I first saw this amazing home on the website of my friend and extraordinary poet, Drew Myron. (Please visit her lovely poetic journeys here.)

According to the Poem House’s website, these enigmatic and provocative words were planned for erasure some time during September.

The home is a delicious late Victorian house in the town of St. Helena, California in the Napa Valley.  Built in 1892, Oakland visual and media artist Jeff Goodby recently covered the house with words, set in a typeface designed in the 1760s by John Baskerville.

The effect is a combination of Harry Potter and Andy Warhol and has challenged the meaning of home and book alike.

I don’t know if the words have been painted over by now.  Perhaps the home’s appearance has once again resumed that of any other Victorian that populates the Napa region of California.  Perhaps new words have been painted over the old.  I don’t know.  However its current state, it’s nonetheless notable that the home once was covered in words of meaning — words that might indicate story and poem and how houses become homes by the activity inside, rather than from the unique architecture of its wood and bones.

Our house is unremarkable on the outside.  It’s neat.  Clean.  Nothing stands out as extraordinary or unique.  In fact, if we were to add something remarkable, our homeowners’ association would slap us with a cease and desist letter faster than we could retrieve it from our mailbox.  Each of our cookie-cutter, stick and stucco houses are supposed to be look-alike and nondescript.   Still, wouldn’t it be interesting if houses could illustrate on the outside what their occupants are like on the inside? What if words simply and magically appeared on the outside of a house because of what was happening inside?

What would the words on your house say?

I hope my house would select words something like, Delicious, Smile, Generous, Hope, Tolerance,  Love.  But then, my house might have a different interpretation of this morning’s coffee and newspaper-fest; the way we carried on about today’s Ops Ed pieces; the quick kiss in the hallway as Dan and I passed, each preoccupied with our own thoughts; the tap-tap of my keyboard as I type this while wondering what my house would type … as I type this … as the house types that.

I think there’s a story here.  A magical, mystical wonderful story.

Let me become two or three again. Let me have dictionaries in my toes and let my tongue become a spoon.

Let none of us forget the poetry of our roots.

P.S. If you can’t see the video above, you can find it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biJ3FP8aDjY&feature=player_embedded

For months, I’ve lamented over all things broken, fractured, lost and never-to-be-found again.  Today made up for every woebegone moment I’ve recently experienced.

This afternoon, for the first time — EVER — I planted a vegetable garden.  Well, except for that one unfortunate time years ago when I tried a summer garden, planting cantaloupe and watermelon side-by-side, and yielding what could only be called cantermeons or waterloupes, depending upon the size of the melon and your naming preference.  But I digress.

When we bought our home last May, the previous owners had, while moving out, packed up not only all their clothes and belongings, their pots and their beds, but they also trotted off with the entire kitchen and all the back yard.  The bank kindly rebuilt the missing kitchen, but the back yard was another matter.  That fenced quantity of remaining dirt was OUR dirt to do with what we wanted.  We designed a nice grassy area for the dogs, enlarged the patio and added a nice little sitting area — not that Phoenicians sit outside while their skin melts away from their bodies.  Nevertheless, here’s our small patio where, once the plants grow nice and tall, will take after its intention as our secret garden:

All around, we planted red hibiscus, ficus trees, a naval orange tree, a gorgeous crepe myrtle that enhances our view from the family room, several rose bushes in various colors, an unusual orange-colored bougainvillea and a spectacular Lady Banks rose that hangs over the front fence like a gossiping neighbor.  I don’t know what the old back yard was like.  It doesn’t matter.  We probably would have tweaked it here and there anyway.  Even in Arizona, not all is rock and cactus.  Here’s Wilson on the new patio:

This morning, the only thing standing between me and a completed yard were two raised garden beds, filled with dirt, a drip system at the ready and the anticipation of doing good over the next three months.

Over these past months while I often and miserably whined in my best nasal horse-voice how everything was crashing around my ankles, one lovely friend — most likely an angel in skin — mentioned softly that perhaps all the falling-down stuff was simply a way to help me notice other new and more important additions to my life.  She took my breath away, this skin angel friend.  Of course she was right.

Since our backyard was installed last June, I’ve noticed those two barren planting beds every morning when I opened the blinds in our bedroom.  Every morning since June I’ve felt bad about not sucking it up to brave the heat and at least throw some marigold seeds around in the waiting dirt.

Today I finally planted my garden.  I opened holes in the dirt and asked it to accept my salad of red leaf lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, parsley, lemon sage, fragrant rosemary, spicy basil and one amazingly gorgeous tomato plant.

