Small Stone for November 21, 2014

It’s the same street I drove down Thursday; but when I drive down it on Friday, it has unaccountably shifted into an alternate reality.  Thursday I was driving a car I’d driven for 27 years, and everything was  normal.  Friday, I drive down it in my new car for the first time, floating ghostlike along an oddly much smoother, quieter road at what feels much too slow for 40 mph.  I am skirted in silver now, instead of sandy brown.   My left leg is close to panicking because it has nothing to do, and my right hand is fidgety and ill at ease because it knows it should be reaching over and moving that stick thing about; it’s only moved it once at the start of the drive and that simply can’t be often enough.   The sound quality of the radio station I always listen to while driving has improved an inordinate amount all of a sudden.  It took an hour and a half  for me to change the car.  I think it will take a good deal longer for the car to change me.

Small Stone for March 22, 2012

An odd sensation:  Sitting in a recliner, with a lap robe on, absorbed in blogging, and the black kitty noses under the end of the lap robe, crawls up between my legs and curls up between my knees.  He is sleek and warm, and his whiskers tickle my skin.  We are both content.

Small Stone for July 3, 2011

 I put down my book, leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes, and for several delicious moments I savored the guilty pleasure of doing absolutely nothing.

Small Stone for July 2, 2011

In the darkness, whiskers light as butterflies’ legs dance along my outflung arm.  By the interval between one dancer and the next, I know the claiming paw is white-furred pink.

Small Stone for June 28, 2011

Poured out, they clink like ice cubes against the china bowl, globes of deep maroon, sparkling with frost.  I use the same pair of bamboo chopsticks, tips tinted pale indigo with the juice of countless cherries and blueberries. I tweezer them one by one into my mouth.  Cold.  They crunch between my teeth.  Sweet.  The juice melts across my tongue. The day’s bright heat is outside; I am inside in the shady cool, and the cherries are melting inside me.

Small Stone for June 17, 2011

At the point on the brink where “go” and “stay” are balanced, where the rope is in your hands and the water sparkles below, you wonder if it is such a good idea to swing out over the water, let go of the rope, fall.  The success of others is no guarantee.  And yet, and yet. . .you grasp the rope tightly, push off with your feet, swing out, let go. The cold water slaps against your body.  As you bubble to the surface, you think, ‘For a moment I was flying!”