Or maybe it’s a song. Or a whiskey-tinged nursery rhyme.

I’ve been meaning to write something with formal structure—a villanelle, maybe, or a sestina; something properly poetical and devilishly tricksical. I’m like a shaggy shetland too long in the pasture, though—unfit for the bit and easily spooked by saddles, and I haven’t been able to settle into those stricter rhythms.

But my work’s a little crazy these days and there’s only so much cardio I can do to escape, so here’s a little thing I wrote in a hurry, between drafting documents and checking design comps. I wanted it to be a pantoum, but the silly filly got impatient with the interplay of repeated lines and willed itself into whatever-this-is (oh! and it rhymes! I never do that…):

I’ve been wrecked and I’ve been righted
I’ve been wrong and I’ve been wronged
Sometimes blind, sometimes nearsighted
I got out to get along

I’ve been wrecked and I’ve been righted
I’ve been weak and I’ve been strong
Sometimes blind, sometimes nearsighted
I wasn’t ready ‘til you came along

Okay, your turn. Write something quicklike between emails and other worky tasks, then post it in comments. Extra credit for recorded versions—I’ll post anything with a melody right on this here blog. Send yr sung or spoken word to me at The Subtle Rudder at mac dot com.

(And yeah, yeah, I know I haven’t been attentive around here in so long that barely anyone will see this, but hey, maybe one of you out there will be sparked to share, if only to show how much better you are at this. Let mine be the bad draft that inspires you to shine.)

image via

Or trying, at least. It’s that kind of a year so far:

work
work
work
frolic
freak
work
work
freak
work
freak
work
watch
(soothing hulu nonsense)
work
work
(stop it
stop thinking
stop thinking
don’t think)
ok
ok
ok
breathe
(take a)
walk
(make a)
quilt
work
work
work
freak
work
(oh yeah)
blog

And how is your year going? Are you getting everything you need, or just living with the want, the lack?

Although Ford is mostly all bigface and giggles, chimping around like the tough-assed and tender toddler he is, I love when I capture that moment between the grins and gimcrackery.

It’s like a glimpse into his growing up face, a mirror that reflects something beyond the now.

Because I ravage through a fresh bag of Trader Joe’s trail mix like a bulimic squirrel, snorfing half my weight in hazelnuts, almonds, dried cranberries, and candied ginger.

While I snacked, I was netflixing Sports Night, Aaron Sorkin’s 1998 motormouth bazooka-wit show-about-a-sports-show, since I seem to be on a sports-related television binge these days (excess, it’s not just for eating!), having marched through two seasons of elite gymnasts turning emotional backflips and four seasons of 20-something sports writers drinking beer. And although I remember watching several episodes years ago, I had forgotten that it used an iconic shot of downtown New York in lights to segue between scenes.

I’d just settled back on to the couch with yet another fistful of dehydrated fructose and fat calories, when I saw this:

I know it’s been ten years, and while I am not one of those Never Forget types because I find that too much looking back makes it impossible to move forward, seeing this skyline was oddly dislocating, like I’d fallen out of time. In an instant I was there in the late 90s, with all my late 90s pettiness and preoccupations—the high-tech boom job, the aussie boyfriend—only everything was off, like the color of old photographs. And although I was back in that time—an era I Fatboy Slimmed through, just like the rest of you—I was also of this time, where I’ve learned that markets crash, relationships end, towers fall.

It wasn’t a huge moment; no gutpunch, just odd—but it made the rich bite of hazelnut and ginger taste like too much in my mouth. Empty and too much.

Ford was over last night and we took advantage of the rare 80-degree late October evening to go to the park right by my place. It has a huge, child-swarmed playground, with one of those monumental play structures, all ladders and tunnels and vibrant plastic twirly slides in barney-purple and yolk-yellow. The neph’s old enough now—2 and a half—to really attack such a structure without someone holding him upright or going down the slide with him. We settled pretty quickly on a straight yellow slide and he ran up the steps, across the swinging bridge, and whooshed down the slide a bunch of times while I waited at the bottom to monitor his speed. This was a fast one, not like a lot of them where adult asses get stuck and you have to wriggle yourself through the twisty bowels of the thing, wondering when you got all feeble and delicate. I did it once (plenty for feeble, delicate me) and came shooting out into an 8-year old girl, who said I’d “scared the pee out her.” Sorry, kid.

One of the times Ford came down, I took a video. It was good timing, because Ford had decided to try something new. Enjoy:

His parents told me he’d been watching other kids go down head first at parks all over town, but this was his first time, and we get to see him steel himself—get up his courage and talk himself into it. And at the risk of becoming a mommy-blogger by proxy—Lookit my neph! Being a kid!—I’m really delighted I was there to see it and share it here with you, because this video is about more than cute—it shows me that being brave does not mean being fearless. That we all need someone there to catch us, especially when we’re trying something new. And that sometimes, the thing that scares us most the first time through is what we’re most eager to do a second (and third and fourth) time. You can see that right in the end, when I wanted to do a post-mortem, talk about triumph and feelings, but Ford? All he cared about was going down again, and again, and again.

I like to think I’m an asskicker, but every few months I wake up feeling all podgy and dire, like I might be coming down with something. So I hit the oregano oil and try to gack down a lot of water—the usual get thee behind me, satan! novenas to the immunity saints—and then take to my bed for a day or two. (Truly, I am a delicate flower. In victorian times, I would have had a fainting couch or a diagnosis of hysteria.)

