YOU

You create poetry
by simply standing
in the
afternoon rain,
cigarette dangling
from a crooked
smile.

Some of us
have to work
harder
at this kind of thing.

  — William Taylor Jr., American poet based in San Francisco

RAIN
by Claribel Alegría (translated by Margaret S. Peden)

As the falling rain
trickles among the stones
memories come bubbling out.

It’s as if the rain
had pierced my temples.

Streaming
streaming chaotically
come memories:
the reedy voice
of the servant
telling me tales
of ghosts.

They sat beside me
the ghosts
and the bed creaked
that purple-dark afternoon
when I learned you were leaving forever,
a gleaming pebble
from constant rubbing
becomes a comet.

Rain is falling
falling
and memories keep flooding by
they show me a senseless
world
a voracious
world—abyss
ambush
whirlwind
spur
but I keep loving it
because I do
because of my five senses
because of my amazement
because every morning,
because forever, I have loved it
without knowing why.

From Casting Off by Claribel Alegría. Translated by Margaret Sayers Peden. Copyright © 2003 by Curbstone Press. Distributed by Consortium. Reprinted without permission of Curbstone Press. All rights reserved.

So Kim just started a new job yesterday, working for McCann-Erickson, which is a division of the Interpublic Group. The Interpublic Group is a consortium of the world’s largest advertising agencies; Kim will be the Technical Project Manager (exactly what that entails, I haven’t a clue), working on one of the firm’s largest accounts.

She started yesterday. Today, she’s flying to Seattle to meet with the client. Talk about fast. When they asked if she had any “familial hindrances” that might restrict her ability to travel, they weren’t kidding.

I’m learning that buying older cars and trucks also means buying older cars’ and trucks’ problems. We’ve already had the timing belt replaced on the Trooper, more out of preventative maintenance than anything else, since we weren’t sure if it had ever been done. I’m told that a timing belt should be replaced every 60-75,000 miles. According to Intermountain Isuzu, the timing belt on my Trooper looked like the original one. Keep in mind that my Trooper has 132,000+ miles. It was definitely time to replace that, at about $450.00 parts & labor.

They also found a leak in the power steering line. So far the estimates are coming in between $275.00 and $350.00 to do that work. I’m still shopping around, though, to see if I can find anything less expensive, at least from a labor perspective.

I need to get an owner’s manual, a shop manual, and to gradually increase the size of my tool collection so I can take care of some of the more mechanical issues myself.

Thankfully, the dealer we bought the Trooper from replaced and balanced all 4 tires, 3 power window regulators, the glass in one window, the serpentine belts, the air and oil filters, as well as changing the oil as part of the purchase price. They should be sending someone out to the office today to do a windshield replacement as well.

And, according to Kim, our insurance ought to actually go down, despite adding a second car, because of the “multi-vehicle discount”. We’ll see what happens when I call Liberty Mutual later this afternoon.