The frogs aren't talking--but I know where the bodies are

You have found me at the coffee shop rather than the porch. It's a little hot for the porch right now. Asheville is droughting. (I hear Phoenix, which doesn't have the run-off infrastructure, is getting our rain.) I know where the bodies of several hundred tadpoles are entombed in what used to be a pond at the Arboretum parking lot.

It'll cool down by evening though. The blessing of elevation. I'll open the windows & let the summer night blow through. Too bad screens won't keep mosquitoes & wasps out & let fireflies in. It would be fun to have a house full of fireflies. Of course, I don't have the vegetation for that. A meadow in the living room would be a lot of work. Plus I'd then want to put a pond in & begin a tadpole rescue operation. I doubt the downstairs neighbors would like that. ("Um, Laurel, your tadpoles are dripping through the light fixtures again...")

I just signed up to go to my 30-year class reunion. Also there's an all-school reunion where my dad & cousins & aunts & uncle went to school. So I have a couple trips to Montana planned. Probably only drive one of them.

My meditation session this morning rocked! Perhaps the best ever so far. The key was a tip from a friend about relaxing into whatever it is you're going for, which means you're not going for it at all, but letting yourself be there. For example, the thought/feeling I let flow through me this morning was
with ease & grace
I relax into my power, my knowing, my health, my affluence, my true self
body, mind, heart & soul
Since I didn't start out as a good visualizer, I used to really try to latch on to images when I did get them--which of course made them go ffftt! Now I realize all comes in in its own time & am much more relaxed about it, which means images come more easily & hang around longer.

Blog alternative:
53. Look up what your name means, if you don't already know. If you don't like the meaning, come up with an alternate meaning. If you don't like your name, come up with a secret true name. Share it with a true friend. Or maybe change it for real.

Inner-Shhhhh...

I'm out on the front porch again. It's a busy street, but I don't mind. Someone is pounding on something & my downstairs neighbor is talking on the phone--I can kinda sorta hear her through her screened open window. I'm not listening. There are many birds I don't know the names of, and mourning doves, which I do, obviously. Birdchick would not be proud of me. (Hi Sharon.) But I did see an indigo bunting at the Arboretum a few weeks ago, so fabulously electrically blue it was worth figuring out, so perhaps she'll forgive me.

A woman with bright red (cherry koolaid red) hair just walked a leashless dog past on the sidewalk. Asheville folk love their dogs. That is to my advantage, since it was pet-sitting that brought me here.

I'm feeling a certain amount of inertia right now, lounging here with my feet up. Inner-Shhh. Of course, that only works for the "tendency of a body at rest to stay at rest" sort of inertia, rather than the "tendency of a body in motion to stay in motion" sort, but I'll keep it anyway. Inner-Shhhh. Stillness. Silence of the self. I was just working on the beginning of a story, oddly enough in pencil, in a yellow college-ruled spiral-bound notebook. (I know, Cathy. Lines! It's me, though. I haven't been abducted by aliens. Or maybe I have & I just think I'm still me.)

Anyway, I'm going to sit here for a while, just quietly, & then try to get the other sort of inertia going long enough to get to the 24/7 internet coffee shop to post this & back home again. (Shh! Don't tell my inner porch potato; she'll stage a sit-in.)

Blog alternative:
52. Wash some dishes by hand & enjoy it. Warm soapy water, clean rinsing, towel or drip dry.

That new TV show "I Love Dick Cheney"

Sitting out on my big old front porch--the whole width of the house--in a ratty old papa-san chair with bare feet up on a little table. Beautiful southern summer evening. That pleasant place between warm & cool, with a slight breeze stirring the trees & playing with my toes. Nummy. I just ate a bowl of grapefruit with plain yogurt & salt, a recipe I got from a Utah poet friend while on a poetry retreat in Ireland September of 2005. I went from there to 3 weeks in Paris & I had grapefruit & yogurt for breakfast most mornings.

I got back from Wiscon yesterday afternoon. A friend picked me up in Charlotte & we had breakfast at Waffle House (love them grits!) before heading back to Asheville. It is good to be home, but did I ever have a splendid time at Wiscon.

