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Cita's Blog – March 2009 Archive (19)

Neglect

The wooden floors are buckled and broken by the rain and snow and baking sun that comes in undeterred as seasons pass unannounced, unnoticed, uncelebrated within these walls.

Some of the doors have been yanked from their hinges by the wind, and in one room, a snake skeleton lies in perfect array, white against the dark decay.

No coffee pot bubbles in the kitchen, no bedsprings creak in the night, no bright curtains flutter in these windows when the breeze blows through, no… Continue

Added by Cita on March 30, 2009 at 4:50pm — 5 Comments

Jabberwocky

She lay back on the slab of rock beside the swimming hole in the finally warm sun of early summer and asked for her favorite poem once again.

Julia sighed, "But Charlie, don't you want to hear something else... something new?"

"No, that's the one I like the most."

Charlie shivered as a breeze blew across her damp skin and thought about how good the water would feel later in the summer when she and Julia would come here again, and then closed her eyes as her new… Continue

Added by Cita on March 30, 2009 at 1:30pm — 6 Comments

Early April

Their diet mainly consisted of macaroni, potatoes, rice, canned vegetables, bread, and red meat, but she bought fruit juice in cans, and longed, from November until June, for vegetables, berries, melons, and the crunch of green things between her teeth.

The truck rattled across the dusty roads, pushed hard by the wind that moved soil from one barren pasture to the next, and the brown paper grocery sacks rattled in the seat beside her, not very many of them because her grocery budget… Continue

Added by Cita on March 30, 2009 at 12:56pm — 2 Comments

Broken

Lots of people thought I left him because he hit me, but that's not true.

I told him I was leaving three weeks before my first black eye and bloody lip.

I mainly left him because around him things either died or got maimed at an alarming rate.

Within a year of us being together we had a three-legged dog, a cat with no tail, another with a broken back that walked all side-wise, a personal horse with no wind, and two crippled company horses.

Both screen… Continue

Added by Cita on March 26, 2009 at 11:58pm — 8 Comments

First time she laughed

We didn't talk about sex the first time we hung out, Julia and me.

She chattered about not being a good cook, how Kurt wanted a baby and she wasn't sure, about wanting to plant a garden that spring.

I told her about my horses, my dogs, my cats, even doing a silly imitation of the one with the broken backed crooked walk.

That was the first time I ever made her laugh, and also the first time she ever touched me.

We washed up the dishes when the guys… Continue

Added by Cita on March 26, 2009 at 6:29pm — 10 Comments

Tribute

You taught me to think, provided a cradle and the mental oxygen necessary for me to examine life and culture with a critical eye.

You showed "Inherit the Wind" in class my senior year, as well as argued both sides of the abortion issue equally well in 1987.

You handed me Irving Stone, Steinbeck, Harper Lee, and E. M. Forester as well as a lunch date during which you ordered a beer after having helped me pay a fine for my "minor in posession" charge.

You gave me… Continue

Added by Cita on March 24, 2009 at 8:28pm — 7 Comments

His and Hers

His nest was high above the street, sometimes in the clouds, always in the birds, floating up above the noise and the crowds, but with the street, the noise and the crowds always available.

Her nest was almost in the ground, an adobe hacienda with three steps leading down, most of the windows perched at dirt level, in a desert that was noisy and crowded in its own right, and blanketed by a sky so big that she got lost in it for days and nights at a time, crawling back into her nest… Continue

Added by Cita on March 23, 2009 at 12:47pm — 5 Comments

Time's Awastin'

Life's too short to pass up raw oysters and shrimp cocktail (and make sure to add in the lemon wedges, horseradish, vinegar, cocktail sauce, and beer).

Life's too short to live without moans, cravings, hope, coffee, that evening glow on the mountains that means its almost dark-time.

Life's too short to spend it with someone who must be patted on the head and the ass four times a day in order to feel like a… Continue

Added by Cita on March 21, 2009 at 7:19pm — 10 Comments

Oh, so much more

She can't be the sum of events in her life or she'll be 22 moves with boxes and horse trailers and starting over but never fresh.

She can't be the college drop-out, the too young mother, the one who locked herself and her babies in the bedroom when the party went on too long.

She can't be the good cook, the one who irons in front of the movie as tears roll down her face, and the "let's pray before we do our devotional" homeschooling mom with reluctant students and no… Continue

Added by Cita on March 19, 2009 at 12:21am — 9 Comments

Lots of Gone in her Eyes

She's a better hand with a horse than he is, and she has to be because brute strength and courage-from-a-can are not tools in her box.

He smiles indulgently at the tools that are in her box, her soft, quiet ways, her determination to let the colt come to her, the time she spends in a pen that is round.