When I was done and everything was cleaned up, I walked back to the house, an old woman with her first garden; her back suddenly strong, her arms satisfied, her hands fulfilled.  I was also a little girl with her first garden; she was smiling like crazy, checking every few minutes to make certain her vegetables were happy and still standing tall in their new home.

For all my broken mirrors and plumbing and pool equipment and whatnots and thingamajigs that have keeled over and died during these past couple of months, these two small beds filled now with the promise of growth and nourishment have erased everything else because ……

I.  Have.  Made.  Food.

We seem to be in a season of broken things here at the Bloggybirdery.  Yes, poor old DancingBirds is experiencing brokenness.  Shatterings.  Stoppages.  Things that squeak and blurp and fall and stain.

We’re coming apart at the seams.

We just might be experiencing Karma-ization, although for the life of me, I don’t know what Dan, me, Scarlett and Wilson the dogs or Laverne the cat might have done to deserve the Universe’s wrath upon our little selves.  Nevertheless, our moat has been breached.  The dragon who once was happy to keep us safe from any and all interlopers has apparently flown off with some floozy.

Let me enumerate our recent catastrophes, in no particular order of importance of befalling upon our heads:

• Pool pump slurps its last slurp.
• Pool filter falls over in a dead heap.
• Pool heater rears its ugly head like Putin over Palin’s porch.
• Two amazingly gorgeous mirrors arrive … in shards of pointy glass and disappointment.
• Moving the giant fake ficus in the master bedroom reveals a carpet stain the size of Rhode Island.
• New tile grout in the master bath, of which installer insists is sealed against stains, turns black.
• Our beloved renter reveals that people call her Typhoid Mary because everything breaks around her.  I’m just sayin’.
• Two more amazingly gorgeous mirrors arrive … one broken, one shaking in fear that it’s next.
• Glass seems no longer safe in our house as we break two, again amazingly gorgeous, glass rod finials while hanging family room drapes.
• Three toilets decide to bedevil us by running, leaking and stopping-up.
• Two sinks forget how their stoppers work.
• Two adults, two dogs and one cat now cower in fear of what might next break.  Please not the food bowls, we intone.  Anything but the food bowls.

Our encounters with all this silliness will soon end.  I know that.  My theory is that we have seasons of good and seasons when everything falls out of the sky.  This just happens to be our time of falling stars and disappointments.  It will soon end.

In the meantime, I listen to my dear Dan who only notices whether his putt falls into the cup or not.

As I do once or twice a week, I find myself upstairs, laptop beneath my hands, DancingBirds.com open to its  “Administrator’s Write Post” screen, a small glass of wine encouraging me to write.  Write something, that glass of wine says.  Anything, my hands urge.  And as I always do, during that once or twice weekly blog-writing event, I pause to think over the days’ occurrences of my tiny life.

May I emphasize that my life is really tiny, so I don’t have large things to write about.

For instance, I noticed today (for the thousandth time) my one kitchen drawer that refuses to stay closed.  The drawer is just opposite my refrigerator, so several times a day I notice it just slightly ajar.  One inch open.

Always one inch.

I reach out and close the drawer.  Then I watch as it slowly opens itself again like a morning flower in a rising sun.  Just one inch.  Always one inch.  I know because I measured it.  It always stands ajar one inch.

I think I love that drawer.

It’s my tiny event.  The thing that reminds me of beauty and perseverance and structural integrity and stubbornness and elegance.  It’s my one true fault in a faultless home, wildly, messily, frantically pushing itself to stand out and be different.  If that drawer could hold a pen, it would be a writer.  A crazy, never-give-up writer who takes up a writing stance every day and doesn’t stop even when people keep pushing him closed.  He simply pushes back that one inch.

That one inch.

One inch closer to the experience of writing a perfect poem.  One inch beyond ordinariness.  One inch away from an agent, an editor, a published novel.  One inch nearer to a winning query, a blazing hot elevator pitch, a book jacket.

I could learn a thing or two from that persistent drawer.  Instead here’s how I am as a writer: messy, failure prone (many), mistakes, brilliance, disappointments, absent from my desk (often), disjointed, successful, unstructured, embarrassed, indecisive, praised, unregulated, betrayed by my own self, buoyed by my friends (many of whom I’m not worthy), frantic, low-down, lifted up by my husband who knows me better than anyone in the world and yet still is my head cheerleader, loyal to my trade, insecure in my craft.

Yet, I’m learning from a drawer.  A god-awful, inanimate drawer who simply won’t take no for an answer.

The funny thing is that since that drawer decided to refuse to give an inch, I’ve accepted the eccentricity of it.  It’s my kitchen Sylvia Plath.  My cherry wood Virginia Woolf.  My John Milton.  My Walt Whitman.  My modern day Sage Cohen, my Jorie Graham.

