I CAN FIX IT!

One keeps things, even broken things, because ...  

"It's fine!  I can fix it!"

And so the pondering frog, with a leg and a hand detached, ended up on the dining room table.  The little metal bird with its wing undone, the spring sprung, lay beside him.  I had the fullest intention of repairing them both neatly.

I came across them at 3.00 a.m. today since I still can't sleep. I  don't think I will for a while yet.  It doesn't matter. I'm not tired.  It will not last much longer. Not this particular night.  

The morning birds would already be conversing. Nay. Concluding morning prayers. I would be writing about them if I were "home", but I am "home" in the Bay, again.  All I can hear is the fishpond waterfall and a few crickets. The house has its own voice. Creaks in the ceiling. Fridge rattles.  My laptop sounds like a toy house fridge.  Same noise, just softer.

I took out five movies.  I only watched Benicio Del Toro as Escobar. Paradise Lost, it's called.  I love that face.  His mouth whispers - well, almost whispers.

"I love you," sounds like a death threat.

He also acted in, "Things we lost in the Fire"

Weird with the X Files and Whitney Huston mix of actors, but the kids are great. They fit the man with the smile that wrinkles so much it looks like a wince, frowns so hard that it looks like a trick smile.  A pretend frown, not confused, a laughing kind of think about that for a bit before you think that, kind of a smile.   

For one who reads faces and hands and lips and all the gambler's tells, he's a pudding in a fancy fine dining place where the portion is tiny, sculpted and tinted to make you want to take it home and keep it on the mantelpiece to look at when there's only yesterday's bread in the bin and the peanut butter jar is empty, lying through its lid because one can never get that layer off the glass.

I don't like to read about the men I love - actors I mean.  I like to think of them and how they make me feel about them, even the villains.  I don't want to find out that Al Pacino is a nice man who walks grey ladies to church. I want a mean man who can tango and name the fragrance I sprayed about my head hours ago, drive a Ferrari, blind, and take down the establishment with one single speech and a uniform.  And then fall in love by accident.

Del Toro is the Benicio of all perfumes and it's just too late, I'm sorry to say.  I fell in love with him when I first clapped eyes on him and not even Robert Redford can unseat him, or Mr Pitt nor my darling of all darlings, (lies, lies, lies!  I have so many darlings and I refuse to kill them) Tom Hanks and Magnum. Oh, and Colin Firth and the lovely late lad who was a dad and I know it was the Joker that did him in, not the drugs, the meds, the be still my heart stuff some of us take when we feel too much good or bad or both.

We keep the broken things because they once charmed us enough to make us take them home, and there is always a tale that becomes endearing, if it wasn't already, right then and there, in the shattering, that sticks with us enough to hold us back from heading for the bin.  

One ditches a broken glass, a cup even, plates, hearts, and God only knows what else is disposable these days, but those little shards of time, past, bleat when a frog's hand shifts from under a sheet of paper doodled to death, one hand waving, or when the steel bird scrapes across the glass and falls to the carpet with only a little bit of a clang.  

There is preciousness in the buying, the keeping dusted and then in losing with a breaking.  It's all good.

I really only get that now.  Frog and Bird hit the bin today because the dining room table is a mess of no dining and that needs to change.  Besides, they are fixable.  

They are even charming in their brokenness.  They will land in the spot they must be in and a collector of things will find them there.  Frog will find his leg and sit in the sun on a window sill. Bird will fly once again from a spring or a string tied to the hook in the ceiling, or hooked, if she's blessed, and I am sure she is, to the branch of a tree.  They have begun another journey.

And sometimes broken people are brought into our lives for us to fix, and fix them we do, but in the fixing, there is a losing, and what is lost cannot be gained again.  

But, yes.  I can fix it.  I can fix it so I can lose it to someone else who finds it charming, broken bits notwithstanding.   

Bye, Bye, dear Frog.  You will be blessed with kisses from princesses and maybe one day you'll turn into a real boy.   

I've gone and fetched Bird.  She's a real Lady and she's too precious to leave to chance.  There are no trees where she'll be going and no ceilings either, come to think of it.  I shall take her "home" with me and hang her in our tree. Yes.  

I can fix it.

Oh, Lord.  I can't dump Frog.  Let me get him out that bin and spend the day with glue.  I think I shall go for a walk now.  The dark has departed. The pond waterfall sounds louder somehow.

Music for my heart.

Love and Light.