but i am transfixed by my muses, writing in my head, but when pen meets paper, hand meets keyboard, it becomes invisible ink, eluding like a cleverly coy mistress. there is a ringing in my ears and i wonder if this is my body telling me to slow, deafened by chaos and deadline and pressure to perform my art. i go for a walk, drink in the sunshine, float in the womb of the warm salty buoyant sea, and the light dances with my mind. i close my eyes and float. i observe the thoughts come in and drift out. i feel the sun penetrate and soothe. i awake to light rain sprinkling over my hot skin on the beach chair, liquid sun relief. i reach for my journal.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
being me is so elusive like trying to catch a rainbow in a photograph, vivid colors, but transparently changing even as i watch and grasp at illusions. the color is drained from the landscape now, in winter. outside my window bare trees beckon, a stripping, a solitary unmoving solitude and resignation. tangles of branches, grey mist, dirt streaked windows, stills my hand.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
no downer, just a cycle, a circling round, a pause for breath, a look at shadows in the light, offering contrast, offering calm resolve, as people die on skis on slopes i have traversed, so i pause, and i wonder a bit, and i don't say much-the silence comforts and words capture nothingness.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i am too tired to think of sex. i curl up to a warm body and am glad to hear his breathing sleep. don't stay too close too long. too hot. butt to butt. dream and wake and ponder, and dream and wake to turn on the news to see how thick the ice is and if schools are closed, or if i can venture about. sickness abates and has come just to remind me to be conscious of health, that when i was in my 20's i didn't have to think about. youth is immortal and invincible. age teaches humility and awakening and pay attention, stupid. used to have sex for hours in showers, on floors by fireplaces, on the kitchen table. now i bathe in the shower, read a book by the fire, eat at the table. and it's a lot more calm.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
my bones feel only the lingering of illness now. all the toxins have gone, or almost. still a taste of insipid infection in my throat and a dry cough. fret about smoking and wonder if i can ever stop. get up and take my dog with me into the shower. an hour later she's still shivering and i am the enemy. i cover her with blankets and rub her all over. she sleeps. i think about omaha and injustice and kids and teaching and questions, endless questions, and what can i do, how can i be in a way that will change things. who am i to make the world a better place? only a girl, one with candleflames dancing in her heart.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i go to see the film titanic and i vicariously live a time of ostentatiously glorious chapeaus and dresses adorned with detail that flow and accent feminity...the impact of the event and the lives lost becomes a momentary reality that then lingers in the back of my mind, some sadness that pervades. mike reads a book. abbey sleeps on her favorite pillow curled into a ball of white fluff next to him. i reach through the wires wondering what part of my presence adds to the beauty i find here. feelings of unworthiness, inadequacy always walk in my hand clasped with sadness.
and then it turns to just a feeling of being blessed, to know warmth, real love, new and lifetime friendships, what else is there to happiness?
it is grey outside for another day. it wraps round my soul.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
do your taxes, wait online for the overcrowded server to respond and try not to scream before throwing your computer through the window, just for fun. dissertation lays on the floor in piles of manilla folders and i wonder how to translate what i do, who these brilliant students are, how i ignite their passion for learning, to others. it seems too much. kid in the middleschool blows his head off, leaves a note. parents divorcing and he shoots himself with a gun purchased for him for hunting at christmas. black kid in lousianna is shot down in the street during a martin luther king, jr. parade, the spokesman for non-violence, and it is a black man who kills a black child and they are turning in on themselves, and who can blame them, and did anybody hear my heart shatter this morning in tiny fragments of crushed glass, tinkling after the explosion? van to take kids to omaha is cancelled, it's always something, wood burning stove needs so much clearance in my new home office it now stands in the middle of the room and will scorch me if i light it i am sure...too much heat in my life. dust is everywhere, in my eyes, choking the breath from my throat, my lungs wheeze and i think of the vaporizer and its calming shoo, shoo, i slept to all my life as a kid, and i miss it's comforting sounds, and i imagine hope and her children singing...and i want to be a child again, with someone rocking me to sleep, feeling safe, warm, loved and unworried about deadlines or dead pets, or dead children, or building inspectors or superintendents who wish to ooogle my office tomorrow.