Now, instead of pushing it closed with an insistent finger, I push it closed with the joyful expectancy that it will yawn open again.

It will open its mouth to sing.

I knew Wilson has always had a soft spot for older people.  Until yesterday, I didn’t know to what extent.  For whatever nervousness I might have had going into our first assignment as a Hospice Pet Therapy Team, Wilson quickly set me at ease.  How like the dog to comfort his master.

The moment we entered the skilled nursing facility, it was like a ripple went through the building.  Wilson was in the house!  He sat.  He shook hands.  He blew kisses.  He let the ladies tussle his hair, the men pat him on the back.

He was a rock star, wagging to the beat of his own brand of Led Zeppelin.  He was Mick Jagger in a fur coat singing 100 Years Ago.

Wilson went from room to room, person to person, carefully sidling up to say hello.  To leave a bit of magic.

During training for Hospice we were taught that dementia patients, even when unresponsive in other ways, often amazingly respond to three things: touch, music and surprisingly, pets.  It’s true.  Everywhere we went, fragile hands with papery skin reached out to touch the dog.  Tightly closed eyes opened even if just for a moment.  Women cooed.  Men sat up a bit straighter.  Small shaking voices talked about their own past dogs.  One man called Wilson by his own long lost dog’s name.  One person declared him a Great Dane and a “fine one at that.”

We’ll be back next Friday.  I have new friends now and Wilson, it would seem, is developing a small following.  Nevertheless, if we left just one person with a tiny smile, if we left just one person’s fingertips alive with the memory of soft fur, if we allowed one person a moment of distraction from what might seem endless confinement, we did a good and generous thing.

Good job, Wilson!  Good job.

When I grow up I’d like to be thin.  No, svelte.  That’s a more sophisticated word.  And I’d like to have thick, straight hair.  And skin that doesn’t clump into “suspicious” spots when touched by the sun.  I’d like to be unwrinkled.   Without liver spots.  I’d like that one chin hair to fall off from the sheer disapproval of its presence.  I’d like to wear a bikini and walk up and down the aisle of the supermarket with cartons of Ben and Jerry’s in my basket.

I’d like kindness to fall over this world like a warm quilt in winter.

When I grow up I’d like my thick, straight hair to be a natural platinum blonde. I’d like large natural breasts.  And white natural teeth.  I’d like laughter to fall gently from my mouth like fairy bells dancing in a breeze.  I’d like long, slender thighs.  Impossibly long black eyelashes.  Generous lips that need nothing more than a brush of clear gloss once a day.

I’d like every child to have a bicycle.  A red bicycle.

When I grow up I’d like long, perfect fingernails.  I’d like feet soft as a baby’s.  I’d like a perfect tush.  A nose that could only be described as cute.  I’d like Oreo Cookies to be declared healthful.  And eggplant to be banished from the earth.

I’d like mothers to need never scan the sky for rockets.  Children to run without fear of landmines.

When I grow up I’d like to travel in my bikini to Southern France.  Or to Mexico.  Or Iran.  I’d like to walk with my perfect toes through the halls of the Basilica and kiss the Blarney Stone.  I’d like rainbows to stand still so I can find their pots of gold.

I’d like fathers to spend their time on golf courses making pars instead of in foreign lands making wars.

When I grow up … when I grow up  … when I grow up …

Everyone will be so beautiful, no one will notice anyone’s difference.  Jealousy will disappear.  Women will look perfect and men will act peacefully.  We won’t need treaties.  Stem cells will cure Michael J. Fox.  Johnny Depp and Nathan Fillian will seek out my friendship.  My husband will putt like Tiger Woods.

Cancer will be gone and it will feel like 5:00 o’clock cocktail time all the time.

Okay, everyone — Pink ribbons at the ready.  We’re only one day away from the beginning of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, starting October 1.  One day from remembering our mothers, sisters, friends, ourselves.  Whether we walk, run, say our prayers, light a candle, wear a ribbon or simply wait for better times, we shall one day find an end to this terrifying disease.  Not we will.  Not we want to.  But … We Shall.

Many of you know I’m a brain tumor survivor.  Fifteen years now and still going strong.  What most may not know is that previous to the brain thingy, I was also a double mastectomy patient.  There!  I’ve said it.  The original girls had some problems and needed to be retired.  I’m now on my second set of aftermarket parts.  It’s hard to think of it now, but … whew! … after all these years I seem to be — In.  The.  Pink.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for many of my Sisters.  Yes, we’re sisters, whether we know one another or not.  There’s not a breast that’s been poked into, squished down, aspirated, removed or otherwise dismantled without recognizing our legion of breast cancer patients and survivors.  We are many.  And we’re strong.