A few highlights in no particular order:

• the tiptree auction, where Ellen was auctioning off a pair of black pants with rocket ships on them & said something on the order of "the only people who could wear these are Laurie Winter & 12-year-old boys." I had just walked into the room, so I went up & tried them on & danced around on the stage a little. There are pictures--possibly even movies--on the web.
• Lady Poetesses from Hell, which was one of our finest performances. (With me were Ellen Klages, John Rezmerski, Elise Mathesen, Rebecca Marjesdatter & Terry Garey.)
• a panel on reworking the metaphors with which we live our life, rather than the war on drugs/terrorism/war/etc in which I said, at one point, without irony, "I have tremendous love & compassion for Dick Cheney..." (Hey, when you're made of out infinite, eternal, immeasurable love, you can give all of it away every moment to everyone & still have all of it left to give!) Both the other panelists & the audience had lots of good things to say.
  
• a panel on decluttering, where a group of us discussed what clutter was & ways to deal with it. A couple of things I offered: One) Come up with a new metaphor for the way you think of things, rather than scarcity & the fear that you'll need it if you get rid of it, think of catch-and-release fishing or the idea that things are not yours but only share your existence for a time and then move on. Two) Imagine your home is a garage sale. Would you choose that couch & arrange to borrow a friend's truck to get it home? If not, call up a charity to pick it up so you'll have a couch-shaped hole in your living room that will be filled with something you actually WANT.
• the dessert banquet, with guest-of-honor speeches & Tiptree awards presentation. I sat with some friends for dessert, then moved to the table where my other jurors & the winners were sitting for the ceremony part. I got to put fabulous tiaras on the winners and hand them their chocolates & such. (I also gave a couple people at my table who were nervous about their speeches a little calming energy medicine.)
  
• parties & meals & random encounters in hallways with many lovely people, both old friends and new.
  
• talking to editors (my fabulous paperback editor, who is up to her eyeballs in everything, is passing my novel on to one of her colleagues, and another editor asked me to send him a YA novel, so that's going to be fun)
  

and lots of other things, but time to get back to my southern summer evening.

Blog alternative:
51. Sit outside with your feet up on something & try to figure out what the birds are telling you.

Add tadpole & Voila! Lake Living Room

From a corner room of the 12th floor of the Concourse Hotel in Madison, Wisconsin, I greet you. There's a thunderstorm moving in & Lake Mendota (or is it Monona?) is looking frisky. The Wiscon crew has begun to trickle in. By tonight it will be a bluster & Friday it will be a flood. Sweet, sweet Wiscon! How I missed you last year.

A giant Mouat family reunion pre-empted Wiscon 30. I had a tremendously wonderful time. There were 54 family members & assorted & sundry neighbors & friends. Music galore. At one point, in Grandma Arla & Grandpa Jimmy's little old house, there were 5 guitars, a banjo, a mandolin, a piano, a saxophone & 3 fiddles. Not all being played at the same time, but most of them most of the time. It rocked--& countried & gospelled... It was not to be missed & worth missing Wiscon for, but I did put the family on alert that Memorial Day weekend was NOT the time to be scheduling future reunions, if they wanted to assure my continued attendance. (I gave enough shoulder rubs & energy treatments & was just generally my shining wonderful self that I'm sure they do want me around. Grin.)

But, here I am, at Wiscon 31. Over--& after--breakfast in the Governor's Club this morning a smattering of us Wiscon-ites had fabulous discussions on living in online communities vs. getting out of the house, political savvy vs. clogging your soul's arteries with the woes of the world, Franco's train (plus a brass band) to celebrate writers in Spain, graceful ways to review/blurb or leave the door open to get out of doing so, & many other wonderful things I am too lazy to remember.

I need to "egress" the blog & try to deprogram the alarm clock, which thought we ought to get up at 6:50 a.m. & would not shut up about it. Generally I speak clock radio quite well, but this one has an obscure dialect, so it could take a while.

Blog alternative turns 50!
50. Think about all the lakes you've been to & pick one to remember fondly. Go to a lake. Or a pond. Or a puddle. If you don't have a puddle, put a bowl of water in the middle of the living room (or some other room that could use a body of water) & sit down next to your micro lake for a picnic.

Stella Dallas vs. Big Lucy Lou: who would win?

