today in kroger i saw two women, handcuffed, being escorted out by police officers. i guess for attempted shoplifting. one of the women couldn't stop giggling, & trying to hide her face by leaning over. the officers looked very distant. no one in the store seemed to be noticing. or maybe i arrived too late to catch the interesting bits of the action, & just saw the bit at the end.
at work every now & then we see incarcerated women. they come in handcuffs & orange dresses, & with one or two corrections officers. the officers are always female & always friendly. the women from the reformatory � the inmates & the officers � are as a rule the kindest & the easiest to work with, out of all the women that come into the clinic every week. i don't know. maybe the inmates are just glad to get out for a couple of hours, for a couple of days. take a ride in the van. interact with some strangers. look at the road moving by underneath the wheels.
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:i spent a good chunk of the weekend cleaning out my studio. we moved phyllis (bean's computer) onto my desk. (charlotte we took apart & most of her is waiting out in the hallways until i give her away.) hello phyllis.
we had kahl�a-chocolate-toffuti-waffle-cookie sundaes, & watched absolutely fabulous because the sundaes were so decadent, & sat in the still house with the back door open & the breeze coming in.
i sat at my desk in the back corner of the still house, & made poems. i am very up because of them.
i am struck by the image, which has come into my head out of what, of a woman leaving a house. it doesn't matter which woman or what kind of a house or under how many different sorts of circumstances. but i am going to sit back here in this corner with all these bookshelves at my back, writing about a woman leaving a house & leaving a house & leaving a house.
remember when i couldn't stop writing about porcelain. about tea. or both.
today i faxed the poems to addie. which is a poor substitute for walking to caples for tea together, but which is i guess what we have to work with now. (also: airplane tickets. we have airplane tickets to work with, if i can afford them.)
:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:.:what else: yesterday i saw two babies getting baptized. one was asleep & the other one didn't cry either. there were all the same songs as at easter vigil & so i cried probably pretty noticeably.
next year at easter i will be in kentucky. all of holy week, alternating between my parents' house & gethsemani. this is when i will show bean the places where i grew up. i have a feeling that the tour will be mostly me pointing out specific trees that i really, really like. since there is nothing else to do there, but develop relationships with the flora.
