Rant and Ramble

sun. right. did i mention the sun? i'm going to melt before i manage to get home.

sun, finally, but i'm at work all day and no chance to enjoy it. my tomatoes will, though, and the flowers are peeking their little yellow heads out from beneath a great canopy of leaves. my motley rooftop garden has become a bastion of my sanity, and the daily tiptoe up the attic stairs and awkward squeeze through the window a comforting ritual. my zucchini plant was drowned by the recent rains (though jason has three more so we should be fine), and i managed to kill an ivy on my windowsill, but the tomatoes and the broccoli and the basil (oh! the basil!) and the peppermint and the peppers and the brussels sprouts are all doing quite well, thank you. i wish i had potatoes and radishes and carrots, and chamomile, and some salad greens and strawberries. i really wish i had a cherry tree, because the ones in the supermarket make me just about swoon, but i can't anymore let myself buy fruit from chile when it'll be ripe here in just a few weeks. all the berries are from watsonville and salinas, and i almost want to buy them, just for nostalgia's sake. i will be all over the farmer's market when i get home, let me tell you.

home! i'm going home in a week, exactly, from today. for silke's wedding - about which i had a long and somewhat terrfiying dream last night, where i failed to get her invitations designed in time and her ex-step-father tried to stop the whole thing - and to visit for a while. then here for the rest of the summer before i flit off to godknowswhere. the play i'm in opens the day before i get back, so that should be interesting in the Chinese sense if not the prosaic.

i spent most of saturday staring at the wall and eating peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, sliding back into the dull euphoria of utter disinterest. i've been sleeping later and later because i have nothing else to do. i did, however, manage to spit out the teapot i've spent the whole pottery class so far trying to make, and a mug or two that might end up going with it. i read Aristophanes' The Sexual Congress (hilarious), and L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future anthology (1987 edition - not bad). my tomato has flowers. it's our anniversary and we're going to dinner. all is not lost.

somehow, social commentary is just so much funnier when it's being made by strange little animals.

we went to church today, sat nervously in the front row. i clutched the hymnal in my sweaty hands, bare feet on rough carpeted floor, and tried to be reverent. light came through the windows, and when the time came for a sharing of stories, the pregnant woman across from us stood up. the topic on the folded paper schedule was coyote, the trickster, but everyone had been sharing fatherstories. she stood up, one hand cradling her belly, and apologized for crying, though she wasn't crying yet. she said that she wanted to share her belief in her husband's ability to be a good father for their coming child, and as she did begin to cry, she reached a slim hand back and caressed him clumsily, her hand brushing down his hair and across his face. he smiled quietly and kissed her when she sat back down. the congregation clapped and old women dabbed their eyes.

as we sat in rittenhouse later, a cadre of children ran back and forth along a low wall behind the benches. every so often, a parent hollered a warning. they ignored us completely, intent on their imagined quests, back and forth atop the wall. for my final in women's lit, i wrote that motherhood is sacred now because we can choose to be mothers, or not to be. we can choose to bring life into the world when we know it will be loved and taught to love.
i think about the children i will have. i picture daughters, mostly, though occasionally a boychild with curled brown hair. i can only see them in those lives i imagine where i have found this germinating dream of sufficiency and soil that so commands me now. in my mind, they are strong children, not coddled, not refused. they delight in the tendrils of a pea plant and in their own minds and bodies. i want children who will eat their vegetables because vegetables are good things to eat, because they will know the taste of a real tomato and the season's first sprig of broccoli. i want to raise children who will change this world, who will carry forth the changes i hope to make. in their lifetime, we will run out of oil, out of room, out of clean water and breathable air. can i change the world enough that my daughters may be able one day to run their hands over a beloved's face and say this man will father my children well, this man i love?

i'm giddy with it. look: no more drexel. plus, a part in the summer show. plus, peas.
plus, i know i did really well in all my classes, i'm secure in my decision to take a year off, might be going to costa rica, and i feel confident i'll find somewhere i want to go next year and get in there. after all, i should have something very near a 4.0 after this term's grades roll in, and there's a knitting group at my new favorite used book store, which is right next to a yoga studio and about six blocks from where i'm taking my pottery class, all on the shuttle route and easily accesible by bike.

plus, there's thunder and lightning and i can play my guitar in the dark.

positively giddy, indeed.

so annoyed am i at this paper that refuses to write itself, that i am purposefully choosing to read an awful and olde-english translation of sophocles as a procrastination tool.

my words do not come easily, these days, neither here nor in the real world.

there is nothing in this world more beautiful than a perfectly centered piece of clay spinning between your hands.

[amended 21:04]
except, possibly, your incredibly beautiful boyfriend playing old smashing pumpkins songs, naked, on your bed, with your guitar and a silly grin.