a score is 20 years

     In the twenty-plus-two days since last reporting for duty, 

I have done a few things many times over.

The bandits in the kitchen of Más Tacos Por Favor

have taken me as one of their own.

I spend the daylight hours learning the trade and testing the tacos.

 By night, I creep about below the floorboards

fixated on affixing bones to metal to wood. 

Learning to "appreciate the impermanence of the human condition." -droot

Between the taco stand and mi casa, there are homes.

There are lives and people and everything that happens

will happen today.

Durante los 22 días de mi ausencia,

he repetido poquitas cosas varias veces.

Los bandidos de la cocina de Más Tacos Por Favor

me han secuestrado para ser una de ellos.

Me la paso aprendiendo su oficio y probando los tacos.

Por la noche voy trepando debajo de los pisos

enfilada en fijar hueso a metal a madera.

Aprendiendo a "apreciar que la temporalidad de la condición humana." -droot

Entre el puesto de tacos y mi casa, hay hogares.

Hay vidas y personas y todo que pasa

pasara hoy.

water aerobics

I am in the process of reassimilation.  

The East Park Community Center has helped immensely.  The beautifully maintained facility has quite an impressive offering of activities that fit within my [currently-job-hunting] budget.  It is near enough to my house that I can ride my bike and so I get to count that as a warm up when I arrive to take water aerobics in the indoor pool.  There is a walking track, a gym with exercise equipment, a kids summer program and group classes like yoga, boot camp and Zumba. 

Emily and the ladies that come to her water aerobics class have welcomed me warmly and have already been a great inspiration to me. If it weren't for them I would never keep up an exercise routine that requires an every-other day bathing schedule.  Their personalities and enthusiasm have also offered me a grand source of motivation for my paintings.  

Bohème Collectif

Spend tonight, the second Saturday of June, on the East Side.  Nashville is a great town to be if you are into the arts; music, theater and visual artists thrive in an environment as alive as this one.

And after all of the other shops near 5 Points have closed, come spend the evening at the Bohème Collectif.  The five dollars at the door gets you a drink for each hand to make the DJ's music that much sweeter and the paintings that much more profound.

bs

Bar Soap and I have never exactly seen eye-to-eye.

His feeble bubbles, aided by accomplice Washcloth, never quite seem to work up to the lather commonly pushed on television commercials. 

Even when set up with Sponge, and the bath runneth over with suds, there is one dingy memory from childhood that, for me, stains Bar Soap’s reputation…

As a child I was sent to summer camp on top of Lookout Mountain in Alabama.  The lush rhododendron’s essence clung to the morning mist and dew that hung heavy around us; we sat on soggy fallen trees and peered out across Little River into the fog.  As we awoke with song and reverence to the surrounding beauty, the director told us that there were problems with the plumbing. We would be bathing in the river until further notice.

We were no longer asleep. Yay! Hunger pains were swept away and breakfast was forgotten. Bath time was not to be hassled with fear of spiders nor the hesitation before braving the icy low-pressure trickle from the showerhead. Not today!  The river was to be converted into a natural bathing spot just as it was used by Native Americans long before.  I deeply felt that in doing this we were honoring and communing with the previous peoples of the land. 

Though we all donned bathing gear and our suds could be seen along the bank for days, I felt as pure and connected to the Earth as I ever had before.  But then, an older girl came and asked me if I had any liquid soap she could use. No. I had been borrowing the bars from others or merely using the suds that flowed past me as I swam against the current.  The look of disgust that froze her face and the words that flew viciously out of her mouth seemed to personify irony.  “Bar soap is dirty.” I listened as carefully as I could to her explanation of germs, her knowledge surely distorted from some other older girl, I became horrified by the little solid scum breeder.  Thus began a habit of washing the soap before using it.

I have no qualms, though, with sharing a toothbrush.