Chuckie's World, another blog

From the front of the House to the back of the house, winter evening to winter early morning. Marge is in Minneapolis seeing a play at the Guthrie, and I'm home eating an orange, listening to electric harp Vollenweider and how happy I am. This is for my friends who follow this Blogg, for those who dip in every once and a while/

Butterfly perched above me on an arbor built by an Eagle Scout, I decide to snap and leave the Queen Owl with cream inside her wings. She is quit beautiful. The natural wood of the arbor sets contrast for her. She rests, she hangs, she waits for evening.

Flower of Marjorie, and Laurel, the youth of bloom, and fair middle motherhood, giving all to the girl we call our offspring, our daughter, and thinking about two cells, the daughter cells of dividing single cell animals and plants, I was always absorbed with the euglina, part plant, part animal, thew hybrid of the common world, the kingdom joined form two directions, and somehow different than a yeast or a mold. Peach, specific in the flower, more of beauty the Wunder Hybiscus.

This child and father are a place I ruled out of my past, a belief, an ever visible meaning beyond fatherhood, for the child is a boy, and I was father to a girl. Laurel came into our home almost 21 years ago, and on March 27th she will be fully adult, and so funny that drinking alcohol and gambeling with hard cash marks the beginning of adulthood.

I love Marjori, my living peral, my dear friend, my wife, the other side of me, exceptionally, and we have a daughter, Laurel, in Japan, learning, growing away, and to us, as she rises to our serenity. I love them both, my daughter becoming woman, finding friends, slowly, family through the both of us, three of us, together.

This dancer, Anna from Russia, posed willing for an admiring crowed giving of form supreme. I have never seen a Prim ma Ballerina, and a younger man might have been quite smitten. In any other era, I would be considered ancient at age 58. I look with awe at younger people. My tapestry, my living past, recorded, the ancient legacy, individual, relinquished, as I move forward with less before me than is behind, and I look at youth as my ignorance, my lack of wisdom then but my wasted time, the knowledge that no man can condom an other's life.

Honesty relieves guilt wh ich in turn relieves psychosis, and that is the core of my past, the thought that I might get away with a theft, so stealing is wrong and I remember quarters in Tim's desk in college. Took them for laundry, and magically a few more appeared in my desk; it's been a long trek to reveal the right! Working in difficult jobs to prove I could earn my way. Giving grades to undeserving students, an this past year taking from my family, but these days I think of relief, Grace, the combination of knowing right from wrong an doing right. River, keep me walking for no person steps in the same stream twice. When I am given, to say Grace as the flower graces the day, as green supplants rock walls. Oh God, be thanked for this vision.

Pretty Anna, Ballerina from Russia, interesting that in my life there has been a USSR, and Russia. Anna spoke very good English, she spoke of the Nutcracker which will come to Sioux Falls. Young, she practices six days a week for five hours each day. To watch her dance gave me great joy, great beauty, and she seemed happy, she performed as lead for three of the dances in Tchaikovsky's gift to Children. She is wonderful, round in black, she is fully in her art, expectation of attentions, smiling and joyous, she is art.

Peace and slow days, desire, what happens, the week ago, end of a long day, this was spring, tulips blooming, notes proceeding, giving the air rich melodies, and little did we know that our marriage would still be lasting going on to 28 years, we are together making reason fly and not knowing the green and verdant September days, from March to September 12, the day after my birthday, 9-11-2001, mine being 9-11-1951, fifty years after my birth.

Truly. the bride enters the union with the most expectatioms. Pretty and expecting the best, from each afternoon , summer into fall, and not knowing the strife of daily giving, bonding. She said to me, "We'll meet in Mid-September, just as days grow shorter.

I photographed a wedding yesterday, the bride in a white dress, the groom very tall and handsom, the Pastor a large and bearded man who arrived in a black cowboy hat that matched a black Lutheran collor. Nine hundred and sixty photos will go to the gentle couple, and 8 CDs of photos. She is a scrapbooker and will easily make her own enlargements, and she will send photos to hundreds of family and friends. When Marjorie and I married, there were only 55 people, and I counted them. For Peg Bohman and William George, there were between 300 and 400 people at the American Leageon Hall for the Wedding Dance, and Marjorie and I, well she says that receptions and thereafter on that day are really the right of spring no matter when they happen. Peg and Bill had about 50 present at the church, and the brother-in-law took the church pictures. Peg will have so much to remember, her day.

Two afternoons a week I go to the Butterfly House and interact with guests, and that seems pallid tonight. It has been a sense of peace, and we are going into the time when peace will return again. But my soul is tired tonight, thinking about daughter Laurel's departure for Japan in the morning at five A.M. Children grow up, at about Laurel's age I was leaving for Germany. I know my mother cried for me as I left down the Interstate, hitch hiking. My daughter is 100% safer than I was. I was, for I was a vagabond.

