Kate Rhoades is the Best

Where I go, you go, Sister. And I'll be back here. I am just loving my homing-blog and writing again with my friend, Kathrine.

My mother, Kathrine and you: The Kath/arines/ryns/thrines are good to me.

Blogging-Away

Lately, my blogging seems to question the act of blogging, much as my facebook-time wonders at itself: what do I get out of this? Is this a narcissist's passtime? Facebook connects me to people whom I would, in no other way, be able to access or yes, follow. It offers lots of professional and academic updates that I could never otherwise find. And it's fun, in a mindless way. Of myself I require only moderation or the eventual cutting-off from my facebook presence.

Blogging is different. One must generate content, have, as they say, a thing to say. I write. It's what I do, what I really am on the radio dial of stations, it is my favorite self. This blog has been besides sounding board, rough draft, place of conversation and imagined listener, also, a comfort, a friend when I went to new places and had not yet made any friends. A place to mark my days when they were sliding by without witness. I don't presume any sort of importance to my thoughts, but as with the bloggers I read, I hope to strike a resonant chord.

Resonance: there it is, as in what resonates now, for me and this self, a little down-dial or up-dial from the intagliod-me. My life feels more set. Nothing is set, no artist can believe otherwise, but there are levels of chaos, levels of disorder and there moments, say last, late summer, when one actually feels able to plant bulbs, those versions of next season that say more owner and less renter, those kind of promised crops that suggest not permanence but the hope of a little lingering.

I can linger a little now. One big beloved's illness, one beloved near-father-in-law's death, one dear left-behind wife's grief and relocation later, one long, long season of taking, I know better than to suggest anything stays put for long, but that anxiety, that brand of carpe diem and restlessness varies much from the way I talked here in this lovely keeping-place blog, so often and so (six whole years!) long.

This isn't a goodbye, it's a bifurcation, not from this road to another, not instead but rather, also. I won't be updating as frequently as I once was, but the house-me, the baking-me, the longtime writing and near-sister friendship of me to the great writer: Kathrine Wright, has a couple of new digs if you're interested in stopping by sometimes:

One is the cool baking blog which is blending into the great new wonderblog called Sweetly Disturbed.

For the lovely Dr. Adler, Whose Birthday I Neglected to Blog About

He of the Slouching Toward Cincinnati poem cycle,
of the black cat, zaftig in her plush pelt, beloved
beyond even the bouquet of radishes offered me
one long roadtrip to Kent, Ohio where we vowed
not to eat them until we called one another and so
we did, crunching the rubyness of them into the cell
towers of one a.m. or thereabouts. Where a big black
horse and a cherry tree were all that we'd need in Philadelphia
in the libraries of his discontent, as familiarity might breed
as much, in his hometown where everyone knows my name!
He of the jumping-on-hotel-beds, riding in Costco
shopping carts, the convertable top down to most
weathers, even in January, especially New Year's Eve
where half-frozen but exhilerated-we drove
a crisp path into the winter stars where later
we'll meet in the fruitstand of our dreams where yes,
we dare to eat a peach, and indeed they are always in season.
To which I say Hallelujah. Hallelujah.

I love my BFF! So happy the world could dream up this little prince
and he could be findable. (Though we really should
make arrangements in the event of time travel.)