The Butterfly Effect

It rained.

From the sky...
a gabillion drops free falling, prancing like wild horses on my tin~can metal roof...
and  then leaping into sudden death...
or freedom...
flying face first into the muddy earth....
and tumbling wildly downhill
to the river....

Monsoons....

I took a shower.

Steadied my hand on the make-shift rail,  leaned up against the vintage vinyl and stood under the warm waterfall....
Crying.....

Maybe wailing.....

It 's the seven o'clock sadness....
It just happens...

Each new day is a gift...
and a Mountain....
and for just a moment,
I have weak knees...
the fleeting moment after you've been cold cocked, but just  before you stand up again,
spit blood,
and say "I'm OK".......

I should have known she'd be here...
     the encore after my hissy fit.....


The yellow Butterfly....
   

      reminding me

 to Believe.....

Butterflies and other True Stories...

She was a plain jane. Faded yellow with raggedy little wings, windswept,sidewalk scuffed, Cinderellish. But Oh God, could she dance....swirly twirls in the air, and head first dip~dives straight from the sky, barely missing her nose on the upturn. And she's lived to be a 100 years old or more....in Storyland...

The yellow butterfly of San Marino...

with her dirty little feet and freckled petticoat....
she's a gypsy.....
in her husky morning after voice,
she's a sunrise....

Counting days until we travel to her homeland again...
until she lands, teetering on wobbly show~girl legs, on the lip of my Michelob....
until she barrels in, Mardis Gras style, right before Santa Claus...
until she tickles my nose,
or my toes,
or my fancy...

And reminds me to laugh,
to live,
to dance at the very,very edge of the ocean...

I still believe in butterflies...

and peace
and love
and all that
hoo~hah....

Fireworks

I dated a nice boy. Once. He opened car doors and brought me donuts on Saturday. He wore khaki pants and golf shirts. Had a retirement plan and took good care of his parents. When he kissed me the first time, I almost fainted. From boredom. And then he sweet talked me. In baby talk.

"Why can't you just find a nice guy and settle down?" She said to me, slurping her McCoffee.....

"Lemme tell you why" I giggled . Remembering.

I like to have fun. I like to laugh til I cry and cry til I laugh. I like to dance. Low and fast. Touching and no touching. In the streets and in the rain. I like to dress up and dress down. I like to be shocked and to be rocked. I like to be IN LOVE and I love to be liked.

I believe in butterflies.....

You're only little once......

We've waited forever. Marked X's on the calendar. Counted days.

Watched the weather
man.

Ta! Dah! This is it!

Hippie Camp-out Night! Kimbies and I and our elfin little grandbabies goin' Woodstock for the night..... And feelin' the love......

My little heart-n-souls rode backseat, buckled up for 400 miles to spend the night in the latrineless green castle in the back yard. They came toting pillows, fuzzy blankets, yoo-hoo's, flashlights and smiles the size of martini moons. Kim's little Alana packed her Cinderella sheets, a sippy cup, and Me'Me's beer and we were off! To never-ever land, 18 steps from the back door. We played AARP Twister......Kimbies and I moaning, groaning, stretching, hoola-hooping our bodies into "left hand on green" pretzels.....tumbling in a pile of laughter. For every beer we drank (Hippie gramma's are allowed!) they ate a cupcake, a chinese fortune cookie, a puff of cheese popcorn....We built a cardboard house big enough for two......We colored, we painted, we glued, and ran barefoot in roundy-rounds through the backyard! We stayed up until 2:18 (That was the exact time according to Stone, the keeper of the battery operated clock!) and we never chickened out. The winds blew left and right and in mighty circles, 60 MPH, and we waited for the house to lift and send us flying.......we laughed, and oohed and ahhhed, and achoo!ed, piling under covers......

We woke this morning, to the same magic we fell asleep too. Alana saw it first. "Look she's fwying, dancing....... the yewwo buttahfwy...." We stretched our camp-out necks, squinted towards the window...."Where?" we chorused......."There!" she pointed...... And then we saw her......

The first ray of sun, glittering through the window.......

A love story

I was in the third grade
collecting badges
and A pluses on papers that didn't matter.
I lined the cigar box,
ever just so,
Tipparillos gone,
with black velvet from the hem
of my Mama's dress,
and laid them to rest there....

the butterflies....

