The tulip farm was a good 40 minutes south of Portland. We rode all the way with the windshield wipers on fast. Earlier my son and had I walked up to New Seasons, a small grocery, and asked a manager for advice. He directed us to the seasonal aisle. I knew they had to be there: plastic ponchos in little plastic envelopes the size of party invitations.

I was surprised to see the farm emerging not so much as a farm but a small amusement park. Just for the record, I hate, have always hated, forced fun. But stepping out into the muddy parking lot and making my way to the gift shop -- you had to enter through the shop--I could see all the vendors and heavily hawked fun was optional. I eschewed the many ways to spend money, not because I was on a budget (God knows I can be quite the spendthrift). I was looking for peacefulness and it was the space inside the weather, inside the untented area looking out that made me pause before meandering in the fields.

I stood looking out. The fields were in rows of course and the colors varied and the varieties I suppose. I don't know much about tulips except what I'd read somewhere; that when you put them in a vase you should only put an inch or so of water because the tulips tend to drink too much water and flop over. God knows why I remember this, but I wondered about them, worried about them in a motherly way, with this onslaught of rain. Still, even though I was getting wetter and wetter I enjoyed walking along the rows and trying not to step into the deep rivulets. It was peaceful.

I saw two men who appeared to be waiting as if for a bus, just standing with their umbrellas and smiling, as if thinking of how grateful they were to be there, standing quietly in the rain. I supposed they were waiting for their kids or girlfriends. With the floral backdrop ranging from yellow to purple there was something about these two men, patiently standing in the mud, that gave me hope that people were not quite as doomed as I'd begun to think. They had such a quiet composure and happiness about them. I thought I was happy until I saw them, but I was waiting for my grown kids and perhaps the rain had soaked through enough for me to wonder if there was a vendor who sold Irish coffee. They, in their stalwart and kindly way, helped me shrug off any thoughts but the beauty of being there. I was grateful for that day of being drenched, and partly because of them. 

The thing with November, especially this year, is that it was weird. Very weird. I had eye surgery again (3rd time in one year). My ex-husband died, I was nominated for another Pushcart (which I thought was a fluke last year) and well, the country decided to vote for a felon. I wrote a poem about the weirdness and I'm not going to submit it anywhere so here it is for you. I shared it at the 30 Days of Poetry reading live (always a challenge for an introvert). The CNAM fundraiser folks booked a venue at Smith College just the other night and as I stood there reading, I heard people laugh. I always appreciate a good laugh if I think I'm being funny. Here goes:

Retail therapy (working title)

everything’s weird
in that nightmarish way

where one thing cascades
into another --- and d o w n 

go the dominoes
the dots themselves

ovalized the way pores 
appear swollen on sunburned skin

one scene shifting into another 
what was and is -- and has always been

now this flimsy gauzy thing and at the same time
   --hammered down -- made of unshiny tin or copper gone dark

great gaps coming alongside the way rowboats don’t fit
together -- their curves so beautiful and apart

I haven’t any way to wrench it back –restart
who am I -- where will I go -- can I sit

when I need to stand - may I please rewind
and take the rough sandpaper of me

scrape it all loose I am the caboose--
 I am the lost wheel of the who I used to be

I used up -- all the all -- of me - and yet I’m full of all the stories 
God, please --- let me have my favorite orange cheese

and those shoes at REI -- Howser slide with herringbone 
in obtuse stripes –lining up like they should - like I can’t--

maybe I could shake loose like you see birds do when they’re wet--
    where the feathers fling right around 

I need those shoes - I’m sure I could step right into 
    the who I was        (before weirdness set in)

It's November 1st and I fully intend to write a poem a day. A bit of a late start this month as it's past 2:00pm and I only just finished making a mini banner for the Center for New Americans page (CNAM helps me set up a page to help folks donate through my portal to their page).
First let me share how to get to the donation page. I did a banner -it might be too big, but we'll see.  Once you're on their page (link below) you're good to go:)

To get to Fin's portal donation page for the Center for New Americans' 
(the money goes to them - not me!) try clicking:

cnam.org/civi/pcp/info/?reset=1&id=966

I walk into Mocha Maya's from the back parking lot near Baker Pharmacy.  It is my habit to get a latte and now that I'm a regular (5/week) I feel they know me even though I do not linger. I typically take it to go. There are small conversations mostly about the weather. I feel comfortable that they know my drink, which seldom if ever varies. Occasionally I'll get a breakfast sandwich. Often the latte suffices, the bolt of milk protein and mix of espresso and foamy milk a treat for brain and senses alike. It all started with all the damn eye doctor appointments. I figured if I had to drive 45 minutes to Northampton, I'd give myself a treat (in my mind adding, damn it). Honestly, despite my tendency to be what I call, 'a dainty queen,' (meaning fussy about how things ought to be) I absolutely love drinking and eating in the car. I like being an exception to myself. Often now, since frequency has increased--the habit including non-appointment days, I return to the car and take it somewhere else to park. I look for a place. First, I try under the trees opposite the laundromat. The car faces the river, but you cannot see out there. It's blocked by trees. I choose a place where I feel alone even if I'm not entirely invisible. Recently, I've come to park along route 2 by a small graveyard. It started when the weather was still summer-like. I had been looking for shade to sit and sip and think about nothing much. I didn't realize until I had pulled up alongside a graveyard, that it was there at all, thinking it was just a rise of a field with trees along the edge. Today, I saw something along the base of a tree. I have one eye that does the lion's share of driving and looking. That eye saw these things like potatoes all in a group. I spent a long time looking at them and admiring the throng of them, funny little pale, tan things. I wondered what it would be like to be one of them hugging the base of a tree, clearly happy in their family state. Mostly I didn't actively think, which has gotten a bit out of fashion. We're all so overbooked and busy. I was (am) grateful for the opportunity to simply be. September is the best month to do that.

