pickin time

 

in the garden and the wilderness

undulating rows of sea island or maybe pima

rising and falling in tides of dowdy white

they wait…

 

squinting , I wade inside embarrassed,

like an awkward traveler to an exotic shore

seeking to trade nothing for something

I snake…

 

between the stalks that seek to swallow my

trespasses…My breath--held in expectation of

sights and sounds and smells feeling so new to me

yet so familiar…

 

I am aching in my need to know them for who they are:

not who they pretend to be with upturned white faces

occasionally nodding in approval but more often just staring

at me like the foreigner I am…

 

they cut me?

bleeding into their dead sea souls

leaving small dropped traces of myself: unrecognizable

in mirrored silence…until the crows caw me back...

 

slave to my words

to my work

to my thoughts

to my hands

I promclaim myself…

 

A writer.

Reflections from a Southern Pedicure....or, a Wrinkle in Time

 

Is it just me who’s worried that many people’s tmi- boundaries are getting a little too wide-for-comfort likely because of social media? The restraint people used to have in public is rapidly disappearing.

Recently I walked in a local spa and immediately know I'm in trouble when I see (and hear) this mouth of the south older woman with heavy makeup and somehow wrong spikey hair talking to her peeps all over the shop.

((Insert expletive you know I used (IN MY HEAD) here.))

But I haven't had a pedicure since like before Christmas and my feet look like a troll's.  I only have this one hour of opportunity that I’ve planned with a precision that would make NASA proud?  There’s no turning back now.

So I settle in. And I hear about their hormones, about their hormone replacement, about their husband's responses to Viagra (varied results-- I thought that crap was like foolproof), about their eyebrows, about how they might get eyebrow tattoo's about how eyebrow tattoo's cost out the wazoo apparently, about how they don't like to cook, about how they don't like to clean, about how they don't really need to know how to cook and clean if they're good at something else (wink wink)-- GROSS! Did I mention that these ladies were well upwards of late to mid-60’s?

Are you scared now? It reminded me of the e-surance commercial where little old lady Beatrice is an "Offline Over-Sharer."  Beatrice is rapidly adapting to social media and the consequences, as you'll soon see, could be disturbing...like when they started Instagramming their feet.  I mean I’ve done that once but it was a joke? I had a rainbow loom toe ring on for heaven’s sake?

From now on I'm going to the VIP area with comp’d champagne where at least I can get buzzed if I have to listen to this banter?  It was funny and depressing and irritating all at once, kindof like fbook in realtime?

Maybe social media really is dying—or the demographic that it’s appealing to the most will be?

At least they'll have nice feet? And, they will have the Instagrams to prove it!:/