Arthritis, wrenches, invisable pain, Marjorie knows we grow older together, something done invisible genetic code, relies on flowers. People know that I move so slowly wracked with pain limitless, infinitie red, green, We withstand and memories of great mountains. throughout my life, where I can't walk and climb up, and I leave the memories in photo albums, the invisible made tangeble in an image. The time my daughter stood and walked for the first time; a destinctly suroud image of child risen from floor to her own legs and feet. She was independent for thee first time, and at twenty years she travels to Kyoto.

I climbed the tower, remembering the towers enjoyed in life to age fifty-seven. When I was twenty the Eifel Tower, beartiful Paris, the Rodin Gallery and The encomperable Gates of Hell, the astounding power of Balzac, the fascade of Notre Dame Cathedrel following to the train station, so much in short time the calling home by way of Amsterdam, and I could not sleep for want of home. split between Grinnell, Des Moines, and Colfax, California. I see today im memory Newton Hills So

These days fall smells of beginnings, the autumn of renewal, and late days slow like the turning north, spending all day in the earth, all day with majestic trees, the white pine in our front yard, aspens we planted twelve years ago to remember Colorado, the real origin of poems, high country, trails to forgotten lakes that shimmer with dots of sun, and there was a time I looked at fall records, school work, the brief success of poems, and to study poems, to write poems. I am back at my Youth, the Coastal Range in California, there I never stayed for long, my first seven warm winters. Now come to South Dakota for sixteen years, east River.

The Falls was cleaner than in past weeks, some crystal in the water, splash and sigh, droplets into the air. Two men watch on with anticipation, and still relaxed, reloaded with redoubled ambition, spray and less foam. Another man wanders jagged rocks and looks as though he were wading.

The August rain and wind, humidity, burning bushes reality in an orange leaf, green turning red, our aspens slightly yellow, Marjorie, stirring beef for a main dish, Laurel creating on her Apple laptop, white and clean, Leaning back into the easy chair, watching the beauty of this day like the first hint of Autumn Poems, and again, isn't it late summer, so I look to October, my birth month September, and I am older than the terrible bombings of the World Trade Towers, birth date 9-11-1951, and cried the day the people died, wept with compassion, to write of the day we would always look at differently.

Rain washes to the Big Sioux, and I've thought to ride a boat to the Missouri. The water is a stew of filth, laundry soap, raw sewage, stench in some places, and some towns take the drinking water from this runoff . Included is Ag waste, cow dung, chicken and hog offal as though humans have no regard for purity. I've seen the same in Germany along the Rhine River, so toxic the water is condemned, will eat the skin off your hand. Twenty years ago Marjorie and I hiked to Fern Lake above 9,000 feet in Rocky Mountain National Park, the most successful and mindful trek of the five year stay in Colorado. I knelt and drank from a small trickle running through sand. I believe in places the water is still naturally pure, above Long's Peak, the Maroon Bells, the Twin Sisters. My heart yearns for the return.

Behind our home is a small bird bath. Laurel and I gave it to Marjorie when she moved into late the fortieth decade, Laurel's idea. Marjorie has surrounded the bath with perennials and wild flowers. Now she says she wants no gifts, just let the "old" slip away. She is fifty-four.

Laurel arrived. Happy she's home, she purchased her own camera. I approaved of the choice, a nice little Sony CyberShot with Carl Zeis 5 power lens.

The black loam of southeastern South Dakota, Lakota, Buffalo, washed to The Big Sioux River, outpourings of rain, early August heat, and humidity, Iowa, Minnesota converging, Nebraska not far away. The River knows, has cut through that red rock, removed a century ago for power, and hands that hauled pipe. The River knows, has seen, as morning converges on noon, escapes to The Great Missouri River, forming to the Mississippi, mud, and thousands of years from now, the same.

Marge and I went to the VA office picnic, watching Marjorie and her friends play Bocci Ball the group in this field, some of Marge's closest friends. Ah Dr. Barbra Sturgis of 24 years ago, convincing me to go further with counseling, and saying that Marjorie would always find work her social outlet, so we are not always as close as I would like, and perhaps age brings that on. However, I'm so glad she found some pleasure in the game, the food, and the friends.

I have never been able to separate Buddhist Compassion, release from self, from the Golden Rule, the first commandment is to Love God with all your heart and soul, and the second is like unto the first, love your neighbor as yourself, and I don't mean this as controversy. Love and Compassion are what I reach for, and forgive the dangling preposition. Marjorie and I spoke the first words of retreat that we have felt for a long time today, funny but Laurel called and we were all thinking that Laurel leaves on August 31 for Japan, and we will have little contact like the video chats we've had, and the systematic cell phone calls. I am less tied to Laurel than Marge, and she says that so few times in her life has she met a friend like her daughter Laurel. There was a part of me that Marjorie closed out as Laurel became a young women. In fact it started when Laurel was small. I have had to learn an adage, the wife is right , most of the time.

This, the peak of summer, gives rise to verdant plant and water, and air and all warmth in mid August, and these are the first of my Canon 50D images released with respect for this wonder with an ultrasonic 17 to 85 stabilized lens , and full grasp this camera is the heaviest I shall endure, does everything a camera might do for me, and sometimes I might back away for the camera is heavy with much to learn. People in sun, drinking water, not from the River, not from the dirt and silt. Purified water, flavored waters, simple, they come to give relief from sun, bought in Falls Cafe; all approach the tower, relief, and one time my friend Bob and I went to the top in high wind, surveyed the land, sick with the swaying rock. Method in photography, let the camera find the work.

