Aside from tending to sick kids and writing my jarheads in Iraq, I have done nothing today, but nurse my own cold, read some and have a hormonal fluctuation or two. I should have known something was coming down the pike after that last post. Heh. I would like to point out, while bearing in mind that men may read this next installment of War and Peace, my contention that if there is a God, he is in fact a man and moreover, he's laughing his ass off.

Can't you just see the Big Guy upstairs sitting around the conference table with the boys doing the whole Power Point thing...

"Okay folks, up next up: fertility. Whatcha boys got for me? Huh? Dazzle me.!I'm looking for something catchy."

Some junior vp swallows hard and throws out the whole menses idea and God says..."hmmm-- not bad, not bad...what else you got?

Moodswings?

Bloating?
Good! Good! You're workin' it... you're workin' it. Okay, tell you what. Go ahead and take the development team on this and run with it. Have something firmed up for me by morning.
Now! Somebody call in lunch---we still have that whole forbidden fruit thing to flesh out."


There is no way a woman would come up with this sick little notice of monthly impending fertility...well maybe she would, but it'd be the men getting it. You follow me?


Where was I?

Where have I been? Oh. I've been reading Ayn Rand and Ann LaMott and Thomas Merton. It's an exercise in madness. Well, no, not really, but I am still trying to flesh it out enough to put it into something I can construct, or speak reasonably about, but alas, I'm not there yet.

It calls to ming when I worked as an event designer. My favorite parts of the event process were the very beginning of the project and the very end. For purposes of edification, I am going to cover the latter at another time and just focus on the former.

At the front end of a project, the introductions were made as the long, waxy shipping boxes were opened. Flowers would come in all tight and wrapped in paper and plastic. In my prep room there would be rows and rows of buckets awaiting them. The room itself smelled green and foreign--intriguing even, like the countries where they came from.


The blooms had faces like people--roses and gerbera, open and generous, haughty iris, graceful calla, friendly tulips, shy, exotic orchids. Spools of ribbon and yards of fabric would be yet uncut and stacked up without the light behind it to demonstrate what it's true role would be in my little symphony.


That would be the sound I heard as they took the water back up their stems after their long trips from Holland, Belgium, Ecuador, Columbia and the Pacific Rim. I heard music. As the blooms opened and hydrated themselves this sound in my head was always akin to the sound of an orchestra warming up before their opening piece. Petals like notes unfurling, color intensifying or lightening. It was a promising sound that left little hairs on my forearms to tingle.

My new hires would be initially dismayed at the condition the blossoms seemed to be in out of the boxes and then equally delighted and amazed at the Phoenix action these blossoms had going on after a few hours and some warmish water. You really didn't do anything- just give them time and room in the bucket to gather themselves and make a proper hello to the world.


This was my self indulgent way of saying, I have alot of new boxes of stuff left to open, inspect and prep. Greens to cut away, stems to clean, new faces to learn. The smell, too, is new.

Green, if you will.