Moving . . .

I've exceeded my photo quota for Blogger and am reduced to writing in just black and white.  Since this is no better than speaking without hand-movement, I've decided to switch over to WordPress.

In other words, I will be riding my Imaginary Bicycle now only over at  http://www.imaginarybicycle.wordpress.com/, which used to be my all-biking blog ("Dream Cycle") but which will heretofrom be known simply as "Imaginary Bicycle" and will now, in these hard economic times, consolidate into an all-service, unreliable and highly random ramble through whichever cycles of life happen to have me in their toils.

And I tell you this so you can come, too.

Can you really deny yourself the sight of cows with pedicures?

singular plurals

a pair







a trio

These girls contend that some identities are more than numerical.

a trio (try again)

The earnest apple believes it's all within.

FEBRUARY 32, 2011 - the end

How fitting, Thou drollest of Stage Directors, to call me out today for one more dove release.

why eye . . . must change my life

Okay, homing pigeon.  Not the sign of inspiration winging in, but that common bird, hardy and resilient with a useful trick of knowing how to come home - and yes, I get the significance there. (I am willing to be Thy pigeon, if Thou wilt plant in me a sure way home.)  A pigeon made dove  by word alone :  To conclude this service, this pure white dove will be released as a symbol . . . 

"You and your symbols," is what my friend said when recently I, forgetting myself, waxed ecstatic describing the shabby but grace-full, fox-trotting middle-aged couple I saw enact the lightness and forbearing unity that is one kind of marriage.  She was shaking her head at me like I made these things up myself.

why eye . . . still dream of flying

But did I do this?  Did I arrange the plot so neatly?  Did I set out to begin and end this long, overlong, stretched-over-two-years-long, who-am-I-and-where-am-I-going scene like this?  I did not.

Pigeons and funerals?  Not my doing. 

I'm just catching Thy joke.  Appreciating Thy sly wit.  

why eye . . . remember I have wings

Because Thou knowest it was that long-ago funeral-bird-fiasco that drove me to begin this blog in the first place. As an incident too perfectly apt to my situation.  An outward picture of an inward truth.

Only Thou and I remember how much I needed an Imaginary Bicycle, some un-ordinary vehicle, to help me to recover all those too-soon departing doves pigeons doves.  My fledgling chicks, my long-flown ambitions. 

I nodded Thy direction last month, when  in January (#12) I was called out of the blue, after two years, to once again release another "dove" at a funeral.  I acknowledged it as a sentence remitted, a curse undone, a silly but symbolic second cosmic chance

why eye . . . am not my cage

When nothing went wrong, I felt the holding pattern I've been stuck in - for lo, these two too-many years - was maybe breaking up, that the filibuster was maybe hemming and hawing into his handkerchief, going hoarse at last. 

I held a laugh of release inside my chest last month (feeling inside something had finally died, something about to be reborn) while I watched, trying to keep my face suitably sober, after saying my magic words and putting the renamed pigeon-now-dove into their hands, as two tear-softened gray-haired brothers together tossed their dove into the air.

Surrounded by sadness, I was glad to feel that maybe my cycle was grinding into action once again.

why eye . . . have flown

Today the grieving family couldn't decide who should release the bird.  "Would you?" they asked.

I held the bird in my own hands.  Felt beneath my fingers the eager feathers, the certain strength within. Feeling inside mysef, the eager heart, the greedy mind, the glowing prospect of going back to school once more. 

With mourners all around me, I -- who am no longer mourning --  swung my clasped hands up, jumping a little up onto my toes, watching this feathered hopeful creature take to the sky.

I stood a long moment, with all the other upturned faces, witnessing that lovely bird wing her way unhesitantly home.

And I just have to say, Nicely played, Maestro.

FEBRUARY 31, 2011 - what I told them

What mi amiga said:  "You can just go and totally reinvent yourself.  Do not even look back."

What my dad said:  "It's about time."

What my mom said: "Don't you think this is what it's been about - not anyone else, just you not wanting to end up a querulous old lady?"

What YoungSon said, after laughing, his face making all its sweet crinkles, because I'm swooping around hoom-hooming a manic rendition of Phantom of the Opera - which has, I hope, very little to do with my news:  "That's cool, Mom.  Will you be gone when I come home from school?"

What Middlest said: "Yay!  I'm so happy for you!"

What Fritz said:  "So we can meet for lunches.  How long is it going to take?  Because we'll need to set that much aside."

Because this  is what I told them.

And now I'm telling you since - just now - the word came through that all the official prerequisite flotsam has been nailed down.  So when I come back in April I will be talking like this.  Or trying to.

(Now back to the swooping and hoom-hooming)

FEBRUARY 30, 2011 - taking questions

Take One

What are you doing here?

I'm trying to write.  At home the phone rings, the piles of gravel mutter, the second coat of paint in the bathroom whines for attention.  Also the dog.  While the same sad array of disappointed books and obdurately unlucky rocks stare back at me.  I can be here.  Dinner is already bubbling away: beans, fifteen varieties of.  The laundry: quelled.  The paperwork: up-to-date.  Everyone who needs to be fed or cheered - or fed and cheered - in my immediate purview has been seen to.

What are you doing here?

I'm watching sea gulls fly across a patch of blue sky.  And tons and tons of water flow west, north, northwest.  Dripping from the sky, dripping down out of local watersheds in hundreds of small cascades and flowing now to empty itself into the wide immensities that are Ocean.  And I'm watching an old lady in a crocheted cap - a black beanie with variegated neon seams - totter up to the rail overlooking the river.  She fusses about in her pocket, wipes her face with a kleenex, totters away.

