Breathing was easy here

I told you about this backyard.Western Australia, November 2012.

Last summer at this same house

July 2012.

Lonely housesitter

I am housesitting for the usual family, for the fifth summer in a row.

In the last couple years I have come to dread nights here. Alone with all these empty rooms and just the family's dog, outside darkness and the moaning wind. I am so rarely lonely, but I am terribly lonely here. Lonely and fearful.

I wish I could just take a sleeping pill at nightfall and skip all of it, but the part-time work I'm doing from home is never finished in time for that.

Letter from Jeanima: 3/1/13

Text:

Dear Miss Holly,

I am very happy to write you this letter. I am greeting you in the name of Jesus the omnipotent. My family and I are doing well. I got my passing grade on an average of 6 out of 10. Thank you for the Christmas gift, the project bought a skirt and a blouse with it to me. I have a sister name Juslène, we are living together. Do you like to drink chocolate? Please always for my health, and I am praying God to bless you always in all you are doing. I wish you a happy Easter 2013!

As always, if you have helped pay her sponsorship fees, consider it addressed to you.

Hesitating

I still sing the doxology sometimes when I am deeply content. I invoke blessings far more often now than I did when I was a really pious Christian.

I still think disaster will result if I say the wrong words; I still believe the perfect sentences exist that would do exactly what I need them to do, if only I can find them and recognize them...

A vague memory from linguistics that induced me to open an old textbook:

"...knowing a language means being able to produce new sentences never spoken before and to understand sentences never heard before." (Fromkin and Rodman) 

Read in May 2013

Titles link to the pertinent Goodreads page — feel free to add me as a friend.

1. The Marvelous Arithmetics of Distance: Poems, 1987-1992, by Audre Lorde

2. Salt Fever, by James Penzi

3. No Trees, All Pianos: Poems, by Nic Alea

4. Emma, by Jane Austen

5. The Arc of Love: An Anthology of Lesbian Love Poems, ed. by Clare Coss

6. Love and Friendship, by Ralph Waldo Emerson