While there’s a good chance I’m just a weak sister, I believe there’s value in checking out for a couple days; in malingering in your grubby jams and rumpled bedclothes while your greasy bangs make you look like Peter Pan with a rooster comb; in eating nothing but Pho you’ve overpaid your underemployed younger brother to fetch for you; in reading only spy fiction, decor mags, and gossip blogs; in watching endless hours of teen soap operas set in the world of elite gymnastics.

Or maybe it’s just me.

But on the off chance you have your own episodes of ennui, let’s compare notes. What makes you check out from daily life? How do you do it? Has the internet made it easier to wallow in your own delightful misery? Tell me yr sad, sweet tales of succumbing, of hibernating like a grouchy bear, of shutting out the world until you’re ready to face it again.

miserable fish, face sail, goth bob

Neph Number One* goes to a christian daycare filled with kindly, kid-patient souls who push a walloping load of jesus-loves-me. (Hey—their turf, their savior.) As a spiritually itchy no-godnick, this gives me a case of the winces. But for Ford, that walking explosion of new synaptic pathways, it’s just the place he goes most days and shares snacktime and naptime and playtime with his friends. Jesus is one of them, because stories are real when you’re two years old. Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder, and Jesus Christ are all as alive to him as Papou and Cookie, or the many comforting scraps of satin blankies and small stuffed things he carries around in his Buzz Lightyear backpack. I think The Lord Their Christ makes about as much of an impact on his life as the fact that he gets a gummi bear at daycare if he goes on the potty; such are the preoccupations of toddlerhood.

Of course, I wonder if introducing the idea of building your house on the sand is really age-appropriate. Ford has a keen eye for systems and structures—how they go up, how they come down—and my sister tells me he’s been having nightmares on stormy nights, worried about their house washing away in the rain. But maybe that’s just an essential part of his development; after all, the stories we hear and the things we learn twine together in interesting, sometimes alarming ways, where a story enables you to test a lesson, or a lesson deepens—often scrambles—your understanding of a story. I suppose something’s got to scare him; maybe we all need a little darkness to push us along, grow us up, help us live in this messy world and learn to love its light and lack. How else do we explain bible stories, fairy tales, zombie films—even my crazyass dreams from the last few nights? On some level, we’re built for narrative, and not all stories are sweet, because they act as both mirrors and bridges, reflecting our own selves, carrying us over and beyond the same old bloody ground.

Anyway, this has been a very long set-up for a very quick but rich little happening that cracked me up last night. Ford and my sister were over for dinner and we were sitting together on the couch, below a ledge of portraits in my living room. Now, we all know that much of early childhood is taken up with learning to name what’s in the world around us: piglet, smokestack, chandelier. So my neph looked up at the pictures above us and pointed to each face in succession, saying:

“That’s Jesus, that’s Jesus, that’s Jesus, that’s a girl.”

I won’t even try to unpack the feminist critique in there, but like I said: lessons and stories mix to make their own mojo, especially in the leaping, fertile mind of a young neph. And I suppose there are worse role models, although I’m pretty sure Ford is more interested in finding out if Jesus drives a skidsteer or a steam engine than in learning whether he saves souls.

*Neph Number Two will not be making any more appearances on this Subtle Weblog. Sigh. Apparently, my sister and her husband do not share my view of the world and its joys and dangers. This is one of those lessons I have had to learn over and over again: not everyone is like me (along with its corollary: not everyone likes me, although I don’t believe this is their issue—love you guys!). This is a writer’s familiar dilemma: other people seem to believe their stories belong to them and even though I claim Prince Roland as my own, my beloved neph 2.0, they would prefer I not share that part of my story with you. I am very sorry I won’t have a record of my relationship with him and I’m sorry, as well, that you’ll miss out on the evolving cuteness. Luckily, there are still baby gorillas and feisty toddlers. Oh, and adolescent water dogs, as well. Stay tuned!

So, this happened*:

Months ago, in fact. You know what they say, the first neph gets all the glory and the second one survives on hand-me-downs, scraps, and overdue blogbirth announcements. But I’ve made a little promise with myself to get my ass in gear and stop tossing away eleven bucks on bloghosting every month for a dormant blog. Either it gets lively around here, or it goes away. I mean, really. Anyway, enough about me. We came here for the cute:

They named him one of those classic male names a little whelp can grow into—he’s no Aiden, Jaden, Brayden, or Caden—but I like to call him Prince Roland of the Golden Locks. I’m sure you can see why:

And yeah, I’m happy to straight-up brag about this Amazing True Fact: my sisters make excellent mohawked boybabies. Even if some of them aren’t really babies any more:

*That loud noise you heard three months ago was the collective ahhh! we all made when Prince Roland’s hair was born at least 10 minutes before the rest of him. The loud noise you just heard was my sister seeing her very carefully cropped and utterly tasteful ladythigh posted on the internet. Love you, sister! Adore my neph!

My heart is still at Lake Vermilion, even though the rest of me is stuck in my over-chilled office, knee-deep in internet and everyday irritations. But this takes me right back to those stolen days in Northern Minnesota, watching a 4-month old lab get her feet wet in one of the most beautiful places ever:

Zane & Possum on Pine Lake from The Subtle Rudder on Vimeo.

I love an odd mix, whether it’s zealots espousing unexpected ideas, adversaries becoming allies around a specific cause, or animals of warring species finding unlikely communion. In fact, in a box somewhere, I have a yellowed newspaper clipping which features Klansmen in full pointy-headed hate gear, picking up trash along the side of the road, with a caption that reads: “Members of the Ku Klux Klan do their part for earth day.” I saved it because that clash of expectations makes my brain go clang! (Or should that be klang?)

But when the strange bedfellows are also cute animals, well, that sets off all my bells. So imagine the elemental squeeeee!!! I made this morning when I found this:

via