Word Furrows from Lily
trudge
ameliorate
defile
collectable
earwig
erstwhile

There are many friends in a lifetime, they add up over time. They start as acquaintances, become friends, and later advance to the category of erstwhile friends. Friends belonging to some prior time. An erstwhile time.

The erstwhile friends form a collection in my mind. I can list and list them, but exhaust myself before they have all been named. There are the roommates–Donna and John with the black Lab, Marty and Val who fucked like bunnies, Helen who’s love of the smoke did make me a sometime smoker.

MEMOIRS OF A QUONDAM SMOKER
quondam : belonging to some prior time
“her quondam lover”

As I was digressing, I thought of the elongated, stinky bodies of insects, with their prominent pincers and foul humor. Thoughts of bugs, of erst bugs, are as tonic, ameliorative to any situation that might seem dire.

Take, for example, my daily trudge. I had a small check to deposit. Hardly worth the walk to the bank, but the check was an excuse to walk. So I walked the check on over. Trudged it on over. It was almost-sunny when I left, warmish. And so I walked and depsoited. Walked home. Was coming up my steps when I realized i was on auto-pilot. Why not walk some more? Which I did. And then the rain did come. I had crossed Burnside when the rain came. Two fellows came out of their car. They were fashionable. I turned around after i passsed them, for the rain was coming down more swiftly now.

My story today is dull, but may it not defile the precious caverns of your literary receptacles. May it be as balm of Gilead to you.

I heard John Prine & another fellow today sing a hymn which I grew up singing. It always made me happy, to be next to my grandma, singing “I come to the garden alone”. I will brreak it up differently than ’twas written, to show where the real breaks are in the action, the emotional breaks, the breath pauses:

I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice
I hear
falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.

And he walks
with me
And he talks with me
And he tells me I am his own
And the joy we share
As we tarry there
None other
Has ever
Known

He speaks
and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the mel-o-dy that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.

I’d stay in the garden with Him
Though the night around me be falling,
But He bids me go; through the voice of woe
His voice to me is calling.

[lots of stress on the word walks...like "And he WALKS! ….<pause> with me”

There you go. This has been a right collectable earwig from your now-while friend, trudging through her Oregon days, to ameliorate all tyme.

Peace be thine friendlet.