I held you in a dream.
You became a part of me,
as if my body never ended
and you were merely
an extension of me.
And though I felt like I was floating away,
you were there
to pull me back to you,
to hold me in my slumber,
to keep me in your embrace,
to never let me go.
**I saw a video of these otters slowly drifting apart and coming back together. They inspired this poem.
“Happiness is a warm puppy.” ~ Charles M Schulz
~~
I have had the pleasure of sharing my life with this beautiful creature for the past 8 1/2 years. She has been my companion and my confidant without question. Last night she had her second seizure in exactly six months to the day. I must admit I handled this one much better than the first but it is still a very traumatic event.
It is a horrible sensation to feel helpless, unable to control what is happening to the one living thing that has given me unconditional love since we first laid eyes on each other. The only thing I could offer her in the moment of her worst distress was the return of my unconditional love.
I remembered to remain calm. I kept her out of harms way as her body remained rigid under the gentle touch of my hand. Once the sound of my voice could be heard again, she began to relax.
You don’t have to have a child to feel like a mother. I lay in bed after she finally went to sleep, hyper-vigilant to the point that I remained awake for hours after the event. I listened for any odd sound in her breathing and for any strange noise similar to the commotion that originally alerted me to the seizure at the beginning. Once I did drift into slumber, any unfamiliar discord woke me with a slight panic but the puppy continued to snore softly in her bed.
This morning, she is the same puppy in a dog’s body. She is full of energy, eager for her walk and her treats and acting happily like nothing ever happened.
We see the vet in a few days and fingers crossed we get a relatively clean bill of health. I’m not ready to imagine my life waking up and not seeing that face.
Second hands tick,
the incessant sound of time passing
yet, time seems to stand still.
What feels like a year,
is simply a collection of days,
falling into a pattern of weeks.
The metronome of life
chimes steadily in my head,
gently reminding me
how slowly time can pass.
But time marches on
and, even though it feels like an eternity,
the perpetual movement of time
always pushes forward.
~~
Spelling mistake aside (because it is an inside joke), the subject line of this post refers, in both parts, to a lively conversation I was a part of at the dinner table last night. The age-old debate of whether men and women can really be friends circled around the table and the argument became quite animated. There was a noticeable divide between those who thought men and women could be friends and those who thought the dynamic of sexual, or chemical, energy disrupted any potential of a platonic relationship.
Since I have many cohorts of the male persuasion (sans benefits), I was vehemently arguing the fact that men and women can, indeed, be friends. And now, as I sit in my darkened living room writing this post, it is difficult to have a Star Trek movie in the background talking about “Nebular penetration” as I argue for the chastity of an idealistic friendship. However, it is a fitting continuation of my earlier conversation.
Perhaps I am slightly obtuse when it comes to reading signals, but I am relatively confident that I am able to decipher whether or not a man has intentions beyond a nonphysical affiliation. I have always had male friends and I have never had the slightest doubt that those male friends see me as just that, a friend. But some of my litigious dinner companions made every effort to dissuade me.
Our conversation became heated at times but we continued to volley the notion of platonic friendships back and forth until the strings on our metaphorical racquets unraveled. We eventually had to concede the match and nobody was declared the winner.
I came home with the same point of view I had during our impassioned debate. I truly believe that men and women can be friends – no strings, no ulterior motives, no hidden agendas. Convincing the others involved in that discussion may be a no-win situation but I will continue to maintain my opinion and defend it with all the intensity I can muster.
So now, I have to ask…..where do you stand on this debate? Can men and women just be friends?
My curiosity ignites.
My burning question is nourished
purely by the fuel of my deep desire
to know,
to experience,
to feel the brush of romance
on the canvas that is my skin.
My heart burns
with a yearning
to find you.
~~
The glow burned my eyes but I couldn’t take my gaze from its mesmerizing emanation. It stood like a sentinel, guarding my emotion. Although it was a single flame, that lone candle represented the one person I wished was here with me.
If the pungent stench hadn’t first assaulted my senses, the tiny footprints in the remnants of snow on my deck would have led me to believe that a small feline intruder had been in my entrance way and left its fluidic calling card.