A walk in the arboretum.

Part of it was a forced march, because I could tell I had a date with a porta-potty. (I know; TMI.) But it was a lovely day, mid 70s, with a breeze, & more of those star bell flowers were out. I was still wondering what they were & then there were more right at the arboretum & there was a sign &

ooh!

Mountain Laurel!

My favorite flowers are named after me. Or vice versa, more likely. How cool is that? (Actually, my mom, who should know, tells me I'm named after Stella Dallas's daughter from the old radio show. But she is no doubt named after the flower, so I'm actually related, although once removed.)

One of the baristas, who is just getting off shift, is texting his wife. That reminds me of a conversation with one of the sushi girls, from earlier in the month, in which I related that I am too old to text. I am convinced that this is the dividing line, with all others (gender, race, political affiliation, etc.) being meaningless:

Do you text, thumbs flying over the itty bitty keypad of your phone, or the ittier bittier (but more numerous) keys of your Blackberry? Or do you rather laboriously enter the names of your friends when you store their numbers on the cell phone, sometimes passing the right letter a couple times & having to cycle through choices again?

I, of course, am in the older generation. There are older texters & younger I'd-so-much-rather-callers, & I don't know exactly the age point on the bell curve where the switch happens, but happen it does. Someone should do a survey. Someday, all us old fogeys will be standing around helplessly with our phones in our hands & our Bermuda shorts pulled up to our breastbones, waiting for a young un with a massively-developed thumb to happen by & text someone to pick us up from the bingo parlor. (Because the last time we tried it ourselves, we got a take-out order of dolmades & a streetwalker named Big Lucy Lou who would not take no for an answer--& did not take American Express.)

Blog alternative:
49. Pick (as in choose) a favorite flower & perhaps--if it doesn't get you arrested--pick one.

New organizers (with cedar inserts) for the monsters under the bed

Oh, the joys of organization! My home is so much more welcoming & wonderful now. My executive assistant worked for & with me yesterday & today. (Plus we had lunch together & visited as well.) Now all the artwork has been moved from the entryway. (Feng shui people would be proud of me. Probably. I might have the personal relationship stuff in the money corner & vice versa.) Stacks of paper have been looked at & sorted & even (partially, at least) dealt with. I bought new underbed storage units (with cedar inserts!) at Bed, Bath & Beyond. Yay me! Yay us! Yay Universe! (& Yay You, too, for good measure!) (Yay exclamation points!) (Yay parentheses!) (Etcetera!)

I will not linger long at the keyboard. Time to get out into the nice brisk world. (Earlier, it was right around my favorite temperature if you remember what that is. Now it's about 56 degrees.) I love it when spring feels like spring & doesn't leap right into summer.

Great little meditation phrase I used this morning:
All that is I, let it grow.
All that is not, let it go.

Blog alternative
48. Look at your furniture to see if it is all where you want it. If not, rearrange something.
(& a bonus blog alternative alternative)
(Alternatively, look at your furniture to see if you want it. If not, get rid of something.)

Green lattice octagon gazebo--say it fast 3 times

Today I saw Carl Sandberg's home at Flat Rock. When I saw the first information sign at the lake, I cried. Didn't tour the house today--will save that for later. Today it was a walking, lying on a flat rock meditating, writing poetry, photographing some flowers that start as stars and end as bells, sort of day. There's a wonderful green lattice octagon gazebo that is just the most fabulous place to meditate.

While walking down the path, I saw the little "rain speed bumps" (my dad who built mountain roads would call them kelly humps--don't know if you use the same terminology for paths) with little channels going off to the side to divert the accumulated water so it would not erode the path. It occurred to me that this is a valuable analogy: you can block things off, but if you don't provide means to get rid of the water/stress/whatever, eventually your little (or big) dam will bust.

And then it occurred to me
(drum roll for philosophy of the day)
that
exactly where you are,
using the metaphors and analogies of the moment
(everything I know I learned in kindergarten, from cats, walking paths, etcetera)
you can learn everything.
Or nothing.

Blog alternative:
47. Sketch out the floor plan for your dream house. (Doesn't have to be a mansion in the expansive sense of the word. I'm guessing my dream house is around a thousand square feet.)