pensivity...

pensive...

And why should this relationship be any different?

I'm always pensive, waiting for a reaction.

I can remember a time when I was braver and I'd act to cause a reaction

but that was long, long, long ago and hardly me.

I'm the woman with 100 pair of high heels who wears mainly flat shoes

I'm the one who doesn't open her mail, but pays bills on time and in the most unorthodox ways, just to avoid the direct insult of looking at the cost of this life we live.

I'm the mother who'd rather perish then upset her children, ever.

I'm the lady who can sugar coat a peppercorn, if need be.

But there is one relationship I can't dance around.

There's someone who can see right through me

and as a result, I've never felt so open.

yep - the horse.

Sorry folks, it comes back to it, him, that...

Just months ago I was afraid, but excited

Past few weeks, less scared, still excited but always cautious

People said this - that - the other thing, but it's just words until it's your experience...

I don't know for how long, but I can assure you this, it's becoming routine -

When I stand in front of him, after having walked him round, lunged him good and tired, brushed him soft as new, we meet eye to eye, standing in the cleaning stall, all our chores behind us...  and in time, his nose manages to choose a route to meet my nose, with the tenderness of two timid teenagers ready for a first kiss, just maybe.   And from his massive nostrils comes warm breath, steam that blasts my lips and chin like babies breath from a volcano.  And this produces an unstoppable curvature from the sides of my own mouth upward.    It's a goof.   This whole horse kissing thing is a magic bullet of happiness which I can't explain well at all.   How I wish I could do it justice.   My heart races and my insides flip flop, while my mind stills, like it never does and I'm finally no longer pensive...

Until something breaks this fragile connection, like a leaf falling or a girls laughter, a dog barking, a horn blowing, a motorcycle roaring.   Like a clock ticking, we come together, the thing I've feared largely, the virtual commitment - of which I've been a life long phobe... Bliss, but not for long... and then I'm comfortably uncomfortable pensive again

Later, in my kitchen, making Chicken Tortilla  Soup without the benefit of a recipe, I think about the kiss.  I know I'm smiling and I don't know how to explain why to anyone near me, nor do I care to.   I only want to acknowledge that this precious gift called life is

one long as_, scary ride, but I love standing up in the middle of it all and feeling it.  I love making all those hard to make choices and mucking up the messes only to feel the reward; which in this case would be, the breath of a beast bigger then 4 of me, against my face.

And I feel like a rock, strong and solid in the wind which sweeps cross a beautiful world, 

steady, obscure, grounded, ready to roll, substantial and insignificant, in other words - perfect...

Until I'm pensive again...

forget-me-nots, things I remember well...

My memory is just awful

What I ate for lunch -

What was her name?

When did that happen?

Where?

How does that story end, begin

and was it real?

 Or was it just in my dreams?

Sometimes I remember something as truth when in fact it never happened or was yet to happen, like Fritz dying and Elizabeth Taylor too.

When she actually passed away, I'd already mourned her, but Fritz, apparently I'd not really let go of him enough and so I cried all over again when he departed for real, long after he died in my realistic dream.

Fritz my uncle's dog, who lived with us in France;

such a sweetheart, such a good pet and such a traitor.   I'd find him out on the streets of our town, having taken himself for a walk, lying motionless as if he'd been shot, but only just sunning himself in front of the butcher's shop.  

Me on my way to the post office where they'd run out of stamps to sell me and him lying there, pretending not to know me, the foolish American girl who shaved her legs and underarms...

My awful memory is not one bit awful, but is in fact powerful, vivid, burnt like a brand on my brain when I recall certain times, some distant and some just recent, where I'm moving over the earth, walking, touched by the sun, brushed by the breeze, like on the fields of tall, beige, living, breathing, bending stalks of gold surrounding the volcano I visited with my children last week. 

So alive was the earth -

exhaling through steam vents, puffing out blue-grey smoke toward the golden sun, which melded the steam orange and black, till they met with the silver clouds above and became one, alive more...

And then a month or so before, when I walked beside my friend and the dogs ran ahead of us, searching the soft, giving, bed-like fields, with the blond blades all parted and lying down, breaking beneath our feet as we followed and waited for them to point out the treasures, the colorful birds.

And in my memory, those fields, the volcano and the hunting ground, are not what they might appear to be outside my mind.

They are not violent, they are not all together wild -

they're peaceful, heavily scented; fresh, musky...

The strands hold you

The sun pushes you down

Your own breath wakes you, prompting you to resist everything else, which lulls your mind,

slows your heart and sends you into a living dream, which you cannot forget and wouldn't want to.

In fields of my youth, all laughter and motion, my body ran through the stalks, like a lover's hand runs through hair

all breath and memory.

Walking like that, it's where I make the only promises I keep. 

My internal resolutions

Things that you don't know you want, but you do.

You want them 

and you wake up to it

in the fields, with the sun and the airs

your breath and the breeze, which become one.

And the people beside you

your children

the hunter

even just yourself

are all you need

and you make a promise

and the promise becomes your memory

and you won't forget

when you walk in fields of gold

you'll remember me when the west wind moves