La Crosse

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Silence

My ex-husband died. He died on 10-10-2020. For numerology purposes that’s a 6, one of the perfect numbers. It’s also part of the triad, the 3 numbers about which someone (Tesla? Ramanujan?) said, if we knew the significance of the numbers 3 6 9 we would be paralyzed with astonishment. His heart just stopped, refused to continue its designated purpose within the human body. There’s not a number for that unless you consider the (one) of its kind belonging to the person it inhabits going to a zero.

I have, since then, been trying to understand some things—unsuccessfully. I’ve played a lot of chess games against the computer. One of the first things we did, he and I, after meeting was to play a game of chess. He won.

The songs come back and play round and round. Simon and Garfunkel…”Hello darkness, my old friend…” And Scarborough Fair…”Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Remember me…for (s)he once was a true love of mine.” And he was then, once. A true love of mine.

I’ve had many miserable nightmarish dreams and a lot of unexpected pain. The dreams that are not such as that, the ones that seem filled with significance and symbols and complexity I can only partially decipher. I do get the sense of them, the sense that there is something incredible just out of reach. The most important things go into that place where there are no words.

But the finality of things, the end here on earth, of our consciousness, our ability to share with one another, that life that we shared so long ago, ended then—long ago. Still I go back there. To our children, those beautiful lovely babies that we had, the places, the rivers of our youth. Now there’s no one there to be able to say, “remember when…?”

We shared things unique to ourselves, our lives, our little family. The life we had together. The cottage on the river where we lived in La Crosse, the coffee shop we owned in Iowa City, the community theatre. We have not spoken for a long time, not directly. Our daughter shared between us, the answered questions, “How’s your dad doing?” “How’s your mom?”

But this is it. It’s over. Though it ended a long time ago. Now it’s no longer possible to continue the conversation.

The Sound of Silence.

Good-bye love

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Bits & Pieces In Time

Bob Good Photography Studios · Yesterday · This is La-X! — at Explore La Crosse.

Bob Good Photography Studios—La Crosse Bridge

Another photo of The Bridge(s) that span the Mississippi at La Crosse, Wisconsin. There was only the one when I grew up there, the triple-arched one, not the single arch. The two are necessary now due to all of the traffic. The population remains the same, but more people drive and more people have vehicles. Some bit of time ago I wrote an erasure and posted it on this site. It’s about crossing the bridge as we did in childhood and the sand beneath our feet, between our toes. (“For An Erasure”)

  • The trials of Lizzy Fig: Today again I thought I’d give the out-of-doors and cat harness a go. First you have to catch her, resulting in trama number 1 for the darling. Then there’s the application of the harness itself, resulting in trama number 2. When at last she uncurls herself from the frozen rock she becomes, we go outside. All goes well for some time; she watches birds, walks in the grass, crosses to the next patio. She even seems happy. I’m congratulating myself on my ability to prevail when a person comes out from an apartment door. That person walks in our direction as Lizzy Fig begins to back up, then more so, further and further. Suddenly she takes off running, tugging madly on the leash, like a fighting fish in the waters of the Florida Keys. She pulls and tugs in one direction and then another. The leash gets wrapped around a small tree, next it wraps itself around the hedgerow. After the initial ruckus I end up with a relaxed line and an empty harness. (I had wondered about that.)

I caught up with her at some point after, where she was crying behind some hedges. I did somehow coax her into letting me pick her up. We are both safely back in the house now. I have no idea where she is hiding. I’m sure she is thinking she will never come out again, certainly never trust me again. Meanwhile Tula thought it was all great fun—watching as she was from behind the patio screen door—then jumping up and down as we came back inside. The only thing better would have been for her to join in the chase after the cat.

  • When I was a freshman in high school I met a girl who might have come to be in our clique as we were forming up and learning our way along. Most of us were on the fringes then, deciding without words which of the worlds we would traverse and the ones who would walk with us. Who would sit at the lunch table with us. Which lunch table would be ours. Who would scream with us at the football games. Where we would belong in the hierarchy and tyranny of the students at the high school named for St. Thomas Aquinas.

Wags asked me if I wanted to go shopping with her on that Saturday, downtown at the J.C. Penny’s where school clothes lay in abundance. (Abundance then was nothing to compete with the sheer variety of today’s choices.)  But of course I wanted to, and why not, something to do, somewhere to be. Girl’s clothing, second floor, top of the escalator where in the not-too-distant future my daughter would catch her shoe and cause the escalator to crash, experimenting as she was with the possibility of catch and release on her own, eliminating the need (not) for a store manager and a crush of patrons. That particular day, with Wags, was schooling of a different sort.

We gathered and carried several cardigan sweaters into a fitting room, both of us together. Those days were well before the clothing limits, the alarm locks, and no more than one person to a room. We were in fact likely the cause of future precautions against department-store theft. She demonstrated to me how she could select a sweater and wear it out of there, under the top she had on, her loose jacket pulled over both.

I wore a lovely pink cardigan out of J.C. Penny’s and walked home with it on. It was soft and luscious. It did not itch. It was perfect.