Summer is not my season. It's too hot. But at least it's green. It's almost too green, am I right? It's dark and bright green, salt and pepper green, under a rock dark green and all the greens shifting as if they're not sure of what they want to be. I long for winter. While I admire the thickened branches and luminous shade outside the sunroom, how when I drive by Aubuchon hardware I want to run in and buy a kiddie pool, how it makes me feel caterpillar-like still, I long for a deep intake of chilled air

I see what I want in hindsight, always wanting what I cannot have. This is true in all facets of my life. But let me at least enjoy the green of summer, I think--the abundance of it; leaves crowding in on one another, sun shining through, the air sultry with heat (well, maybe not that part) and the odd desire to be wet. I recently read that caterpillars completely change their entire self before turning into butterflies. I'm picturing them turning into a sort of caterpillar mush and then somehow magically, during this Cuisinart process, remembering who they want to be and creating wings and the design of their future selves. I'd like to do that too--let go of everything and begin again. Then, remember who you are by looking at the shapes of things, find a piece of art or look through your closet and find a particular kind of clothing or even simply a color. Remembering who you are (from scratch) is one of life's most odd pleasures. It's scary, but a good one. Let's do it. Begin with green and then... just let go.

Summer Face (but no official title as yet) *
 
For all I know you’re already up in heaven.
You always brought heaven with you,
In your smile – kindness such a way
It might as well be a thoroughfare.
You are missed, will be missed
But it seems like it is time to go.
I hope to meet you elsewhere
Up in the clouds although
Somehow I picture you in
A garden – you have such
A flowering way—gentle.
And all the ways I go
Are somehow tempered
By you, by knowing you
And thinking, what would
you do because the Jesus
Is in you and I find it
Solace just knowing you
Whether you’re here
In the flesh or not
Although leaning down to
Hug your tiny self
Is something I will not do
I still will nearly everyday
Think of you
Lots of love
(I say that to my kids so why not you)
Safe travels, by the way
I dropped off some flowers although
the ones outside your porch are sweeter still.
I left them in a paper bouquet and
had the feeling you were already in the air – lifting up
and taking off like a dear bumble bee.

​--C. Desirée Finley 

*apologies for this sentimental poem but I cannot help it today

About ten or twelve years ago they told me the bad news that at some point in an undefined future I'd have to receive into my body someone else's corneas. I don't even like using someone else's spoon, so this was, needless to say unsettling. Even the logo is alarming reminding me in its piercing way of coming procedures. 

My original plan was to die before I'd need the transplant (when you get discards from someone else's body that's what it's called). That plan didn't work out because I'm still here despite my original projections. The thing is my vision has always been off the charts bad. Myopia was something I excelled at - I can see at 20 feet what others can see at 800. Once, when I tossed my hair (this was when I was younger and had ten tons of it) my glasses flew off my face and total strangers had to help me find them. Even though my glasses were about 8 feet away, my vision stopped being functional after just a few feet. That's not a good starting point.

For those with Fuchs Endothelial Dystrophy (catchy title, huh?) the symptom is basically going blind by an inability to see through the corneas (windshield of the eye, for those uninitiated). I say it's like looking through a screen door. That screen door is now getting a bit murky. That it's fixable is a hopeful thought. Then again, I'm not always the most hopeful of people. And it's not an instant recovery as with cataracts. It can take a few months up to a year for everything to settle down.

The corneal specialist told me last year it was time. You're supposed to listen to your specialists, and they don't like it much when you don't. Ornery as I was last year, I eschewed that opportunity. I had other medical fish to fry as it were. And now, it's time again for opportunity to present itself like a bill.  I surrender to my fate's inevitability which, to be sure, I don't usually do, that is to say I fight things instead of going with the flow.   

So, hoping everything goes well. I do a lot of close work and the thought of losing my vision entirely, shabby though it may be, is scary. My original back-up plan was to get a seeing eye dog, but I adopted two adult cats, brother and sister, just before Christmas last year and I don't think they'd like that.

Sometimes people come up and ask me if I'm still driving (not at night) and did I get my corneas yet. I'm not sure how this became cocktail conversation. Hey, did you get your corneas yet? said like it is a brass ring I get to collect on my ride around senior-town. But I'm setting down these thoughts so there's a record of my intention to proceed. Journeys begin with a first step. It is also my intention to go to Wales and I'd rather focus on that. ​ Onward: there's sure to be fodder for a blog or two.