I miss my first breasts.  They were, perhaps, on the smaller side, but they were mine.  They budded and flourished.  They enunciated my womanhood and, later, nourished my babies.  They were generous with feeling and sometimes bawdy with their behavior.  A woman’s breasts are like that.  When they were removed, it seemed my ability to function as a full woman was also depleted.  Fortunately, I’ve since gotten over that.  I’ve also gotten over the plastic surgeon who enlarged me toward today’s standard.

I rarely offer political comment on this website.  I have other venues where I express these thoughts. Nevertheless, I’m watching with a hopeful heart that the millions of our uninsured Americans might be rewarded for their long and often fateful wait for better and more generous news than, “We’re sorry”.  I’m holding my breath that our leaders will pay attention to the majority of their constituents who want … who need … their leaders to listen to the people.  The difficult part for all this hoping and waiting and watching is that somewhere back in time, large corporations were deemed to be “persons”.   That’s when real, living, breathing, people were shoved to the side.  Now we have corporation people and breathing people.

Currently, the corporation people rule.  Corporations have nearly unlimited amounts of money and breathing people pretty much don’t.

So, a woman with breast cancer is left in a pickle if she doesn’t have insurance, or if she once had acne she forgot about and her big insurance company has a teensy-weensy clause that indicates they can now say, “Sorry,” or if she is underinsured, or if … or if … or if.

It could be so simple.  We could just take care of one another like we’re supposed to.  We could be our sisters’ help in her time of desperation.  We could end our disagreements with one another.  We could.

We could provide this nation with health care for all.

We could easily do that.

I’ll stop now so your ears will stop bleeding from listening to my rant (especially, if you happen to like those corporation people a whole lot).  But I’ll never stop caring.  I’ll never stop wearing my pink ribbon for all the brave women who live with breast cancer.  I’ll never stop.  I’ll never stop.

Would you please never stop caring too?

Here’s my Sunday morning smile. May we all share such unlimited joy and may we each find our own special Hound Dog!

This year the instant of the Autumnal Equinox occurred at 5:19 p.m. EDT on September 22, shortly before sunset.  I guess one could say that yesterday, fall officially fell.   Many think the Autumnal or Fall Equinox marks the day when the the length of day is exactly equal to the length of night.  Not so.

There are a number of complicated meanings to this equinox thingy.  There’s something about the equator and something else about witches and druids and maybe something about gearing up for the annual combo beer fest and craft extravaganza down at the church hall.

One oddity, however, is that on the Northern Hemisphere’s autumnal equinox day, a person at the North Pole would see the sun skimming across the horizon, signaling the start of six months of darkness.  On the same day, a person at the South Pole would also see the sun skim the horizon, beginning six months of uninterrupted daylight.

So there you go.

Six months of dark or six months of light.  Pick your poison.

In Phoenix, we have trouble finding anything remotely fallish.  The leaves on our trees don’t so much turn those lovely fall hues of yellows, oranges or reds.  Rather, they just sit there in all their greenness until one day they simply crumple into a brown curl and fall to the ground.   Phoenix isn’t really good in the fall department.  It’s hard to do much colorizing with cactus and dust.  Mainly, Phoenicians just wither in the heat until after Halloween.

Then we all magically appear outside with margaritas in our hands and start impromptu block parties.  We reconnect with neighbors who’ve been holed up in their air conditioned homes for the previous six months and marvel at each other that we made it through another summer.  We begin once more to take walks in the evening and oooh at our magnificent desert sunsets.  We pull light sweaters from the back of our closets and prepare them for that one day in high January when we might need them.  We oil bicycle chains and shake the scorpions out of our hiking boots.  Our dogs can finally take walks without having their feet sear to a crisp on the sidewalks.  Kids quit trying to fry eggs on the hoods of their dad’s cars.

For all the heat-filled misery that befalls us during our seemingly-endless summers, we make up for it in winter.  For Phoenicians, the Fall Equinox is merely a heads-up that good days are only a month or so away.

For you who live where the leaves turn, where there’s a crisp smell to the air, where the fire logs are readied and stacked for winter, where you make hot apple cider rather than icy margaritas, where you put away your sweaters and pull out your coats … I love your good fortune.  Enjoy your Autumnal time and let your feet walk through crackling fall leaves.  Pull in the scent of cool pine and savor its taste on your tongues.

And — if you think of it — put in a good word for the Desert Rats who wish they could be like you if even for a day.  In return, we’ll hold good thoughts for you come mid-February when you’re neck-deep in snow and we’re hanging out poolside in our shorts.