He's more wham and jam, rope 'em and choke 'em, make 'em spin a hole in the dirt, jerk, job, jab, give 'em a taste of iron, teach that son of a bitch who's boss, and… Continue

Added by Cita on March 18, 2009 at 10:00pm — 7 Comments

Twenty-one (Warning: Language)

She's just twenty-one, but she's living my story except by twenty-one I was preparing to deliver my first child, no party with booze as a signpost to adulthood possible because my big belly was right of passage enough and all I wanted to do was go to bed early.

She's just twenty-one but she's in love with living on a cow camp without electricity, couldn't give a shit about television, tells me about heaven-on-earth where if she isn't horseback she's hiking over the hills and finding… Continue

Added by Cita on March 18, 2009 at 7:44pm — 10 Comments

Harry's Blog'O'Mo Challenge: Subconsious Goopilicious

"What should I do with the money?"
"Someone needs to fence the Grand Canyon so no one will fall anymore."
"Did you lock the gate?"
"There's no more goopilicious stuff we like to eat on top of beans."
"Wish I hadn't shorted those treasuries."
And so they continue, this couple who doesn't sleep well when they first start drifting off and find themselves muttering nonsense and answering each other.

Added by Cita on March 17, 2009 at 3:22pm — 9 Comments

Aftermath

The little boy hung on his mother's arm, dragging at her shoulder and slowing up her steps as she searched the dusty parking lot for her car.

His shirt was still a little damp from the log ride, and he smelled suspiciously like upchuck.

His hair was sticky with cotton candy, and his eyes were bleary with fatigue and joy.

In his right hand he clutched a cheap stuffed bear and a tinfoil whirl-a-jig, both… Continue

Added by Cita on March 13, 2009 at 10:11pm — 6 Comments

Log Ride: Twilight Carnival

Log Ride

Its the sexiest ride in the park what with its phallic shapes, chutes, and sluicing splashes of water.

We'll tuck you inside with your honey between your legs while her elbows rest on your knees and the log bumps and grinds its way to the starting point and then floats innocently down the stream.

She leans back against you and you laugh, laugh at the ideas and the nervous anticipation and her back against your thighs.

At the peak of the climb… Continue

Added by Cita on March 13, 2009 at 6:00pm — 8 Comments

Elemental

"She's really fallen off in the last three weeks."

The windmill on the other side of the creek makes slow rhythmic squeaks in the late evening breeze, a kind of punctuation to the sounds of the three old mares and two geldings chewing the grain in burlap nosebags that hangs with twine from around their ears.

The mare being discussed is one-eyed, having lost an eye to a cactus spine some years back, giving her a spooky and unsettling appearance as well as special… Continue

Added by Cita on March 9, 2009 at 2:48pm — 9 Comments

Barry's Challenge: Lockwood Aims True

Darcy was dressed as Maid Marion, an admirable gal from another time, a time she wished she had inhabited and would have felt more at home in than in this place of hustle and bustle and concrete and asphalt, and she relished these silly re-enactments, these fun little Saturday morning archery tournaments where she put the names up on the board and handed out the prizes.

Today she spelled out “James Lockwood” in small bronze letters,… Continue

Added by Cita on March 5, 2009 at 5:17pm — 4 Comments

Right Brain

My biggest regret is that I drove up through eastern Utah without turning off the highway and camping at any of those wonderful little creekside signposts along the way.

To truly embrace our real journey through life, or through Utah, or through Tuscany, or through City Park with a dog on a leash, we have to almost annihilate certain lessons taught to us since the cradle.

We have to deny some inner clock, some place holder in our sanity that says time and space and miles… Continue

Added by Cita on March 5, 2009 at 11:25am — 7 Comments

Geese

I am weary as the geese must be when they migrate, flapping great wings through the sky, on and on and on.

I wonder if the one at the point of the "V" gets tired and wishes someone else would lead for awhile, would poke his long neck through the resistance of the air, would determine the direction, would let instinct be the guide to the next liquid resting place.

I wonder if those geese grow heavy of heart and want to close… Continue

Added by Cita on March 4, 2009 at 9:01pm — 4 Comments

Answered in 6 with bats and eggs

What makes life worth living? A question answered in 6.

Its bright yellow eggs being scrambled with a swirl of white milk in a red enamelware bowl, the dog's cold nose on my hand, iced tea with sugar and lemon, that song you sing with the guitar riff that squeezes my heart.

Its water running over rocks and my son's first crush on a girl in a black velvet shirt and black felt cowboy hat.

Its the memory of the let-down reflex when I was nursing my babies and… Continue

Added by Cita on March 4, 2009 at 3:54pm — 3 Comments