The other day a bunch of us were talking. We collectively confessed to be anxious about things in general. It was me who piped up: "What about the aliens?"

The unreality that set in with the pandemic's worldwide catastrophe-all-around-people-dying-by-the millions-isolated-and-no-way-to-stop-it "thing," has yes, softened. We're not as intensely scared as we used to be. But that doesn't mean we're out of the woods. And if habits take only three repetitions to be formed, then how is it even possible, after years of fear and isolation, that we now can "go back to normal." We do our best to cope and basically, we're pretending. But nobody talks about the pretense. Nobody talks about how the other shoe will fall --we just don't know how or when. Doesn't it feel just a little bit like we're farm animals and we've been herded into our corral? We've been herded into a sort of obedience. Am I the only one who feels this way? 

I personally don't think aliens is out of the question. I hear you laughing, but the feeling of unease that settles if you don't pretty much continually distract yourself is unnerving. There is an artificiality to life. Certainly, you admit that, right? News is filtered. How do we know there are not lots and lots of stories about aliens and they're just being squashed. I try to stay in touch with world news but it's challenging. How do we know what's going on in lots of places? Here it is 2023 and we should have a robust interface where news is a matrix with lots of news stations all working cooperatively so we can stay in touch. I want to hear the local stories about the world and not in an, 'oh you'll love this' kind of way. I'm tired of the segments of the world being parsed out like we have nothing in common with everyone else. We do. We're human and we share the world. Let's figure it out. Let's be kind. Let's be tolerant. Let's be smart and figure out how to manage the changes that are already taking place not to mention the scenarios too difficult to manage in any kind of individualized way. Countries need to cooperate. People need to work together. I hear you laughing again and you're right. You'd think by the 21st century people would be able to get along and not spend most of their time one-upping each other. We've got other fish to fry. Take for example, weather-related emergencies, which manifest on a 45-60 day basis. These events (that's what we call them now) are influenced by global warming and the behaviors that led to it. We're chipping away on that front but not as a cohesive cooperative world. By the time we're there, the fires will be self-igniting on the ground (hyperbole--but not a lot).

Is this perspective influenced by having watched Twilight Zone as a young teen? I remember that Rod Serling show and how theoretically unlikely things took place. You gen Z and whatevers ought to check it out. There was this one episode where a bunch of cul-de-sac-ers (sorry, I made up that word) got their self-satisfied backyard lives turned upside down and it was all because of a series of orchestrated events. The conductor (of the events) was--you guessed it--an alien. Is it so very unlikely? I wonder. I'm in denial, the same as you. I spend evenings worrying and petting my cat.

Cats are obsessed with food. I hear you saying, well, aren't we all? And sure, some people are plugged in by the thought of their next gooey cookie, but mostly I think we're obsessed not with food, but with time. What time is it now? When is this happening, did I miss this special thing, how long until I have to get ready for that other particular thing. I have tried in my way to be free (great line from a song) from this obsession with time passing and where I need to be. 

I set alarms and that's the secret of relaxation, I say to myself. Spoken like a Virgo, my daughter would say, but honestly, it's true. When you have someone else (the timer) looking out for time, you can relax. I set too many alarms, I'm sure. Gosh, there must be at least 4/day, maybe more on some days. It was this morning, however, when I saw an advertisement for winning a trip to Finland to learn how to relax that I realized maybe I might have it wrong. I would love nothing better than to win this trip to Finland and learn how to relax up in their Lake Country. Actually, I've been there and can vouch for its beauty. Fingers of land reach out into the water and the shore is tranquil and dotted with little cabins. Admittedly, the lure of a clear unblocked period of time -- no internet and no phone and no watches or mark of time passing other than the sun sounds idyallic. 

I wonder if any of us would be able to handle that much relaxation. We're not used to it. We are so used to cramming in every little thing that we need special sound healing and other like opportunities to unplug. The idea is to take a couple of hours and let sound wash over you and then off you go. I wonder if the part of me that loves being productive could turn off for a longer period of time, a weekend to start and then maybe a week or two. Take a vacation in the way they used to be -- just flop and be inert, no thinking allowed. 

Sometimes my cats teach me to relax, e.g., when they walk on the keyboard or bump the phone onto the floor. They're just looking out for me. I quite appreciate it.
​

January: It's begun and already the cats are in charge. Two rescues (their human family sort of evaporated). I'm grateful to find them. It was either that or jump in the river. I say that not to be alarming but because when you're old and physically isolated you do tend to need a companionship of sorts. It makes you a bit desparate. The one with white paws has a very disconcerting stare. See what I mean? They arrived just before Christmas with all their paraphernalia. Now as I'm settling down on the couch to read Graeme Macrae Burnet's Case Study, the small one arrives and forms a donut in my lap. The large one (with the disconcerting stare) is more a sneak onto the bed after 10pm kind of guy. They have me in their grip. I love them already. It's begun, a new year and 2 adopted cats.