The glue didn't stick
and the teacher,
Miss Swanson,
"fixed" them for the fair....

I couldn't wait....
my torn pink ticket in my pocket,
to see my butterflies and the ribbon
she promised me....

But,
all I remember
are the green and gold and blue and red

hatpins through their hearts.....

Whatsa matta whichyou boy?

I sat with the squatters. The elbow boys. The ones who watch from their dark corners, five o'clock shadows and tall boys resting in their hands. It was creepy. Lonely.

From my favorite padded black bar stool, where my fanny hardly ever rests, I became one of them. The Friday night parade marched by, "How to do? How are you?" Kisses on the cheeks. Leaning in for hugs. But it was different. Tethered to the stool, crutches glaring out in the dark, I couldn't jump in for Jack Flash, first one on the dance floor, and my eyes searched the crowd for who would take my place. The dance floor was empty on the count of four, eight, nine, ten... then finally I could breathe again. I smiled. Clinked!

I noticed how very smokey it is when you sit very very still, bodies swirling around you, kicking up the dust and cigarette haze like cat hair everywhere. I studied the floor and for the first time, saw cocktail stirrers everywhere, like a game of pick-up-sticks abandoned mid-sentence for a better game. I read the signs. Climbed out of my Friday night skin and the concrete block around my ankle and pretended to be on the dance floor, good foot moving to the music, shoulders swaying, hair swinging in the smoke.

And then I knew.

And I cried. The slightest trickle of rain, falling from my eyes. "Are you o.k?" "mmmmmhmmmmm" and I smiled. "Is it your foot?" "uuuuuh...uuuh" "Your leg?" "uuuuuh..uuuuuh" and I smiled again. Because I had to, Grabbing the stainless steel stilts, like a pointy little pocketbook, and swiveling out of the chair.

"It's my heart".

And the shadow people...

Dancing with their ghosts...

Wallpaper on the Friday night walls.

When I can walk through the front door on two legs, both arms free, I'm gonna hug 'em.

At the ballet....

"Hush, hush, sweet" butterfly,
Butterfly "don't you cry"....



I watched her today, dancing in the heat of an arrogant sun, crickets screeching at her quietness, a never ending siren of background static. They make a lousy orchestra. Their music tragic. She doesn't care.... She tip-toes across the fence line, a yellow ballerina with transluscent wings, eyes heavy with mascara, flitting from stage to stage.....


Never caged.


I splash. Just a little. Paint ripples with my fingertips. Plunk! A whisper in the water. I'm being very careful. Very still. Floating. Watching the subtle changes in the deep, deep water. I don't want to change the butterfly effect.


Hopefully she doesn't notice, and keeps on dancing.

Butterflies and Hurricanes......

I downloaded the song without a clue….And it freaked me out, kind of spooky at first, then I sunk into the 28th row of the orchestra pit and melted into it. I don’t know who the artist is, or where they were coming from….
just know my keywords….
that day, my feelings….
butterflies and hurricanes….


And that’s life….

The yellow butterfly, with her translucent wings, barely visible from the kitchen window, flits across the yard, dancing from blazing begonias to rotting pot of cigarette butts, she’s careless and wreckless and feminine and dainty, pointing her toes like a prima ballerina and strutting her stuff like Tina Turner….she spirals and twists and makes up her mind as she goes……


I lived through three hurricanes in a month’s time. And never saw the like of this. The damage done.

In the aftermath of the storms, the hot dirty days that followed, we drank hot beer and bathed in tepid water ladled from the neighbor’s garbage cans. We feasted on Slim Jims and hardened bagels. We slept with the windows open, the night air wailing through the broken glass, and awakened to the sun blazing and chain saws ripping through our borrowed peace. We filed insurance claims and waited, lugging our lives, as we once knew them, to the curb…

splintered, broken, waiting for the fix…..


Butterflies and Hurricanes…..

Sometimes, in the debris, stacked like pick-up sticks…we find what we were looking for all along….



The calm after the storm...
Thanksgiving leftovers…



The wish-bone .


And Butterflies are free……..

"I'll worry about it tomorrow....

