Outside, beauty bark and the occasional waft of dying wild onion. Left hand side: geranium, forget-me-nots, bird feeder, rhodedendron, blueberry bush (with green ripenings), yellow poppies, iris, rosemary, thistle, mint, roses, primroses. Right hand side: succulents, decorative strawberries, bird feeder, crane’s beak, 2 rhodies, rhubarb, water feature (with fishes, one of whom is a little baby), clematis, wild roses, japanese maple, columbine, tulips, orange poppies. And many many other plantses I’m not sure how to name. Up above me are grey clouds, and they’ve been there ever since I got back, but the sun still gets through and I am sleeveless, sitting on a deckchair, wearing steel-toed boots and covered from head to foot in dirt.

I’m building some steps and weeding one of mom’s beds. Yesturday I mostly lazed about but helped cr get started on the front deck that he’s building.

This place is so crazy, I get back here and cry on a regular basis, but it’s also so green and peppered with little moments of me sitting in deck chairs, sipping a beer and literally watching the bushes grow up around me and the sky stretching out from shoulder to shoulder like there couldn’t possibly be a brick building in the world that could keep the blue away from me.

The first morning I was back, I got up early and went into town with my mother. While she got her hair cut and dyed, I walked for a long stroll along down the Fairhaven gravel path to Boulevard Park. It was incredibly windy, which served to cover my face in my own hair and fluff the scent of wild roses in through the strands. Everything smells Edenesque here… the seaweed drying in the bluster warmth, the barges chugging by in the distance, blossoms spinning down, leaves rattling, a group of graduating seniors asking me to take their picture for them (from the back as they sat on a bench).

I felt myself all grins and this is how Bville is for me, but it’s still odd coming back because it’s half this: half present. The other half is composed of a slide rule between future and past, and with all my puffed up cheeks and imagination bent on blowing the scale towards tomorrow, some kind of tomorrow that I can invest a realistic hope in. But wow, place is a potent aid to memory, and I'm sure ya'll know that, because this entry feels really familiar to me. But it’s also this: all the open space also brings with it a loneliness, a confrontation with the way I sometimes feel as if I will always be on my own, heading back over and over like some kind of pathetic momma’s girl who always drags her ass home with little achievement.

Sigh.

I find myself forcing my head on this path: Hey! You once skinny dipped here at night after sneaking into a queer club that was actually queer back then and dance, dance, dancin’ with your best friend, who was then skinny dipping with you in green phospheresence that rings itself off your fingertips. Because the ocean is perhaps the only beast who knows exactly who I am. Hey! Remember that? And I do, and something beating around flurried settles down, folds her wings, and leans up again the inside of my ribs and rubs her head on their fleshed surface. Cause it’s not bare bones around here.

It’s lovely being home, and strange too. Perhaps there’s too many people up at my mum’s/cr’s place (my sis & brolaw are living in the other old house), and my mum may be kidding when she calls me and my sis mootches, but there’s something in me that freaks out when I hear that and thinks: Job! Job! Job! Fuck, I gotta get me a Job! And also I think being out in Algier has its positives, like it’s *beautiful*, but also its negatives, like nobody’s around except folks who need their privacy. I need a little background noise, yeah, a little rubdown of the ear drums.

So, when my brolow asks me to open a hundred test tubes that are growing sea algae off fish brains that have accidentally clung to the Black Cod Inner-Ears that he’s collected, well, I think about it for awhile and actually clean about 30 of the damn little containers. When I asked him for an explanation about how he got the inner ears, he responded:

“Well, you’ve seen *Hannibal*, right? You remember when he cuts the lid off that man’s head in a perfect ring? Well, it’s just like that. Then you just fish around in the grey matter until you find the ear bones. And if there are 15-foot swells, you don’t always have the time to wipe them off before you put them in the test tube. But that’s what old Uncle Sam wants from his protectors of fish and game.”

Apparently—although brolaw is skeptical, claiming that when he called them to ask where the US Fish and Game folks wanted the tubes turned in, they actually asked “what are we supposed to do with them?” to which he replied, “I seriously hope that you are kidding, considering that you just started a new regulation that requires me to collect five pairs of inner ear from every set the boat makes,” to which they replied, “oh, bring them in”—but apparently, they can cut the little cod-drums in half and count the rings in them to age the fish… just like with trees. Interesting no?

Maybe that’s what Hannibal was really up to? Aging humans by gathering their ear drums. Good fun!

Anyhow, the little ear bones are two little white pieces that look more like white maggots than ear bones, but hey… I’m a mootch otherwise, right!? So, I opened the tubes, quaffed l’odeour d’poissoine, scrubbed them out with paper towels, and then wiped any gut remnants off the mini-maggots. Afterwards, I popped the lids back on, stickered the tube and tossed them in a bag.

Oh, other news is that one of best buddies is having a baby, which officially makes me an auntie… heeeeeeeee. I think Karma is on the upswing amongst my circle, ‘cause everyone sounds much happier these days… maybe Saturn is entering the house of positive futures?

I went dancing to some pretty bizarre but good house-funk mix with a goofy-cute dj singer who dropped sweat drips all across his machinery. He had a nicey voice… After this, I thought I really really needed to play air-hockey and so went over to the Club That Kicked Me Out, which still managed to charge for entry despite only being open for another half-hour. I played some on the air hockey machine, but got annoyed with all the guy-sleezes who were hovering afterwards. Why is it that the only queer bar in town is also the *only* place in town where guys are unbearable letches? I don’t get it. Answer: sigh and sadness, it is *not* a queer bar anymore.

“Laughing with your pretty mouth,
Laughing with your broken eyes,
Laughing with your lover’s talk,
Lullaby.”

Good music right now, and the sun just just just broke out of clouds, holy cow, it’s hot with that sun out… I can’t wait to hit the beach, skinny dipping warm and sweating it up… Cheers folks, here’s to summer, and writing that story I’ve been sayin’ I’ll get done before too long (haha).