A Few More Sentences – 45

Miskomini-Giizis (Raspberry Moon) Edition

Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog! Aaniin! That is to say hello, all of my relatives! Welcome to another edition of An Irritable Métis. In this case, I am happy to present the FORTY-FIFTH EDITION! of the monthly sentences. For those of you new here this monthly edition, where I post the daily, single sentences that I’ve accumulated for the month-just-ended, is based on the practice that ultimately led to my first book, One-Sentence Journal, back in 2018.

It’s simple and fulfilling … and also maybe not so simple as it may seem. Regardless, the practice is excellent training for paying attention to the small moments of my life, and I enjoy sharing those moments here. This remains the best and most consistent aspect of my writing efforts (often the only aspect, aside from the embarrassingly infrequent instances of this newsletter), and something within the reach of anyone who simply wants to be a more attentive participant in their own life.

As always I deeply appreciate your time and attention and support! If you are so inclined, please consider supporting the efforts here by initiating a paid subscription – financial support really keeps me going, especially with other opportunities drying up. You may do that here:

Meanwhile, would you like to support my work but don’t want to subsidize the “dirty money is still good money” villains who run Substack? You can always do so via Buy Me a Coffee HERE. As always, I am eternally grateful.

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A wonderful example of the company I prefer to keep.

2026_0701: Nothing exceeds the pleasure I find in the company I keep during pleasant moments passed outside.

2026_0702: A donkey brays into the evening, sounding like a battle horn summoning me to make a desperate defense of the OMD.

2026_0703: The Laheys have the audacity to ask via email if I’ll be willing to anonymously narc on neighbors who shoot off fireworks, and it takes all I have to not reply “snitches get stitches, you idiots!” instead of just ignoring the request entirely.

2026_0704: The most odious of holidays begins in the wee hours, when a pack of morons decides the best place to flex the cruder side of their personalities is after 1:00am at the end of a country road they don’t even live on, leaving the entirety of their mess behind for further discovery – and outrage – the next morning.

2026_0705: True testament to what this colonial empire really is: there is apparently no product too inane to slap an America 250 logo on in an effort to celebrate a little more capitalism, a cynical play on the “patriotism” of the moment.

2026_0706: “Vesper” is such a sweet word to accompany the name, and song, of one of the neighbors whose presence never annoys.

2026_0707: After the morning saunter the hoodie is returned to the closet, not likely to be worn again before October.

2026_0708: Migizi over the Blackfoot under a brilliant blue sky is excellent company for another passage up and over the Divide.

2026_0709: At the end of a long day, the realization of the pointlessness of my ideas, the mistake of my attendance.

2026_0710: The loathing I have for my phone is justified after it attempts three times in a row to correct “feral” to “Ferrari”, a clear indication the thing, for all the irredeemable time it’s spent in my greasy, sweaty grip, doesn’t understand me at all.

2026_0711: The fires of some years ago have remade the trail from a shady traverse to a sun-exposed slog pretty much the entire way, but the site of the iconic waterfall remains a stirring destination.

2026_0712: A little kid in a blue helmet, oblivious to my presence in the shade of the porch, pedals by on his red bike with a big smile on his face, blissfully living his best life during the cool hours of a bright summer morning.

2026_0713: In public, always teetering on the edge of offense.

2026_0714: A cloudy, reasonably cool, almost-rainy reprieve from the relentless onslaught of a burgeoning summer.

2026_0715: Triple-digit heat on the furnace-like highway to Eastern Oregon.

2026_0716: Fires on the Colorado Plateau paint Nookomis’s waxing smile red.

2026_0717: An effort to remain stoic in the face of the wind turning the street fair higgledy piggledy when all I really want to do is chortle.

2026_0718: The dawn chorus is much reduced and I love every quiet chirp, whistle, and coo more than ever.

2026_0719: If not for one odious tasked queued up behind another, I might move my chair and its accompanying ruminations from shade patch to shade patch all day.

2026_0720: The car next to me in traffic is covered end-to-end in variously-themed stickers extolling Jesus and in that image I see little more than violence and bloodied-and-buried bodies disappearing beneath shovels-full of rabid fanaticism.

2026_0721: Still unnerved from yesterday’s vision, I discover that the perfectly etched demon face that occupies the water stained folds of the shower curtain continues to leer.

2026_0722: Glee in watching someone meaningful enjoy for the first time an experience I’ve enjoyed many times.

2026_0723: The fantasy of this final meeting for one thing being the final meeting for all things.

2026_0724: Heavy smoke, like an obnoxious tourist who won’t leave, has arrived to remind us of the realities of summers hereafter.

2026_0725: Grandmother’s swollen face looms deep red with outrage over our choice to torch this glorious gift of a magnificent world.

2026_0726: It’s a zoom miracle when the unresponsive guest of honor arrives at the last possible moment, sighs of relief whooshing from opposite ends of the valley.

2026_0727: Sitting on my porch with coffee, someone celebrating the smoky morning way off in the distance with relentless gunfire while the world burns.

2026_0728: “Mind your own business, Karen!” the dilapidated handmade plywood sign shouts from the most unexpected of roadsides.

2026_0729: For the second straight year, an unanticipated heartache slips the distracted defenses and the entire construct buckles.

2026_0730: A reprieve found in smiling faces and kinship.

2026_0731: The exertion is so extreme that the under-fueled and already weakened heart sputters, it seems, ominously close to failure.

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Miigwech, friends, for reading. And chi-miigwech to the 50+ people who signed up for the Return to Attention class that ran all month. It was a wonderful experience though I did drive off almost half of you by month’s end, heh. That was typical for this July though. It ended like how it must feel to light myself on fire and then leap off a cliff while doing something unimaginably cool on the way down. Now I am reckoning with being on the boulder-strewn bottom as little more than a scorched pile of ash. 😂 Meanwhile I’m going to post this, then hopefully wander out to the view of the river that flows behind and below this rad little motel I’ve had the good fortune to visit several years in a row now. Tomorrow I will be among the buff’lo.

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