Join me again tonight for the second part of a little series I’m developing. I’ll attempt to start each one with a little intro, a little refresher of the previous tale, and at the same time, develop this in such a way that each step stands on its own. Tonight’s entry is a revisit and modest revision of this previous posting…Fields, Motels, Gideon’s Bible, Marines.

There once was a girl who grew up in a really small town, really far away from much of anything. As you might assume, that girl was me. I started this little humble series with the intent to see what would happen when I walked back down the streets of my childhood – would I see how things had changed or, in reflection, how much my own perception has changed; have I taken note of what has been lost to progress and the decay of youth; who were the people and places I’ve left behind and if I remember them, does the telling shed light on who I am today. Consider, if you will, that this is an evening constitutional in the cool night air that circulates in the back of my mind.

There once was a girl who grew up in a really small town, really far away from much of anything. Of course, the word “girl” doesn’t define her, didn’t then, doesn’t now, but definitions in those days were unimaginative and lame, and besides, all she knew at the time was that she was a girl, much as that meant anything to her or to anyone and after all, it implied someone of a specific age or gender, doesn’t it, and even then, she had no idea there was anything at all beyond being a girl, unless that led always to being a woman, which is what she imagined her mother was.

The girl’s imagination stretched just a bit oddly farther than other people’s imaginations, and their definitions, but alas, that would amble along later.

I hesitate writing this, because of the judgments passed on those who have too much, who need too much, who are not careful enough. But sometimes you just have to wallow in what you have and forget about the things you’re missing. Right now, I’m living the life of an animal maniac, in a household of five female dogs and two male dogs. I have three daughters living at home at this moment, too.

You think you can imagine chaos? I can describe it in granular detail more finely drawn than that pixelated image of God on your screensaver.

Why reclining, interrogating? Why myself and all drowsing?  What deepening twilight! scum floating atop of the waters!  Who are they, as bats and night-dogs, askant in the Capitol?  What a filthy Presidentiad! Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I never mentioned to him, during those four years that we knew each other, that I was familiar with Theodore Roethke. I never recall Murray saying a word about Roethke to me. It is the greatest irony to me; a small thing to you, of course. But when you meet someone, and see them many, many times over the course of four years, and your lives cross paths in both big and minuscule ways, you’d think that “knowing” Roethke would have been a topic that might have been shared.

Of those so close beside me, which are you? God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there, And learn by going where I have to go.

“Well, I hope you’d vote for the best candidate, regardless of gender or race.”

“She is the best candidate. She’s smart, she knows how to play the game, she has visibility, she’s been through shit and survived, she’s someone who would have made it on her own, without her connection to her husband. I really believe that – she’s made me believe that.”

“What do you think about what many liberals are saying, the ones who write on the blogs I frequent? That she’s a corporatist, that she takes lobbyist money, that she’s beholden to big money?”