When we met up I tried to tell Wags how I was not sure the fear was worth it. How all-consuming fear to the point of dizziness had become. How I thought I would scream as we walked out separately and purposefully meandered to dispel any suspicions. And she tried to tell me how that was the point of it all—to not only be able to have what you wanted and could not afford, but how it felt. The act itself, and getting away with it. That feeling was the best part. I was not at all convinced.

At home I told my mother that Wags had given me the sweater as it no longer fit her. That was surprisingly easy, and the questioning ended with that response. That weekend the parents were having people over, and those people had children with them. Why could I not entertain those young ones with sparklers we were setting aside for the fourth of July? Why not? The patio and sparklers on a cool autumn eve were no hardship, rather an easy and fun entertainment for the kids and me. Not only easy and fun, but I could wear my lovely new pink cardigan. The one Wags had given me. The one with the pearlized buttons. And in the fashion of that day, a sweater which could be worn buttoned up the back or the front.

It was an autumn night with a rose-colored sky, matches and sparklers on the picnic table, excited children, and me in my lovely pink cardigan. Ah, the trailing arches and figure eights and ribbons of shooting stars. How they sparkled and shone, and how they set up tiny burns on the flesh where they lightly struck the hands and face. And then burned little holes all over that pink cardigan.

I thought it was punishment for my sins. God acts swiftly for the guilty to prove you cannot escape though you might not be caught. I later made several “acts of contrition,” and buried the sweater in the sand underneath the bridge.

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Hot Cross Buns

It’s officially Spring, and on days like these, I recall my mother coming home with hot-cross buns. They were proffered with a flourish and the announcement that we could have them on that day, that one very special day. I don’t remember, however, why or which day was so unique. And we were indeed allowed to have the Hot-Cross Buns on that day alone. But those days, those days were Catholic days, and they held many a ritual glory. When I close my eyes I see white ribbed socks turned over to measured perfection above black patent-leather shoes, yellow tulips in the center of the dining room table, a decanter of coffee and small plates next to them.

The house would smell of Spring, of open windows and soft breezes, of the lace curtains that would dance in the sunlight. In those days Lent was taken seriously. Easter would be a celebration and an end to fasting and abstaining from meat. Thusly, on the Good Friday before Easter, before the celebration of the Messiah! we would acknowledge that day and the beginning of the end and the end of the beginning. We would have Hot-Cross Buns.

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When Elizabeth the first ruled England (1592) it was decreed that hot-cross buns and other spiced breads were not to be sold other than at burials or Good Friday, or at Christmas. There was in fact a punishment for doing so—all of the forbidden baked goods were confiscated and given to the poor. James the first continued the tradition in 1603.

Poor Robin’s Almanac in 1733 published a London street cry, the first definite record of Hot-Cross Buns:

Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns.

Nothing can be found for earlier records or recipes.

The more recent recipes for the baked goodies can include descriptions for the meaning or symbolism held within the ingredients. The cross itself has evolved to mostly include a sugar frosting:  confectioners’ sugar, milk, lemon zest and vanilla. This is how my newly purchased, boxed grocery-store treasure is completed. I’ll sing the song on Friday.

Hot_Cross_Buns_detail,_March_2008

—Information/background & photo from Wikipedia—

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Visiting La Crosse

‘Tis the first home, the foundation. This strange little city making its way along the Mississippi River. Here’s where the memories are stored. (Some of them might be a bit waterlogged.)

Bob Good Photography Studios  A few snaps from the bike trails between Downtown La-X and the Trempealeau Hotel. Some of the City trails are currently flooded out but the Great River State Trail was amazing!

Wood Bridge

Here’s the start up…an old wood bridge to begin the trail

more on bridge

Passing on to the green

GreeneryToo

Through the green

Pond

Passing by ponds

Swamp

And Swamps

The swamps will be filled with cat-‘o-nine tails come autumn

TheGoal

Ah, the goal—time for a brew

SunsetOnLake

And then the sunset

Is there a more beautiful place? Can there be?

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The ‘Ole Home Town

bobGoodGreatRiverbiketrailHolmen

Bob Good Photo Studios

Feeling very nostalgic lately. What do I mean, lately? Seems I’m always longing for a  time that was, and the magic of childhood. And it doesn’t have to be mine. Mine, my kids, my parents (from their old photos). And that place of the Spirit, feeling Hiraeth.

{Hiraeth is a wonderful, multilayered word meaning a longing to be where your spirit lives. The place where your spirit feels most at home may be a physical location that you can return to at any time, or it may  be more nostalgic of a home, not attached to a place, but a time from the past that you can only return to by revisiting old memories.}

This is a shot taken on the now bike trail that goes from La Crosse to Holmen. It used to be railroad tracks—the old Chicago And North Western railroad line. We were warned so very seriously not to play on the tracks. The big threat was the invisible & unheard train that would suddenly appear and mow you down. That and the “don’t go down to the river!” Both were of course exactly what we would do. The train tracks really gave a thrill when they were enclosed by a bridge or tunnel, where there was no escape. We stared down death at every chance.