My Trip To The Market

Retail Therapy? Oh, grocery shopping day.

I arranged time yesterday for Elder Ma to have a care provider so I might walk my 'rescued' cart across town to make a badly needed stock up of groceries.

In route, I gleaned a delicious array of experiences including being able to walk for five hours. School yards, dogs, unemployed, or happily retired people sitting on the corners. It's an old downtown neighborhood.

The nonlocal retailer (the only book store in town within reach), allowed for a replacement copy of my favorite volume of Rainier Maria Rilke's, Book of Hours, translation by Anita Borrows and Joanna Macy. My borrowed or care package library has grown since I left home a year ago. Empty suitcase home, heavy return.

The store also provided me with a listing of upcoming events to plan toward. The Big Read, featuring The Empty Space Theater will be presenting a dramatic reading from Their Eyes Were Watching God, a 1939 novel by Zora Neale Hurston. Her work was central to our home school effort as the kiddos were growing up and bled into studies of other women authors.

The evening of the dramatic reading, a workshop for local word-smiths will be held. at the same location, handy on foot. Or perhaps I can lure Mom out. Though terribly cumbersome for her, the city transportation system provides excellent curbside wheelchair service on request.

But the major imperative of the outing yesterday, was to find a temporary replacement for the ice cave where I generally like to sing when I'm home. The acoustics in the deep, blue cave are pretty impressive. The sound of the melting ice dripping into the river sized creek is well...let's just say the sounds reverberate pretty nicely. The river flat and snow trails through the forest ring too. Combined with a lengthy walk, one gets a pretty good glow going.

The most recent replacement while here in Bakersfield, is beneath an interstate overpass with a six lane thorough fare below. Just one lane away, hundreds of vehicles hurtle past, doing at least sixty. I let my body hang very loosely, arms through fingertips extending outwardly, spine fully lengthened and eyes closed as I give myself over to vocalized transportation. As I vary range and intensity of volume, looping it back and forth with the streams and variety of traffic, it's like hurtling through space.

I practiced this most intently once on the back deck of a tug boat in 40' seas. Then, I had to be sitting in full rain gear with the waves crashing down around me. That particular storm, the back deck won out over being stuffed down into my tiny state room, waiting for the storm to subside. It gave me the illusion of having some say in the matter, as though the sea was a symphony in accompaniment to my relinquishing desire for control.

Yesterday, I'm sure I gave the motorists something different to ponder before lunch, though people here are used to crazies. I didn't cause a wreck, as far as I know, and it's free entertainment for all. Singing is very good for the body and soul, and something I try and undertake where ever I am. Cathedral, culvert, open sea, underpass, shower.

Back home however, out of doors, there's no one about but the occasional snow shoe hare or ptarmigan. Snow Chicken. And I think they get a kick out of it.