Chuckie's World, another blog

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.