Seattle 119, Cloud Spit and Rag Rugs

I feel like launching a protest against G-d - a universal boycott until conditions improve. My friends' lives are chipmunk cheeks of unfair and not-their-fault, of addiction, and heartbreak, and sickness. I spent today cleaning my room and reorganizing my bookshelf, taking breaks to knead bread and eat vegetarian sausages and suck on the phone like an agony milkshake. When did we inherit all this pain? When did our cracks turn into fault lines? Are ever going to be safe from the earthquakes?

It has been a cold and rainy June. The peas blossomed, then fruited, and are shriveling. I eat them on my way between houses, snatching one every so often. I don't touch the lettuce. Why did we plant so much lettuce? There's garlic in the back yard, full of scapes wanting harvest. My share from the farm box has small carrots, a fistful of chard, tiny beets with huge greens. More damn lettuce. Today, the clouds have alternated between crying and spitting and breathing condensation all over us. I miss hot summer rains that chased humidity. I want to storm-watch something fierce. It never roars here. It aches.

Late nights at the kibbutz around the kitchen table. I'm ripping Tamar's excess fabric into strips, see if I can't make one of those braided rugs that became so popular to make in college. Remember those worn-carpet days in the living room, with old tshirts and scissors and the growing piles of rags and talking over the teevee and shiny fingers from the popcorn? Remember how we tried to stitch home into an institution?

Tomorrow is my birthday. I'm going trapezing again. I want to make this Year of the Body. I'm not sure what that means yet; it's been kicking around in my head for weeks. Perhaps I'll have a better idea by the time Rosh Hashanah rolls around, when I devote real time to thinking about this. Maybe that rug will get finished, and find a place near a door, on a cold floor, somewhere one stop from the graveyard. Maybe the clouds will breathe and part for a smile. Maybe G-d will stick a white flag made out of kerchiefs and ballpoint pens and say "Okay, you win. You win."