it is still grey, but grey fits and strangely comforts.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i can taste the salty remnants of sadness in my throat. i feel like crying sometimes and don't, other times blubber without always knowing why, it just comes, too easily, too swiftly, without warning...maybe just in response to a toilet paper commercial, for chrissakes, what's up with that? menopausal, yea, so they tell me...and that is too soon too. but all things in their time. so i just watch and listen and hope.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
you will be a little girl lost spirout the comfort of her dog, a mother who cannot explain the fear and pain of a hosptial room and why she's a part of it as she restrains her child, a poet with muses who taunt and tease elusively, an energetic woman whose body has decided to call for rest because she refuses to listen, a migrant child who plays while his father works, and never complains, just amuses himself quietly, a teacher with many questions, a man searching for streetlights and tears to match the rain, letting go only in words.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
and my plants droop from neglect until i hear them screaming quietly, water, water, light. and it echoes my own cries in the stronghold of winter. and then it starts snowing big flakes in sheets of white, outlining the black of the trees, the crevaces and i wonder if the squirrels shiver in their nest. i tilt my head upwards, stick out my tongue, feel the freshness of clean white cold air-renewing as well as any spring. the hot water of the jacuzzi bubbles round me, the steam healing air passages, invigorating. my puppy barks at the sky, not knowing snow.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i too watch the historical documentary on pbs of the irish, remember the children on the west coast, dark-haired, blue-eyed, freckled-like siblings,so many brothers and sisters and knowing from whence i came, and my love for potatoes and story. The poets were the historians and held in highest esteem as the knowers. the oral history passed from generations from parents to children round fires in darkened rooms-small pleasures as people lay dying and the stench of blackened potatoes suffocated the air. i remember the bullet holes in the walls of dublin and a skin-head who walked me home too late at night for me to walk alone, he said, and he held my arm with barely a touch. i looked at his piercings and bald head and his eyes spoke caring as we walked over wrought iron bridges and through alleys with late night windows lit with warm greetings as we pass. i belong. i dance till wee hours, walk Green Park, Grafton St. and feel a coming home. My grandmother was a farmer, and we ate o
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
and the blue guitar sings from the rhythm of his lousiana and down home chicago roots. he leaves the stage and suddenly appears in the balcony where i always sit, since jr. highschool when we hunkered down in seats to kiss in the darkness, to stare at the pinpoint lights and moving clouds that create the ambiance of a theater older than my grandparents. i don't have to close my eyes to imagine i am in venice, or prague, or paris. the architecture, the lighting, the overhung balconies, where we once watched bonnie and clyde and romeo and juliet when they first came out. but it is the flutter of my stomach as the boy took my hand and kissed me long that i remember, so long ago? and lonnie brooks comes up to my world and sits in the chair next to me, whining on his blue guitar, sweat beaded on his black face, play for me big daddy. he plays with his tongue and the women all look at one another with mouths open and we all know what we're thinking. and i laugh and he laughs and the cr
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
turtle carries her home on her back. Turtle Island is the home in the UP of Michigan where my native ancestors lived I hear Tokeina Nasudai WaWa recount as i sit cross-legged on the floor. she wears a turtleshell totem pouch and tells me the story of each sacred item within as she turns them in her hand, eyes wistful and voice softly melancholy. she dances to the drum in the pow-wow in handmade beaded dress. Turtle grounds, lives close the earth, moves slowly, withdraws from too much sunlight or intrusion. she is protected. She hears the strum of the blue guitar and the drums of time long ago when all lived in balance. she is ancient knowing and i am just dust.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
he is the craftsman, building a home from so many boards of wood, each carried on his back, until suddenly a form takes shape with stained glass windows from an old church in Paw Paw and a bath that runs the entire length of the house, and a new painting for the bedroom, half naked woman from the back, fashioned after DeGas by a pregnant woman in Seattle, and he felt his first womb, placing his hand on her stomach as if it might suddenly break to his touch, gently, like a small child himself, wide eyed and wonderful in that moment. The hammer pounds, the years fall away, but for now, he is the craftsman i am the artist, and together we make a home. The only thing missing is the Child, Jose is a migrant worker. no, jose, i don't mind if you bring your son, Noel, to work. he plays with the puppy, eats a sandwich with me at the table, i cover him with a blanket on the couch, and watch him fondly as he sleeps. some dreams are borrowed.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