I am no stranger to the repugnant smell of cat pee. I have suffered before and was doing it again as the essence of the foul beast breached the sanctity of my nasal passages and made its way into my throat. Before my morning vision had even the slightest chance of coming into focus the very solemnity of my home, as well as my olfactory nerves, had been violated by my neighbor’s cat.
Now, before you judge me on the basis of these words, I do not dislike cats. I appreciate their ability to be detached yet affectionate. I admire their commitment to their sense of self. And I applaud their propensity to be indifferent and intrigued at the same time.
That being said, I do take offence to a four-legged creature of the non-canine variety befouling a room in which it has no business being present. Cats do not, and will not, live in my home. Allergic reactions aside, I have a colored past with these anciently domesticated beings and, in putting my differences aside, I have come to the realization that we make better strangers than friends.
I have repeatedly admonished my dog for wanting to run into the neighbor’s yard when she sees this territorial interloper, but I have since rethought my initial position. My dog is merely protecting the rightful place that is her shelter. She is simply defending her home against enemies, feral or domestic. And she is attempting to preserve my nose from the offensive fragrance of future feline fearlessness.
I used to be a very patient person. I was never fidgety while waiting in a line. I knew my turn would come eventually and I was okay with that.
As the years have passed, I now understand where my mother was coming from when she used to say “my patience is wearing thin”. Perhaps it is somehow a right of passage that we are less apt to wait today than we may have been a couple of decades ago. My patience these days resembles something like the onion-skin paper we used to trace pictures when we were in high school.
There are still moments when I am okay to wait, moments that are fleeting and that I know will pass relatively quickly. But I am currently caught in a circumstance where I feel completely helpless and have no choice but to sit back and wait for information to come to me. I feel horribly powerless and that is not a feeling I am accustomed to experiencing.
It’s hard to let go. It’s difficult to convince myself that things are going well at the other end when my imagination continues to conjure hundreds of possible scenarios. And my lack of patience only fuels the fire of anxiety as I am forced to bide my time until I get some news.
Until then, I shall consume myself with projects to try to keep myself busy enough so I can quell the even more impatient creative writers in my head. My own restlessness is hard enough to deal with….they will make this waiting period intolerable.
I do not consider myself to be a “food snob” but there are certain things that are either right or wrong when it comes to the kitchen and food preparation. Sure, bastardized versions of many dishes have been made popular over the years to appease the increasing number of dietary restrictions, but there is one thing that I find offensive if it is messed with and that is spaghetti.
One of my dear friends shared a story with me (mainly because he knew I would lose sleep over it) about “the incident” that may haunt me for the rest of my days.
We are both twirlers. We take great pride in reaching into that steaming bowl of pasta with a fork and twirling that spaghetti, either on a spoon or in the bowl, until a pleasing mound of pasta is gathered in a beautiful spiral pattern. There is something very fulfilling about the twirling process and the effort to twirl makes the reward of the first bite that much better.
It was a day like any other. He had been out working in his shop and could almost smell the pungent aromas of tomatoes and spices wafting through the air. As he neared the house, the scent of the sauce was accompanied by the fragrance of a fresh baguette, lathered in garlic butter, toasting in the oven.
She was there to greet him with a glass of wine and, as he got cleaned up from his day, she then busied herself getting the table ready for dinner. He was eager to sit down to a heaping bowl of what he thought was going to be a fantastic meal. Once he had seated himself at the table, she presented a bowl that looked very similar to this:
What promised to be a meal fit for a King turned into a meal fit for a toddler. I can only imagine the amount of time that elapsed while he gaped at the bowl in front of him, trying to be appreciative of her efforts but not commenting aloud about the egregious choice she had made. She had sacrificed everything that is good about spaghetti and had broken the noodles into bite-size pieces.
He felt the harness tightening, encasing him in the invisible high chair in which he now felt trapped. He repressed the urge to turn into that toddler and throw the bowl to the floor while he struggled to come to terms with the embarrassment those noodles must have felt. He suffered in silence along with them as he spooned the unrecognizable pasta into his mouth.
Years later, I now suffer, not so much in silence, with him. A law of nature was twisted that day – the day the spaghetti broke.
polysyllabic profundities 