It’s not spontaneity, in my world. It’s suddenaity. That’s just me. To the world at large (well, this is a really small town, which makes it a really small world, but)…I’m settled. Snuggled into the ordinary. Comfy Cozy in my couchless house. Predictable really. I drive the same way to work every morning, blasting the same music in the same way….LOUD! My hair has hung in the same direction since I was fourteen, the way it grows. Straight, and trimmed every once in a while at the bathroom sink. I still flip the peace sign at passers-by, toss the mail in the trash, and believe.

And then BAM! The butterfly breeze blows a little lower, and I’m just sitting there minding my own business. And everything
changes. Just like that. Swoooshing in a thousand new directions.

Suddenaity.

An unintentional hurricane. Flipping everything ordinary over onto it’s underbelly. Exposing the pale protected safeness of my every day world to… the scorching sun. And it’s so hot in the aftermath, that the dirt is steamy and fog is rising and for a moment, or maybe forever, I don’t think I can see beyond now. I’m standing in the middle of madness and I can’t blink. Terrified to close my eyes for fear of never waking up again. And I can’t breathe. If I suck this steamy heated air into my lungs, how will I ever exhale hard enough to take the next breath. And I can’t move. I don’t know where the earth ends and I’m afraid, or not afraid, that I’ll just fall off and tumble eternally, floating through the bottom skies…. Weightless. Pieces of life as I knew it, careening past, bumping into me occasionally, close enough to touch, but no longer within my reach…..

Butterfly breeze…..
The tiniest flutter…
And
There’s no turning back.

Just passing through my world......

I saw her this morning. Fluttering…dancing….doing figure 8’s in the morning sun. Free. She tickled by my Sunday morning winter window. Reminding me. Yes, Butterflies are really free. For everything else, there’s Mastercard….

KEEPER

A heart shaped shell, tumbled in a thousand tides, grainey and wrinkled, tossed at my barefeet...a keeper

An abondoned birdsnest, delicately woven, lined with glad-bag trash and the neighbor's Christmas tree tinsel...a keeper. I pruned the tree and left one branch up and three branches down, a tribute to peace, and a Mother's determination. Even empty nests bring comfort.

Marbles, twirled and swirled, blown glass spun in a circle...pocketed by little boys, rolled on wooden floors....found 23 years later buried in Georgia clay... a sister's keeper.

Silver shoes, 3 inches high, scuffed just at the toe... glitter faded, straps stretched out....toe prints on their soles...Keepers

Pisces man with a wrinkled face, and a wrinkled smile and a Coors light in his hand....reaching over, diving in, embracing his "you still look 21 to me" gorgeous wife collapsing at his side....and saying "WE CAN DO THIS. IT's OK. I LOVE YOU".... Keeper

Christmas card with a Magpie poem ....Keeper

Wedding album, mildewed and tossed, pages eaten by hungary moths and uninvited roaches, chocked full of random papers, the key to your past...A keeper....meant to be lost for 20 years and found on a rainy Friday..to be wrapped up in Christmas paper and bows and passed onto my child with so many questions.....I apologize if i haven't told the stories right...memories are sometimes made-up as you go, but I love you, and unedited, this book, stuffed with the truth is a keeper....

Beer bottle caps. Damp from the chill. Tossed in a painted gourd. Collected year round, from Friday nights out, Sunday night cries....And later touched by the pen or the brush of a Magpie...reincarnated into jewels and sillies and ornaments...tossed amongst loved ones like fairy dust...keepers

Tattoos....You're stuck with them. Love it. Because you damn sure can't leave it. A permanent salute to the moment....keeper.
(And I am at this moment contemplating a yellow butterfly...come Paigey, and Kimbies, and Corinne, Linda, and Judy and Curty and Haley and Noah and Christine and Anna and Amber and Arianna Olivia and Peyton and Alana and Kyle and Stone and Tami and Dad-O and Grand-C and Chancellor and Scott and Annie and Nadine and Stan and JR and Jimmy Mac and Peggie and Badri and Sheila Anne and Tim and Papa and Nicky and Rumors and Joe and RCK and Vicci and Anne and Orhan and San Marino and everyone and everything that makes the butterfly effect so very very yellow...)

Keepers...May the New Year be Blessed with all we cherish....
and all we've yet to discover.................