Yesterday afternoon, I took pictures at Falls Park, and more pictures as I drove back to Hartford. I enjoyed the afternoon.

Busy, busy Wednesday, and thinking of friends, the finish of good work, my loyal wife has invited me to the office picnic, and we will have a potluck with people I only see once or twice a year. I remember the first Christmas dance; we went together, and danced slowly, two step, and being 43, looking back it seemed going into mid-life, but we were young, even a baby sitter for young Laurel. I have deep fondness for the two, Marge and Laurel. Excited to be safe as if to be far from crime and doom, and often letting it out of my mind, like dad and I leavingg San Fransisco at midnight. Going up the Bay Bridge, and me taking over in Berkeley to drive a hundred miles to see dad, and give him some freedom from pain. My life in South Dakota, it has been seccure, the picnic, where we will stay for two hours laughing and being with nice peoplel. It is true what Dr. Barbra Sturgis said years ago, much before Laurel, that Marjorie would find social solice in work.

I ate an ice cream sandwich, so good and delicious, and today life is good, life is delicious, to take a chunk of peanut butter, ice milk, living history, farms laughing brooks when I was four, and my father took me fishing for brown trout, nothing like brown trout from uncle Lloyd's creek, hiss and sizzle with the frying pan making good lunches, and suppers, the long days, and uncle Clair's cows, the squirt of fresh milk from the teat , those cows feeding and being milked, eighty or so brown cows, and we had pitchers of fresh milk for lunch, living out that long summer vacation, livid with the cousins, I was always excited, and the girls let me ride a bull, the bull was saddled, they called him Old Red, belief, and give, they were God fearing people; I had no notion of what they meant, God revealed to me now, God living in each living cell, morsel of food, we live another day.

It is about time to take my evening meds. I've completed two nice letters for IOOV, the division of NAMI, of which I am the state coordinator. Let me be ever mindful of God, and His Son Jesus, to love one another, as He loved us, and the spirit of love is the Holy Spirit. I believe this Love is tangible. Marjorie hugged me this evening and said that she was beginning to understand the bipolar component of my illness. For her, the evening is befor the TV, reading, sleeping, reading, snacking, and between my

Damp earth, and those times in South Dakota when I go out just with camera and drive for ten or fifteen miles by my self--these times give me alone time, and I feel so alone with time, relieved of the essence of desire. I am 57, almost 58, and I feel fresh vegatation more keenly than I did at age 35, more than 22 years ago.

Late February, I came, I came to, I came to God with an offering, the book I have believed would happen since I was sixteen; I have dedicated this offering to Marjorie--my best friend, and to Laurel Ann, our daughter. I had begun the project seventeen years ago with the advent of my M.F.A. thesis, thirty-five poems, some troubled, but a good launching into adulthood, and being so gracious as to have raised a daughter as a sober dad, and to have stayed true to my wife, and to have made mistakes, but ever mindful of carinr for others, and of three years ago making a committment to Christ, both privately, and before the congregation of my church, the book came into being as a collection of poetry and photos. My wife and I have resolve the book as acceptance, a labor, a thorn, as in the side of St. Paul, from which I will never recover, for in as much as some doctors know, they know so little. I pray for others, I live for my wife and daughter, and I praise god. Charles Taylor

Can you see this butterfly perched on my Thursday afternoon, sleep and yet weakening? It is brown with desire, feeding on bright red blooms that are yet so small they give us a hint of sweet, that perhaps has been tried over and over in an insect world.

My arthritis, like a saw tooth fish makes me want to stay in bed sometimes until noon or so, but then I get up and move around some, and by 2:30 I'm going. Sat in Black Sheep Coffee today listening to young people talk of photos, cameras. Two joined me and we talked of Dylan, "Forever Young," both of them about 22 years-old, young woman with a Sony Alpha 100, young man with two older cameras, a Canon and a Pentax, both film cameras. I was pleased to show them my Nikon L100, a beauty. Camera, eye, stabalized like a rock, Zoom to 15 power, a few years back, unthinkable, a menu of color, shape, easy on the pocket, easy for Marge. I am not in hock, Around the easy day of a lake in summer, Beautiful days, 75 degrees, soft wind in July.

I have lingered in the caves of winter, glass smooth houses containing brown clippers, satisfaction in green, blue and brown, leaves containing messages of butterflies, and one does not stop long to watch the moist drops of dew, for I am aging, already my bones have grown together in places, and I inject myself with interfurons to stop the ache. Then, I remember my fifteenth year and I was too young, but strong and worked a time with wood. That was long ago.

The small creek slim and glinting over rock, riverlets, and real water, pure, like the enunciation of summer, and I created dinner, two cornish hens for my love, stuffing for the small birds, strawberry cheesecake, fresh green seedless grapes, delicate and pungent at time, and this was our anaversary of 27 years on June 12, 2009.