I saw the monkey people on television too. discovery or learning channel, and i think yes, this is how we evolved, but have we really? or have we regressed? are we so different than animals, attracted by smell, by subtle nuance of movment, by physical prowess? be my lion. be part of the pride. return to days of indigenous balance. monkey mind? wild mind. connected, grounded, big sky mind..no time to think logic or rationality, only intuitive existence, and knowing is but a part of it all. pull back the covers. stop hiding. you won't be sad. it's the comforts that you think protect you that smother what's real. The ice in the air awakens the senses. Get up. Wake up. Get out of bed. Plant and forage and create. no need for the gym then. watch it grow.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i run into an old student who has made it out of jail and now is 30 and has 3 kids of his own, separated from his wife on saturday, and i think, where have the last 14 years gone since i last saw this boy turned man? he tells me about another boy, now dead from drinking, and i think how short his time. the clock ticks differently for each. the new man tells me time incarcerated was surely slow. why'd you go? didn't like checking in with probate. isn't it better than doing time? yes, but i didn't know that, at the time, or didn't care. time to go, time to languor, time to reflect, time running out, time i wear on my face in laugh lines, and sadness, time to quit smoking, what time is it? how do i know? time to move on? time to relax? time to let go? times i feel my heart be crushed under hurtful words, when i try so hard, all the time. time travel. timeout. time released, no time at all.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
time well spent, time travel, time waits for no man, timely response, time and time again, father time, stitch in time saves nine, time after time, internal clocks tick. the tick tock treadmill of time.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
lst year valentine's day, i met you in DC. remember? oh, and yes, it prompted impetuous kissing, to show the young ones how. laughter and dancing, and new friends and one turned 18 and what a party because it was all a coming together over food, story, and virtual becoming real. i remember it fondly. it didn't hurt. it was a moment of beginnings, a journeying come crossroads. and here we are, at the inn. fire warms, tea kettle sings, hearts join, pull up a chair.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
there is no arrival. it's all in the traveling, here to there and back again, circling, sometimes spiraling out of control and i am just happy to be looking out my window with fingers that move on the keys and feel the tap, tap, tap. it's life itself knocking. the rain makes tiny circles in the puddles formed around the trees, melting frozen bark and sleeping flower bulbs and will i live to see spring? it's a possibility i hope for, and in the moment, i am glad to watch the drizzling melt of life.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
and then, as i work at home, knowing that comfort, only possible through the way technology transforms, and understanding the irony of remembering not so long ago when i pledged my faith to my typewriter, not believing a computer to be anything more, only less, another machine, and my dread of machines. and at home, i see Jerry Springer, wondering if it's an aberation, or a frightening icon of the chaos of the times, number one in the daytime ratings, that i would never know if i "went" to work like most do. wondering about the others at home who watch and those who throng to display the violent confusion that composes their way of being, the degredation, the far stray from value or sense of self outside of the outrageous screaming, we need to feel loved. and where and how did we all get so lost, or is it all, and how and who does it represent, it makes me quaver, and it kills princesses who survived monarchies, but cannot survive the times. is it a ripple from the social revolution of the days i have lived, the aftermath of an attempt to cry out against wars without cause and the rage against a seemed lack of meaning..and now, where does it bring us? i worry about the feeling that we are lost in the fog, forgetting home we ran so quickly thinkig it was a place we needed to escape..still hoping upon return to find our supper still warm, our teddy bears still a not forgotten friend we missed, waiting on a cold pillow. and i often wish i could sleep whether in a remote forest alone, or in my bed at home, without the plague of an artist's mind that never stills, even in sleep, dreams. scarecrow, which path do i follow, why can't you tell me more than, well, you could go this way, or this way as well? is there an answer anywhere? can we ever really "know"? ironically, no one can ever tell me how...muse of the morning, but no dawning...always just beyond my reach.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
those voices, a phone ringing in the middle of the night, an old boyfriend, and my most passionate love. he's drunk and bitter. his words crush me and my stomach knots and i wonder how i still love him so. it echoes into the morning. "you taught me to hate."
