City of the Lost Plane

Headed back to school for finals week. Here's something I wrote on the plane today. Just because.

The drone of the prop engines is only
half blocked out by my skull candies
My seat was the aisle one
But I moved over to the empty 
window seat beside me

I can't complain about life now
I'm looking out and down at the world
Landscapes change as we fly
Trees and clouds
now flat and blue sky

From here everything looks perfect 
in an asymmetric way
But I never would know it unless 
I saw it from here

I'm thinking back to before take off
When the flight attendant 
was performing the familiar chant 
about safety and such

I heard the muffled chuckles from 
the one couple who were actually listening to her
"in the event of a water landing..."

Then the awkward silence when they
realized they were the only ones who
found it amusing today

This isn't Southwest

In the event of a need to land on water
our main options would be the reservoir 
or crater lake 
I'm not relieved or afraid at the thought
I will have my seat cushion for 
a floatation device

I don't know what song to listen to
The buzz is annoying
And it doesn't help that my row
is underneath the wing
close to the propeller

We're starting to go down now and I
think I'll just stay up here
Escape the landing

We could fly away
Make our own existence
Name it whatever we want
City of the lost plane or something

the wheels are down
I have to turn off my electronic device 

Christmas trees

It used to be that every year after Thanksgiving, my dad would take all of us kids to go Christmas tree shopping. We had this tree farm that we went to most every year and we all got to help pick out the perfect tree. Then we would bring it home and the carpeted living room would soon be strewn with ornaments and tangled up lights that we inevitably had to untangle every year. Sometimes we put lights around one of the trees outside, but that didn't usually happen because we always ran out of lights. So we had Christmas. Presents and family -- the tree. But year by year our tree got smaller and smaller. Finally one Christmas we didn't get a tree. That's around the time we moved from North Carolina to California.

Our first Christmas here was a lot different. Lots more snow... bigger trees. The first few years we went up on the mountain with snowmobiles to get a tree. We had this make-shift sled to which we tied our Christmas tree for the ride back to the car behind one of the old machines that belong to one of my dad's friends. But the last few years we have gone shorter distances to get our tree. Probably because the sled isn't big enough to carry the trees we get now.

This year we have two trees -- because two is better than one. They or may not have come from the back yard. Standing at 6 ft tall, the little tree is brightening up the family room with all its colorful lights illuminating the serene gingerbread men and women suspended from its branches. The other tree might be the tallest one that we have had so far -- at 21 ft tall it is impressive to look at. We decorated it with white lights (of course we didn't have enough so we had to buy more) and golden, red, and silver ball ornaments. Oh, and before we stood it up my sister and I tied a lovely red bow on the tippy-top. It looks splendid.

And this year, we are having a solid Christmas. A white one for sure. Friends and family near. Firelight dancing around the room. A record playing old-fashioned Christmas music. My breath fogging up the window glass. Smell of cinnamon and spice. Stockings hung up. Presents underneath the tree -- the big one.

Peace and Love

Piece of Mind . Post

So I'm trying to write this first blog post... and everything seems so. . . .  so cliche. It's like everybody and everybody else starts out with a really incredible first post that goes something like "This is my first post," inevitably ending with, "I'll post more later." But I want to do something completely unique.

Maybe I'll just tell you why I made this thing in the first place.
Something you may or may not know about me is that I'm not great with words. Sometimes I just have to sit down and write stuff out to process it.
That's how my brain works. So this is not necessarily a brain dump, but it is a piece of my mind. About life in general and everything specifically.

I'll post more later.