Five Facts about Facts

1. My mother saved many of my old worksheets from one or two of my elementary school years, which is why I know that when I was in 3rd or 4th grade, we had to do a worksheet in which we differentiated between facts and opinions.  We also had a unit on different advertising methods-- the bandwagon approach, celebrity endorsements, etc.  What we were expected to do in Language Arts at that young age astonishes me now.  This was a public school in a not-well-off area.

2.  My recently-turned-four year-old sits on the potty and demands an audiobook.  I tell him that he needs to sit and think for a moment, that he's just thrown a hard ball at my face without thinking and he needs to slow down.  He retorts, "I don't want information about myself!" Then asks, "Is that information?"  I tell him that it is.  His brain is working on a lot of things, which seems to make it harder for him to control his body.  Later at the museum, he reads me a sign about an island-- having somehow taught himself to read in the last month or so-- but pronounces it "is-land."  I tell him what the word is and he tells me that, no, it says "is-land."  Outside at the museum, he asks me to play bad guy.  I am a super villain who is wreaking havoc, which he can fix with his robot hands.  Finally, I run out of ideas for havoc, and when he asks me what problem I will cause next, I sit on a large rock and tell him, "I've turned into a rock."  He says, "Don't cause problems with yourself.  Cause problems with the world."

3.  Then there's the time Amanda and I got drunk in graduate school and conflated two nineteenth-century novels, retelling the plots to each other in a folie a deux of misremembered narrative.  A grad student a deux.  A folie a whatever you call the shared mind that close female friends move in and out of, Jesse laughing at us from across the table.  (Nevertheless we persisted.)

4.  Ghosts.  I would like to speak to someone who has seen an actual ghost.  Most of mine are vivid dreams or confusions upon waking.  Even many of the stories recounted on the show Celebrity Ghost Stories seem to me to have been particularly vivid dreams.  Some involve voices coming through telephones.  But there was one that featured an actor and his wife on a bike tour of Ireland.  They stopped to walk around a long-abandoned village, interacting with people who, they later learned, were no longer there.

5.  Most hotel rooms feel haunted to me, but this may be because I am an "intuitive" who picks up on lingering energy.  There are two kinds of people in the world, and one of those kinds uses the word "energy" in that way.

Seven Facts about Roses

1. In Salisbury, NC when I was a kid there was a discount store called Roses.  I think it was near Bob's Big Boy.  One time my uncle John took me to the Bob's Big Boy and cut up my spaghetti for me.  I liked how he went out of his way to take me places and let me know I was loved, but I questioned his spaghetti technique.

2.  A dear friend I know from the computer sent me a care package a few weeks ago-- tea from the farm of a Catholic witch; a rose oil candle to bring out my inner saint; some peppermint oil to wake me up.  It's nice when we can all take turns caring for each other.  Enough to go to the post office, even!

3.  The rose candle is burning now.  It's Reiki charged.  This morning my four-year-old took it off my dresser, then saw me open my eyes to see what he was doing.  Without my glasses on, I couldn't tell what he had until he brought it over, saying, "Here, smell this."

4.  Rose-scented products make me think of my mother, and for some reason I have found them especially comforting since the election.  First, I bought myself some rose-scented hand lotion on sale, in a shaky "I-can-still-buy-myself-rose-scented-hand-lotion" gesture.  Then I received this candle.  "If we share this nightmare/ Then we can dream Spiritus mundi."  The Police said that.

5.  Life can be traced in a history of doodles.  Sometime around seventh grade, a rose doodle, which I can't remember how to draw now.  Around eighth or ninth grade, I learned how make a high-heeled shoe.  By tenth grade, a face with squinched-up eyes and Robert Smith hair.

6.  I have found myself unable to commit to growing flowers.  People born in late June are supposed to be homebodies and flower growers, but I keep moving house.  I may look into some plants for spring, but roses will have to wait a bit longer.

7.  On a whim, I Googled "Joan of Arc rose."  According to the Antique Rose Emporium,
Jeanne dArc is a dainty but vigorous rose with semi-double, pure white flowers borne in clusters. Like all Noisettes, it betrays its Musk ancestry by a grand fall display and a strong fragrance. Attractive red hips often appear at the same time as the flowers. It is best used as a pillar so that the flowers may be readily seen, or it can be grown as a free-standing bush. Wherever it is planted, Jeanne dArc will create an almost perpetual display of Southern beauty.  OK, then.  

Cultivate and circulate

Three things:

1.  Today I was in a horrible mood, and I made myself go for a nature walk, during which I began to feel better.  In fact, I received a prophecy from some sunbeams on my walk.  (See picture.)  The prophecy was something like, "What was that poem I wrote that used the word 'circulate'?  Look at that again."  I found it!  It's called "Our Biography," and I originally posted it on this blog.  Here.

2.  I have a new Instagram project (if such a thing exists) in which my friend Jessica Mesman Griffith and I post weird insights into the lives of melancholy moms.  Tips on creativity and mothering.   Not really.  It's more like if the troubled teens from Heavenly Creatures grew up to be disaffected Gen X mothers?  Er, maybe not.  Maybe it's about how to stay alive by allowing yourself to be inappropriately amused by that which you find unsettling?  I really need to work on my elevator pitch.  For my new Instagram account.      

3.  Here's an excerpt from the essay about my relationship with the Beatles I may or may not be working on:  The next day, Granny is peering out the front window at dusk to see who has a candle out for John, muttering, “I lit one for Kennedy, but I’m not lighting one for him.”

OK, good night!  Happy full moon, I guess.