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never been a very strong storyteller.
could never tell a joke. can't emote like the young ones do.
not at liberty to say much that i could. good for moments that
don't add up to much..
like the other night five of
us were at a nice restaurant and the windows looked out onto
a watery park and a path. first a boy jogged past with his dog.
then a dad came by with his kid on a bike. he had to stop to
help her. then a heavy hairy guy gallumphed on by alone. then
a strolling indian gentleman whose wife followed a discrete five
paces or so behind. i noticed a guy out on the patio who wanted
to toss some food to the geese but wasn't sure. finally he did.
like dominic is back from ohio
and we started walking in the mornings this week. just over by
176 there's a bike path that goes all the way to the lake. we
set out on that but found a side path that took us to unknown
territory. it brought us to the field just the other side of
the gigantic powerlines which run just beyond our baseball football
and soccer fields. this is a fine path maintained by the libertyville
park district. at first the grass is carefully trimmed, but when
we took the path up a tiny rise through a wall of trees we came
to a large wild area full of stuff just growing and flying and
buzzing. and the sun was hitting the mist like we were in some
movie or some damn cereal commercial. i was like a kid. oh look
there at that. redwing blackbird. purple thistle. some kind of
daisies. brown bird on an old weed stalk. up another rise we
can see the housing in the distance but there's also a tiny pond
with an egret. and all the time i'm walking and thinking. somebody
made something good here. something real nice. oh look. look.
tonight at dinner we were telling about it and dominic said he
was just trying to walk but i kept seeing things. oh look at
that. what's that? walking and talking. that's me.
like i had a little problem with
some of my pages here so i sought help and ended up moving to
a completely new webhost. happened fast. no procrastination.
whammo. new host. even repointed the domain name all by myself...
thanks to andreux who over the past year or so has taught me
some stuff... but most of all that it's just a web page and i
can do it.
and like i finally polished up
the indexes and got them online. the apes' work on The
Things They Carried made that happen quickly. then i took
the momentum from that project and finished The
Great Gatsby.
like back from june 10 to 14
we had our provincial chapter. and it was good. we elected new
leadership, made some important decisions about government, heard
from some dutch carmelites about titus brandsma, prayed effortlessly
in english and spanish, celebrated jubilarians at a nice dinner,
mourned the sudden death of one of our brothers. many of us lodged
at the argonne guest house and had to show passes and photo i.d.
and pop our trunks to get back to our rooms. i saw one famous
white deer on the first day. and then none.
like what we call the garden
has a few not-too-ugly flowers in it. pink roses. and some purple
things i planted whose name i forgot to remember. white coneflowers
and a red one i transplanted from out by the garage. geraniums.
daylillies. and black-eyed susans from a teaching colleague.
they're mostly salad for some critter by now. none of these plants,
excluding the one big pink rose bush, are doing too well. perennials
need a year at least. they say.
like all the widlife, rabbits
and deer and squirrels and birds - this one lemon yellow thing
with black wings seems too big to be a finch. sen it twice now.
and chipmunk and woodchuck.
like trying to read. william
faulkner. what planet was he from. as i lay dying. a real treat
for the apes to come. and reading a brief illustrated biography
of virginia woolf who needs a place on the ap shelf but...
stuff like that. having a summer
of it.
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