Another Sunday At The Church Of The Batshit Crazy (Or, Let's Talk About Sex, Babee)

Last night's performance went well, although it lacked the sparkle and pop of opening night. This is how you know we are not professionals. I think about those actors who go to the theater every night and twice on Sundays to do their work and how each and every performance must be the best they can do. How do they do this? I have no idea but I am certain I could not do it.
I am carried along by the nerves, by the joy of the Oh My God! we are really doing this! and if I were expected to make it my work, I would fail at it miserably.

But it was fun and the audience enjoyed it and some of my oldest friends who were visiting relatives in nearby Lamont came to see the play and I was astounded! I only see these people perhaps once a year and yet, there they were! I had told them about the play when they called to tell me they were in the area and I couldn't believe they actually came. And my dog groomer came! "Thank-you for coming out at night," I told her, because she's the same age I am and I know how hard it is to drag your tired ass out of the house on a Saturday night to drive the miles to do something when you could be at home, cozy and in bed by ten.

I think of myself as having very few friends. I do. And yet, when something like this play occurs and I am surrounded by my friends at the Opera House and then other friends come to see me, I am shocked. Completely shocked.

Well. It's a good kind of shock. And now we have two days off and I am so grateful for that. Two days to catch up on ever-growing mounds of chicken shit and maybe some yard work and yes, this blog. It has been catch-as-catch can here at Blessourhearts and I apologize for that. I am vaguely aware of the greater world around me, catching a bit of NPR as I put on my make-up, as I drive to the theater. I hear that Tiger Woods pleaded for forgiveness and that his wife did not attend the press conference. Well, good for her! is what I say. But what I really say is- it's none of my fucking business. I don't buy those sports products or luxury watches and cars Tiger gets paid to endorse. And here's what I know- men are led by their dicks in more cases than you can imagine. That's the way of it. I believe I understand the evolutionary need of this far more than I understand any man actually standing up in front of a group of people with one woman and saying, "Yes, I will stay true to you." I think it's amazing when that actually unfolds to be the truth.
Amazing.
I have said it before and I will say it again- I do not understand sex. And I'll tell you this- I certainly don't understand why every religion in the world tries to control it. What an exercise in futility THAT is. Sex is what makes this world go around because at the very bottom of it is the need to reproduce, to create more of what we are. We humans are funny about sex and try to act like we're all above the animals when it comes to our love and courtship but take a look at the great apes, take a gander at the Blue Bower Bird, just look at the squirrels or the chickens and you will realize we are hardly the only species which plans for, works for, enjoys and lives for sex.

Okay. I can barely handle a sexual relationship with one person and that's the way I am and besides that, I am old, and I am so very grateful that Mr. Moon stood up and said he'd be faithful to me and has continued to live with and cherish me and be my lover and friend and man for all these years. I know that's a miracle. I know what what a miracle he is in my life.

Funny. I didn't start out to write about sex this morning. I swear to god, I did not. Or God. Whatever. I never know whether to capitalize that "g". I go back and forth, depending on my mood, I suppose.

But it's coming on spring and I went out with the camera and took pictures of things that mostly do not have sex but are certainly examples of the way things reproduce and grow and bloom and what now looks merely like a swelling (!) bud will soon be a gaudy thing of beauty which will attract bees and thus, lead to pollination and yes, more life.

Ah! It's all gorgeous in a way, but there is that underbelly, is there not? I mean- look at Tiger. Look at Sam. Poor Sam, dead and gone and his meat part of my very bones now. And his hens do not grieve him and their tail feathers are growing back because he is not there to torment them with his constant need to wiggle his bean, as Gus in Lonesome Dove would say.

So here are my pictures from the yard and the house this morning, Sunday, February 21st as Mr. Moon works to put up a fence around the garden, and the chicken poop is piling up and I will not be going to the Opera House today but have the time to think and write this little bit, to go out and record with the camera some of the earth's silent and intimate attempts at making more of itself in this season of love for us all.

Mr. Moon's tomatoes, getting ready to go into the earth of the garden.


The open throat of an opening camellia.


The tangled wisteria, which, if you look closely, shows beginning swellings at the tips. (!)


A fern's perfect fiddlehead.


The Buckeye's sprouting before it bursts into red flame flower.


The violet, again, because I can't resist its sturdy, innocent promise.


Chickens, fanned out, and who, if left to their own devices, would give us babies in a few months, whose eggs are the symbol of Easter, which I choose not to celebrate for the rising of a dead man, but for the rebirth of life.


And finally, the little altar in the hallway where there is always something green or blooming to remind me dozens of times a day of the beauty which is outside that I can bring in and where the Virgin of Guadalupe stands always, the Mother-Symbol which seems to have chosen me. And where a little walker is parked, waiting to be used again by Owen, the very fruit of my own need and ability to reproduce more of me and my love, and that of his own parents'. Owen. My perfect little fruit, my perfect little monkey, my love squared and quadrupled.