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Thai Tea

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I give thanks and praises as I brew the tea—

tea leaves and spices from distant lands

their journey long, their origins far

How fortunate we are to hold such gifts

how blessed I am to prepare this warmth

for the ones who fill this house with love

I never curse the dirty dishes

the endless rhythm of cooking and cleaning.

For there are those who would give anything

anything at all, to hear laughter echo again

to feel the weight of a shared meal

to set a table for more than one

It is always sudden, even when planned—

the silence that settles like dust

The kettle boils for no one but you now

a lone cup sits idle on the counter

And the kitchen, once alive with purpose

becomes a quiet place of learning:

how to cook for one, how to live alone

The tea is bittersweet as it cools in my hands.

~ Pretty Thunder

Cool Water Tonight

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It’s after midnight here. I just turned on the water to wash my hands and it’s ice cold. I bent down and drank from the pipe and am so grateful. Images pass through my mind of times water was so scarce. Toting water deep in the bush in Wassembo. There was a narrow dirt path in the village. One had to carry a Bamboo pole about 12 to 15 feet long, with a bucket at the end of it. Once at the water source, you had to put it down the hole, catch water and bring it back up. Then walk back to the village.

~Pretty Thunder

Grateful for Sweet Potatoes

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I don’t really have deep thoughts these days, if I do, I don’t know that they’re deep. Tonight, standing in the kitchen, peeling and chopping sweet potatoes. I’m so grateful. I often think about the women working hard in remote villages that I’ve traveled to. How they process their provisions, how they process their cassava. Backbreaking work with very little tools. Fufu drying in the compound. My young friend walking down a dusty dirt road to get the cassava for dinner. Grateful for the small pieces of meat. Greens, tomatoes and ground nuts. I search for the fat in my bowl. #smallthoughts #grateful

Vigil 3

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Don’t speak

send me the arts

music poetry photography paintings Offer me magic and the West horizon Offer me incantations and prayers that require singing Bring me 8,000 candles and wood to burn mesquite piñon palo santo red cedar Bring me ceanothus root bring me chaparral for my tools set alight the resins breuzinho white copal and ghost pine i toil day and night searching for a place where’s he’s not gone from this world i do not rest i do not sleep i do not eat Bring me psilocybin DMT and iboga Bury me far beneath the Mourning Ground Send the Pointer and Shepard away Wrap me in my colors of annihilation

the colors of hurricanes and the endless road Wrap me in brown Wrap me in burlap

i have surrendered all my names and my foot print has changed

feed me small pieces of raw liver and salt Feed me the morning star

feed me glass from the collision at the crossroads

see me in the shaking earth

see me in the descending wren

see me walk among all that composts

summon me with your endless silence

summon me with your long gaze

you too are this

you too are oblivion

you too Are me closing the roads

Vigil 1

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this grief has me equipped for war

my eyes have no more tears yet still i cry Is this how deserts bloom?

i am plowing my little acre with a buffalo horn Season of violets and lupins salute me as i drive through the vineyards Pills tucked under each nail Hashish lined up like soldiers Tulips tired in my bedroom bend towards the sun How could i not simply dissolve and sink into the earth

Good morning worlds

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Eye kan an fo lere mi, lere mi, o f'apa otun ba'le, O re gbongbongbon bi oko.

A bird twirls all over me, touching the ground with her right wing, and sounding as does the hoe when struck.

Eye kan an ba lere mi, lere mi, o f'apa otun ba'le, o re gbongbongbon bi ada.

The bird then perches on me, tapping the ground with her right wing, and sounding with the strength of a cutlass.

Bi alaworo - Òrìsà ba ji, a f'ada Òrìsà no'le, a ni "Òrìsà, e ji tabe o ji!"

When the chanter - priestess rises at dawn, she taps the earth with the Spirits cutlass saying. "Spirits, I want to know if you are awake and attentive on this day!"

Thank You

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I lost my Beloved March 27, 2022. He lived, loved, gave, cared, laughed, sang, drummed, fished, traveled and never gave up hope and arrived fully at each juncture of his life. I will miss you for all eternity. I love you darlin.

A salute and thank you to all members of our Caregivers for Stroke Survivors Group.

I bow down deeply, and I’m grateful, for all that you gave me. You have been there when no one else was, you gave me solace, in my grief, and often gave me clarity, when none could be found anywhere else. You have been my rock, my family, and my support, and soothed my soul so often in the past years. I can never thank you enough, for caring for me, and my husband, and each other.

I say farewell to you all, yet it is bittersweet. I long to stay, as there exists remnants of my husband being alive in this world, within this group. 

My dear beloved husband, laid down his robe Sunday morning at 11:38 AM March 27, 2022.  I am more devastated that I could ever imagine. Thank you all again, and I wish you all love, joy, peace and ease as you navigate the complicated road of being a caregiver to a stroke survivor.  never give up hope, and remember what I’ve always said, never base one bad day as the whole of your loved one’s healing process. strokes are very strange and mysterious, and it is not always what it seems. There can often be really good clear days cognitive wise for our loved one, and there can be very bad days when it seems like it will never get better. But we have to remember that strokes are very strange and mysterious and they are not linear. 

Much love to you all, Prettythunder

Working 35 Hour Days

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I’ve been unavailable lately. Not on purpose. I’m not ignoring anyone or mad at anyone. I’m trying my best to get through the days nights days. Trying to fit 35+ hour days into 24 hours. It never seems to work, I always come up short and find myself standing at the kitchen sink at 1AM, eating a ripe mango in the dark or throwing a last load of laundry into the washer after my loved ones are settled into bed for the night - my cup of tea sits cold at my desk. I’m lucky to have had a sip or two.

It’s not due to poor time management, ignorance, stupidity, lack of judgment, bad charter. I’ve been busy surviving.

I work 15 hour days, everyday. Sometimes longer. and yeah I know, I don’t have a degree, own a home and I shop at thrift stores and Walmart, but my jobs do require intelligence, fortitude and ingenuity. It takes intelligence and ingenuity to create something out of o thing. To be able to rub two sticks together and create a miracle.

You see, all this Academic elitism and classism, isms of all kinds has tried to disappear my accomplishments. My jobs, my responsibilities. My workload. These isms have pointed their ugly finger and tried to shame and criticize my Walmart food and drugstore lipstick. Pointing out my GMO oatmeal, my used tires.

I’m exhausted. I care for my family. My husband has endured 7 strokes. Some major, some minor, all devastating. People tell me I need to take care of myself, need to eat better, need to take time off, I need to do all these things. and, I know. I’m not trying to intentionally suffer myself, not trying to be some martyr or appear to be one, no, It’s what happens when family and commuity run the other way in the face of blindness and those who have endured strokes. People scram, they leave, they go on vacation and have dinner parties, have babies then use that as an excuse for not showing up, they lay down the new carpet and pay contractors for custom work, they go to Baha and Costa Rica but I digress.

What I’m doing is moving in a situation in a normal way. This is a normal response to an abnormal dynamic. We are not suppose to get sick and be alone. We are not suppose to have babies and be alone, we are not suppose to die alone, to suffer alone. What people are seeing in me is exhaustion and zero support for the past 10 years of taking care of my husband who has endured 7 strokes, the 6th on leaving him blind. His own children have not even came to see him since he went blind 10 years ago. Expect once when one of them had business in San Francisco. Shame.

Those who have left, please stay gone. And don’t, don’t ever reminisce with me about my husband and who he is was.