from Provincetown to Boston. We had a good good time and i am happy happy about that.

love

kj

My Life Part 4 (still in no particular order) :^)

The little things?

They're not little...

P.S. This last shot is courtesy of the chipmunks that have dug up my yard and uprooted my patio bricks and who I cannot bear to kill, which I'm told and I believe is the only solution. Meanwhile, this hole is their front door or their back door or maybe their vacation home....

Love

kj

More Thoughts About Love

I've been looking for this poem. I wrote it in my Big Yellow writing group and at the time I was less convinced than I am now that life is (sometimes) hard, even when it's appreciated. 

This is an old post recycled. It's one of my favorite poems. I wrote it after my friend Tracie wrote a song about hearts that bounce instead of break. I've just added a new line, the only line with three words. 

......................

Here I am waxing about love again. I'm coming to the conclusion that my brain is softwired straight to Cole Porter and Irving Berlin and every love song ever written. And why not, I ask? Even my garden spurs me on.(sometimes)

If a heart can break in two

Can it break in fours

And eights

And sixteens and thirty twos?

And if it can break in that many pieces

All small enough to fit in the fold of my hand

Can I shake those pieces up,

Shake them in a martini tumbler

Or hand them to the crappier at Foxwoods

Ask him to toss them long and hard;

Watch them tumble all over the surface that is me

Spilling all that unused love all over the surface that is me

And you too

Like warm raindrops in the August sun.

Being Known...

How many poems have I written, including the hundreds on the back of napkins and paper place mats? Somehow my themes all seem to be about connection and love, both the requited and unrequited kind. You know how it feels when someone really understands you? This poem is about the value of that. 

I thought it was that chuckle when you lean back and laugh,
Your willingness to dare even when the forecast’s grim,
The details and years piling up until you are now your age,
And plans that don’t materialize but still sometimes thrill.
To my surprise it’s so much less.
It’s being known.
To lose that
Is reason
Enough
To try
Not
To.


Best wishes for a happy weekend
love
kj

My Life Part 3 (No order to it) :^)

No words except have a good weekend, thanks always, and my favorite of these pictures is three year old Drew peacefully in his birthday hat

Love
kj

An interview with kj :^)

I have had the pleasure of being interviewed by Wander (Chris). He is one of my favorite bloggers and poets and he asked me good questions. :^)

Here's the link if you can tolerate hearing me spout off about this or that.

Thanks, Chris. I kind of felt like a movie star.

http://wanderwithoutbeinglost.blogspot.com/2012/07/interview-with-kj-from.html

Sometimes I Know

How many mistakes

does a good learner make?

Is it true that I do

What for me must be true?

I love and complain

Might forget my own name

But when I'm rolling along

I'll sing a fair song

 just before dawn
 it hums and it strums
the rhythm it comes

no mistaking the sound

of being found.

  

love kj

A Brief Reminder

Lovely days don't come to you,

you should walk to them.

Rumi

Fireworks Update

1. My Mother is no longer dying!

2. My friend Susan becomes Dr. Susan as of Friday.

3. Making deviled eggs is not quick.

4. Darn that five  year old Chase the elegant goofball greyhound has seizures and we don't know yet why. That and his becoming 'our' dog is still to be determined.

4. Special Addition: Happy Birthday Marianne. I hope it rocks.

5. YES Alice! Better to wear out than rust out.

love

kj

and so it begins: Provincetown 2012

I plan to keep my posts (mostly) brief this summer. Probably more photos and less prose. But some things never change and one is my love affair with Provincetown. This is my place there. Couldn't afford it now but could then. It is cozy and sweet. It is also rented out for the next five weeks and getting it ready has been HARD. An interior leak. Very costly gutter repair. Things that should work and need to work and didn't and don't.

But enough of that. Here is one late afternoon and evening walking along Commercial Street. I want to show you  the 'commercial' side of a town by the sea that swells from 3500 year round residents to 20,000 summer visitors.

The sea is majestically behind all of these photos, but those views are for another day. It's a grand place, Provincetown, if you ever have the occasion. Strangers talk to one another for no reason. The ocean breezes settle the most anxious mind. It welcomes you, whoever you are, where ever you've been. xo

love
kj