The Omen and other chic flicks

There are some things that just innately mean something else. Little intuitive omens on butterfly wings. “It’s a girl thing” “a psychic thing” “a psycho thing”. For about ten years I always blew a kiss to my car ceiling (hanging headliner flapping in the breeze) when I passed a one eyed car. You had to do this, you see, it brought good luck. I did this faithfully, for years, until I passed about 9 one eyed cars on a lonely stretch of highway being chased by a tornado…limbs cracking overhead, trash flying by the windows…

I used to groan and moan and go arrrrrggggghhh, when a black cat crossed my path, a childhood superstition, and then I had a black cat, who took up residency at my front door and not wanting to condemn myself to forever purgatory, I just got over it.

But there are still things I chink over, get a little thrill over, or a little chill over. Believe in. (ooops , can’t help myself, but I do) …little omens passing by….sometimes smiling…sometimes haunting….

A ring around the moon …. mischief stewing…
A dog whaling, I mean pitifully whining, howling to the tune of a distant siren…. that’s not good
Yellow butterflies, anywhere….hope, dreams, peace…you can’t wreck this one, I still BELIEVE
Hearing “Our song”…this one is wretched. For part of your life it is awesome, for the rest it is trashed, you want to hurl things. Live things. Don’t ever pick an “our song”, eventually it screws up the music forever.
Stopped clocks….I never pay attention to the time unless it’s stopped. And then I obsess over the hands, until they’ve passed the same place a gazillion times and I realize it has absolutely NO MEANING
Found pennies…As broke as I am, I still won’t pick one up if its not heads up
Broken love beads…I hate when that happens. Time freeze frames. Until I restring them and it starts again.
Ducks flying blindly into the hood of my car…another NOT GOOD thing
Tea stains on the kitchen counter….tarot cards by accident
Flying dreams….you don’t even want to go there
The sound of magnolia leaves rustling….Nana’s watching
SLB’s marbles….the meaning changes in the rain
Palm itching…I can never remember what this means, but it means something
Red Bird out the window…..blessed
Foot itching…run baby, don’t walk
Blue eyes…Nadine has been here, waving her wand, reminding me to pay attention
Smoke alarms…well, we all know what that means
Bird accidentally in the house…..ewwwwwww, not good
Sensormatic alarms… oh God, I left my vitamins in my purse again, and I’m going to be persecuted, prosecuted for shoplifting
“Can I see your I.D.?” ….. they have a bet going on
Toll free number…I should have picked up the pennies. I owe these people money
When the Bird of Paradise blooms…..Don’t worry about a thing, it’s all good

I don’t do horoscopes and no Ouija boards live here, but still….

The Yellow butterfly of San Marino

SUMMERS, SISTERS, and THE SEAWALL

She wasn't a figment of our dreamy sunburnt imaginations. She really lived there. Her salty wings somewhat summer blonde, a little tattered on the edges. She'd flit and swoop and dance in the baking florida sun, this tiny little sun goddess. At night, like a firefly, we would catch glimpses of her, swirling, twirling in the moonlight (And don't you dare say butterflies don't fly at night!) She was always there. Everytime. At the seawall of SanMarino.

There, with our eyes to the ocean and the heavens, and our sandy bare feet propped on the seawall, we dreamed. We met the sunrise and watched her fall. We spent days and days, nights and nights, lounging at the seawall of SanMarino. We met strangers and best friends. Old souls and newborns. Lost kitties and lost kites. Lost souls. We made promises and we made pacts. We built sandcastles and made periwinkle soup. We drank coffee, then bloody Marys then beer. Bottles and bottles of beer. We sang, and danced, and told stories. We made up stories and laughed. We began to believe.

To believe in borrowed peace. To believe in the promise of tomorrow. To believe that we could make it no matter what. We spent stolen days and stolen weeks during stolen summers at the seawall of SanMarino. And the yellow butterfly, the tiny little oceanic ballerina, was always there. Reminding us to believe.

And then "poof it was gone". Our precious, tacky little paradise plowed upside down for high rise, concrete condos. God, it almost killed us. Where would we go? How could we escape everyday hell if there was no place to run to, to hide, to accidently stumble on?

And then, we saw her. The yellow butterfly of San Marino. And we remembered. To believe.

When this is all over, when the world as we know it is well again...we will have peace, and we will laugh and dance under the serious moonlight in barefoot sandals....

We will follow her...as she has followed us....

To a place called peace