returning to earth

is the title of a collection of poems by the late wonderful poet/novelist jim harrison.  it is also an emblem of my own mental state.  i have been battling the blues off & on for a few weeks now.  nothing, as the beatles would say, to get hung about.  but still, anxiety, panic attacks & the blues is a permanent feature of my own physical & mental makeup.  

& but still, today is the last official day of summer.  it rained today, & monday, like a mofo.  first rains we got in a very long time.  welcome?  you bet!  scary?  sure, because we live in a world of extremes now.  i worry that we don't get rain.  we will have a deluge.  

even so, we are moving in to my favorite time of year.  the scary season.  fall.  the time of shorter days, longer nights, cooler [i sure as fuck hope] days, etc etc.  & autumn nearly always lifts my mood.  every day is halloween!

but still again, i was looking at videos of a seminal poet of mine, tomas transtromer, on youtube.  digital age we possess i can use a platform to search for the sounds & images of some of my favorite poets.  trantromer won the nobel prize for literature in 2011.  he is a wonderful poet & the vids i watched tonight prove that a good poet need not be an asshole.  i have no idea what the personal life of tomas transtromer really was like but the videos show his wife, monica, as the strong woman she is.  how both tomas & monica function as a couple especially after tomas' stroke is revivifying.

watching these vids of transtromer in sverige makes me long for sweden.  it is the only other country, other than my home in california., i know fairly well.  i live among swedish women.  their customs have become mine.  my own dna is fifty percent norwegian  my maternal grandmother emigrated to the u.s. after WWII.  i am more norwegian than anything else.  but i have become, at least, honorary swedish because of my life with anna & the rest of our family.

so when i am watching a short documentary about tomas transtromer & i can see out his apartment window i recognize the land & the weather & i long to be there too.  

does this rant make sense?  probably not.  i think of that haiku by basho, 'even in kyoto/hearing the cuckoo's cry/i long for kyoto'.  something like that when i watch videos from sweden for i feel i have touched down on earth.