I happened to catch a glimpse of Luka strolling down the hall on his way to lunch and his teacher, Mrs. Burton, with her intrepid watchfulness, several paces behind. Luka had been lucky enough to have another veteran teacher, Mrs. Garrett, last year for Kindergarten. That room had his teacher’s hand painted trees and sky and clouds on all the walls and window shades. And I was another lucky one, meeting them all last year when I was artist in residence at their school.

I’m reading Steve Jobs on my Kindle which reminds me of Europe with you and packing light and repacking light from hostel to hostel. The compactness of it all. This morning I showered as your Israeli soap grew paper thin in my hand. I knew this day would come when the scent of the promised land would slip through my fingers into eternity.

When I was raising kids, the lovelies, I had very little time to write songs, play guitar, send little postcards and play out. But I did both, kids and art, because of my inner drive. I’ll never know whether my children or I or both would be better off now had I never followed that drive. These compulsions don’t ask our approval and I, for one, seldom question their motives. But I’m doing it now.

‘In recent memory the round table had seated such royalty as Bob Dylan, Bob Neuwirth, Nico, Tim Buckley, Janis Joplin, Viva, and the Velvet underground.'
-- Patti Smith, Just Kids

We’d booked ourselves into a cheap hotel after a lavish country club wedding reception. Our newish Honda stood out in a lot full of dented cars, rusted vans, worn trucks and trailers. From a crowded parking space near the inn’s rear door, we skittered inside, avoiding the gaze of two young guys in a parked car as we clasped our possessions to our bosoms. Three doors down the unwashed hallway stood our smoke-free, well-kept room for the night, and we were grateful.

That’s me. My name, spelled out by the reservations clerk over the phone last week.

It could also be the Julie Roberts character line in Larry Crowne. Campus lush to Juliette luscious in two easy hours of movie magic.

Or, make it a writing challenge: use whisky-echo-bravo-echo-romeo in a song set in Dodge City 1848, sans cliché. Good luck.

Dylan’s songs let us in. They are his butler, impeccably dressed, astute, well versed in the bard’s wishes. Oddly, this butler lets anyone enter who rings the bell.

Worn wood bleachers, shade and sun.

Camp kids, kickball, home run.

One girl slides in the dust and jumps up

announcing through gap tooth grin,

It didn't hurt. I'm OK!

Annie Oakley squint, outlaw braids

are OK too.

They dance, with her, back into the game.

It's a pretty day. Sun dry and not hot either. After swim workout, Micky decided, 'we should all go have a picnic lunch.' After which we all sped off to our non-picnic obligations.

I just got back from Europe. My sister, Pam, thought it would be great to spread the riches of those weeks over a year instead of spending our 'wow' time all in a heap.

"Creativity is neither a rational deductive process nor the irrational wandering of the undisciplined mind but the emergence of beauty as mysterious as the blossoming of a field of daisies out of the dark Earth."
Thomas Berry, The Great Work