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
first time a house has felt a home for me. a year and one month and counting in the creation. inspectors and high paid workers who don't take pride in workmanship. stairwells and drywall and paint and saw and hammer. i touch it with my own art, perwinkle blues and butter yellow, black wallpaper with forest ivy vines, cherry red woodstove. my oils lean against walls, next to black and white faded family portraits and i know both my artist's heart and the heritage i come from. i hope they are watching. i miss them and sometimes hear their faint laughter. i paint old medicine cabinets blue grey and white liking new brightness. we survive the noise, dust and mistakes, only yelling when we are too tired, and we lay in grandmother's bed at night and look at the church stained glass window over the stairwell, and the expanse of creation. i know the trees curves and the feel of bark and where the crocus will bloom. abbey plays in the front yard in the mud, white face black. i hear the train whistle in the distance that i heard from my grandmother's back yard at night, along with grasshoppers through the open summer window. i have finally come home and i will not move again. but i will always wander.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i paint eggs with color sponges, bright spring blue, yellow and lime mixed in purple. each one different. pile in some jelly beans, a strawberry candle like my brother always got for my mom on easter, a CD of old jazz tunes, a mystery book, chocolate bunnies. For my mom. fresh flowers from my gardens form a wreath around the edges of pink grass. i paint the ladderback chair in primary colors for outlines. The chair was my father's as a child. i paint and i know how the world has painted me. ritual love. i am content. the sunshines through my dirty windows. the house is thrashed in every room. the smell of paint on banister rails permeates and gives rise to a small headache. i am tired. but it is spring and time for renewal. each day is closer to something. order? new project? more chaos? i laugh, because i know i will create some if there isn't any. and yet, my day is simple. painting. making baskets. looking at the trees. typing. storytelling. loving.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
i ride in a lift to the top of the roof to sign my name on paper, soon a copper sunburst will cover? who will ever see it, and why does it matter? whoever takes this down a hundred years from now. i wonder if they will wonder about who i was, way back when. now.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
I look outside past my computer monitor and see my grandmother's bird feeder, now turned squirrel feeder in my front garden. Mike is out weeding round the flowers. I think of days in Grandma's back yard in lawn chairs drinking pink lemonade from a glass straw. She wondered about how long it took for squirrels to have babies and only saw them mate once in her lifetime. She spent countless hours staring out her kitchen window at the animals and birds. They always bathed in her bird bath, but won't come to mine. Yesterday I missed my grandmother as I listened to my mother complain. Grandmother was complacent and simple and I was more like her, which always hurt my mother's feelings.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
I treasure my alone time, away from the fears and accusals of autocratic administrators, the smoke and mirrors, the sounds of hammers, real and in my head. We only pass each other in the hallway now and kiss as we're saying goodbye, instead of hello. He drinks in the other room alone. I read in my bed at night till my eyes are tired and then I light a vanilla candle. I stare at the flame dancing and then out the window at trees dancing in the wind of summer's air. I hear a screech owl screaming for food. I hug my pillow.
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition
Even the trees blew angry last night, with tennis ball sized hail and the wind, oh, the wind ripping, blustering gusts up to 90 miles an hour. I lay in my bed listening, watching, wondering what karmic wrath tossed those trees like blades of grass. I opened my windows as wide as they could go so I could feel as if immersed. Dead calm and suddenly, frighteningly strong bursts, shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHH, through the side forest and across to the back and bending and shaking and cracking of limbs. What forcefulness. But the trees lean into the wind, do not resist, and make chaos into dance. Some break. Some remain tall. I lay in my bed listening to the scream of trees in the late of night to early sunrise. I cannot sleep. The phone rings in the dark,
"This is the Sheriff's Department".
listen — Ginny Little, in the voice cast for this edition