Today, as Lenya was walking out of the door of the dance studio, I passed an elderly man who looked to be in his mid-eighties. Standing up straight, he would have been about five five, but he could not stand up straight. His back was hunched over and nearly horizontal, and his hips were turned to his right so both of his legs jutted out sharply. His pelvis also seemed to be tilted forward. He had white hair and a line of thick drool stretched down from his mouth by about seven inches. I could see the damp spots on his brown trousers where the saliva had broken and fell. In his left hand he carried a brown briefcase and his small steps carried him at a clip. I smiled at him as we passed and he looked up at me and gave me back a big bright smile. When I looked back a few moments later, I saw him slip into Mariela's Argentine Tango Room. Lenya was listening to my walkman and heard one of those pretty, breathy feminine voices that are so popular of late sing the line, "In my Present there is so much Past."
In other news, the garden is doing well. First lettuces, chives, basil, kale, radishes, and sungolds have been very soothing to Lenya's lucky heart. Don Bachardy came over for a spot of Arak this evening and he said the best, most true thing: "Everything I value in my life has come as a result of my queerness." I could have just kissed him for that.

There was one in Claremont, one on Sheep-Davis Road, one in White River Junction. Whenever there was welding to be done on the homestead in Santa Clara, we would get our gas tanks from Merriam Graves. When I was a midwife, I would ford the Merrimack River on my pony to get my oxygen tanks from Merriam Graves. Well, today at work the delivery lady was wearing a new uniform. Did it say the names of her company's founders? Did it seem to have any connection to place or history? No. The uniform she wore was printed with the bristly and awkward non-word "AirGas". Air-Gas?
"What happened to Merriam Graves?" I asked. "We were bought out," she replied. "Is "AirGas" a big company?" "Yes. Its Youge. They're all over the country, nationwide, you know. In fact, I don't even know where they are from...its...regional. They have all kinds of regional offices."

Raise up your head

Back in Bloomsburg, I would have to stand here for ten minutes staring at the screen in order to come up with something to say besides: love, friendship, family, trust, permutations, permeation, permanence, permanent markers, life is long.

If you go to songza.com and search for "The Finches The Road," you will hear a good song. I recommend the fourth selection from the top.

Now the party is started, and the ink in the skin on Ralu's back reads,

"What a piece of work is a man
How noble in reason
How infinite in faculties
In form and moving
how express and admirable
In action how like an angel
In apprehension how like a god
The beauty of the world
the paragon of animals
And yet, to me, what is
this quintessence of dust?
Man delights not me."

Rahel, the Unicorn of the Utopalypse, purifies nuclear waste with the touch of her horn. She is a powerful steed drawing the plough through the Earth so that every mouth can be fed; the pale horse of Death.

There is also a Siren and a Shaman Mechanic in our colony.

Utopalips

Many of us are relaxing our minds into this secret tide - I flew out of T.F. Green for my once-yearly return to Moldova and come to find out that the theme of Ralu's pre-Bastille Day Party is "The Utopalypse" (!) where we will all use Universal 500 model hand-grain mills, and at times the best footwear will be platform boots with crampons. Special prizes will be awarded to those who can withstand waterboarding for the most minutes and moustache trimming will be performed with an elegant scissor from Cronenberglandia. And then, when I calmed my mind and excused myself from the group work-day for a moment, this message came from the Dust:

"as the economy crumbles further under the weight of stacked illusions, we're going
to have to keep finding more creative ways to adapt. that might make us more
interdependent, more connected to one another. we're going to survive by unsettling
one another's lives a little more."

I shared it with the other buzzing bees and we have decided to make a banner of it for the party.