Notes from The Shrine, Late May 2024

I don’t believe them
when they say how far
that galaxy is away
away from what from
us? And how do we
know where we are?
If we are all just particles
buzzing but never coming
into contact with anyone
or anything else, if all we
do is hover somewhere
above an invisible, an
undefinable surface?

Caught the musical flute song of a thrush as I was walking along the far edge of the Shrine Loop earlier this morning. It’s a sparse, inviting song. Sweet but better than candy. The sound of heaven maybe—musical, warm, tumbling, floating, declaratory, simple, assertive.

The app had it as a wood thrush. Then three or four deer, grazing the grass along the side of that service road. They let me keep on walking, watching them as I went by; they did not flee into the woods. One did, but two others stayed. Lean legs, light red-brown fur, tall ears, white spiked furry tails. Big eyes. Quiet.

A little sun now. It’s still. Chickadee, cicadas, Carolina wren, walking stick lady, the hushing flow of a small garden fake-rock fountain, like a water fountain running, two spigots, potable in a pinch.

My dad is better. He asked what the Cardinals did last night. He knew his tooth extraction appointment was next Thursday. He said he saw vultures yesterday. He got a haircut; seemed alert when I got here. He’s just all-around more “with it” lately, with today being a good example, maybe the best yet. Walking Stick Lady now on her way back. Walking Stick Lady with one of her walking sticks in the Main Dining Room!

A Shrine version of Clue could be a lot of fun. Pick some of the most recurring characters. Bob with the coffee cup in the Bird Room. Sister Shiny with the scissors in the Storage Room, et cetera.

Purple Martin appears on the app as does Tufted Titmouse. I think Summer Tanager is out there somewhere.

The other thing that my dad said that surprised me because of the cognizance it showed was his identifying an old towel I had grabbed from out of the car in order to wipe down the chair I wanted to sit in.

“Looks like one of our old towels,” he said.

It took me a moment to process what he had said but he was correct. It’s an old Ralph Lauren beige hand towel from what is now his old house, Rockingham. The towel is about a third of the size of a bath towel, much larger than a square washcloth. Something like a foot by two feet.

That towel must be thirty years old, which is part of why I like them so much. They’re useful. Wiping, drying, cleaning up, covering up. They can serve as your only towel if you happen to— Sneeeeeze!!! My dad rips off one of his patented loud sneezes and the pen jolts in my hand, skittering across the page. My dad is still one of the loudest sneezers around.

“Have any memorable meals lately?” I ask him.

“Fish with tartar sauce, two tartars,” he tells me.

“Last night?”

“That could have been.”

He’s sharper today, no doubt. Down the road I could see myself working here. I’d volunteer or maybe take a part-time job. If they wanted another groundskeeper on staff who would also work as a porter, transporting Dammert residents to lunch and back. I’d fill in this pock-marked concrete. Do some hedge trimming. Sweeping.

The sun is punching its way through the clouds. It’s strong. I was not expecting it. It’s mostly cloudy but somehow suddenly sunny here. The low clouds are moving out; thinning and flowing north. Their departure reveals high, soft, diffuse, pretty cirrus. Formations. Clouds you can see the shape and texture of.

I wanted to write about that dream I had. The sexual encounter with someone who works here. She, topless, fell over a railing while showing me her cleavage but I caught her. I felt her weight, the heft of her bottom in my arms, then raised her up and was somehow peripherally kissing her somewhere over and around her left leg? I know the person’s identity, I think, or at least one of their identities. This person, entity might have been made from a number of different people. I’ve never thought about her in a sexual way before the dream, still don’t. Strange. That’s why they call them dreams.

Sky in the west getting darker. To the east it is continuing to clear. Plane contrails higher than those cirrus. The low clouds are quite low, flying lower than a hawk or a vulture circling. Lower than a local prop plane would be. Now a red-shouldered hawk is firing off.

That cirrus is probably alto-cirrus. A lower cirrus, a hybrid. Maybe that bird I would have said was a Chimney Swift is actually a Purple Martin. And how about an Eastern Wood Peewee clear, recognizable, and confirmed by the app this morning at Teasdale? The Teasdale life list has taken a jump this year, thanks to the app.

“I don’t see those trees moving over there at all,” says my dad, out of nowhere.

The breeze remains slight, a few miles an hour if at all, barely moving tree branches. Although as soon as I write that the wind picks up, debates me as to my description of it. Heisenberg wind!

We briefly sat in the courtyard, basking in a sudden surge of sun. But the sun from the south and the clouds from the west were sufficient reason to move. 11:52. Lunch isn’t far off.

The cicadas are dissipating. They are still plenty visible but mostly in the form of lifeless winged bugs on the ground. Silent cicadas? No, the only silent ones are the dead ones. These are still buzzing. My dad asked me what sound that was out there. They were frog-like sounds coming from an oak in the courtyard near the chapel. More of a whirring sound, a blanched siren. A faint siren. Could be frogs, I’m not ruling it out. Do these Brood XIX cicadas make two sounds? Not just their peppery, ratchety hissing buzz but also a frog-like whir? If I only had the answer.

—Late May, 2024, Belleville, IL.