What are you doing here?

I'm sipping orange mint tea from a thermos.  I'm eating a half-sandwich, one slice whole wheat: folded over, peanut butter: 100% and unadulterated.  And peapods.  And stunted carrots.  I have an apple waiting.  I am so very stuck in this age and place and socioeconomic profile, sitting here in my soccer-mom van at the water's edge.

What are you doing here?

I am trying to write something and crossing out lines like the heart of what really matters and the thread of light in this mazy murk and meanwhile my mind keeps wandering away to that article from Sunset (June 1993) in the waiting room at the DMV about braising/deglazing and now I'm thinking how a clutch of yellow onions in beef broth/with balsamic, respectively, would be rather divine if stirred (with a little garlic) into those 15 varieties of beans.  And then maybe some smoked paprika?  a bit of sage?  Crumbled bacon.  And collards cooked up in a bit of the grease to go along with.

What are you doing here?

I'm looking/ not looking at the young lovers who have wandered over to the gazebo down on the grassy shore.  Their hands in each other's pockets.  They lean into each other.  They read each other's faces like everything they'll ever need is written right there.  They ought to be in school this time of day.  Or working.  I'm trying not to remember what they look like.  I don't want to recognize them later - or more probably just her - months from now at the food bank, big-bellied and abandoned.

What are you doing here?

I'm trying to shape a life I can live with.  I'm trying to balance in and out, dark and water - which is so egregiously self-plagiarism, too utterly obscure and private metaphor that I might as well just say I'm aspiring to be the Telescope's Apprentice and have done with any wish to communicate clearly.

What are you doing here?

I don't know.

Take Two



I wrote a poem once.  So long ago, it seems like someone else wrote it.

What the Telescope Hears

Channel for light, heavenly witness, what wouldn't I
give to see like you, forever
emptying your eye.

You scan the void with such aplomb,
gather light, reflect. I clown around
scrabbling in borrowed clothing,

my goatskin suitcase packed
with worn-out constellations. Spectator
pumps Andromeda wore,

Orion's studded belt, the Virgo's wig
and flowered caftan.  I am so broken
down into question-

answer, mix-and-match coordinates -
still hoping to be seen through, still
yearning to be taken

in, absorbed by all that isn't
there: black holes, dark matter. O
you who see

it all: help me to the right ascension,
to the arc of declination where I
can give up every mask

and see the room
where stars dissolve and spin themselves
from dust.  O deaf

and blind but filled
with light — heaven’s laughter in particle
waves — show me the way

between in and out, dark and water.
Let me see it floating to the lens: sudden
planet, white apple, pomegranate.

What does it mean?

It means I'm still not there yet.

FEBRUARY 29, 2011 - what? you didn't realize there was a Leap Day this year?

How about a Leap Week?

The end of the month is upon me.  In fact, we could say (thanks to a major power outage) that the End of the Month is been and gone, hit and run, abscondido.  That it is the First of the Month now squalling and mewling for attention out in a basket on the front step.

We could say that.  Or we could say February is far too short when among friends. We could, actually, consider today February 29th.  We could decide that for once, February gets its full complement of 30 days hath September . . . even an all the rest get thirty-one.  In fact, considering the amount of things I find I need to tell you before slipping back behind my vow of silence, we may need to stretch this month to a record thirty-two days.

Couldn't we?  Actually, we could. 

So, since the first of the month (which is still February remember?) I've been carrying around notes I wrote on the fly after one day at the Food Bank.

For weeks I've kept coming back to my little book and its quick scratches, trying to shape scribbles into something postable, trying to tease out some interesting angle, or shadow of insight - because something here mattered immensely to me: 

Last Monday I worked at the HELP Pantry - unless that stands for Hunger Eradication League Pantry in which case I worked at the HEL Pantry.  Which would be unfortunate.  But a good sight warmer.  However, it was achingly cold, so I suspect it stands for Help Everyone Live Properly Pantry.  Or the Higher Eating Levels Project Pantry.

Anyway, as I was saying . . .

Though I never actually did say.  I never actually got beyond playing around with what I wasn't saying, never put shape to the telegraphic notes I've carried around with me in the  little moleskine notebook that I carry everywhere so that I am never prevented from scribbling down recipes copied from magazines in waiting rooms or meditational maunderings or, shockingly often, taking dictation from the unsuspecting who speak interestingly in my presence.

I have from a child upwards  gathered small rocks.  Overlooked treasures.  And this habit of collecting the things that people say is the same habit.  Check the pockets of my coats, the side pockets of my car, my recipe box, window sills, inside the covers of my books - everywhere: pinecones, bizarrely shaped pebbles, little rocks with intriguing glitters, scraps of paper, 3x5 cards of sketchy monologue, torn-open envelopes with snatches of other people's conversation scribbled on the back. Small undervalued delights.

I wanted to tell them to you.  I was going to set the scene . . .

 . . . how I breezed in, in a hurry as I so often am.  How I greet the grim-faced helmet-haired lady and the pale young man beside her: his slicked-back 1920s poet's coiff and curly spurt of chin-hair, the heavy chain hanging out of his pocket.  How even before I say anything they are wary, watchful, on guard against me, anyone, everyone.  I won't know why until I hear the whole story later in the day of how the absentee I'm covering left in a huff in the middle of last week's shift.

"Hi," I introduced myself, brisk and bright, "Are you working the desk?" 

The old lady bristles, "I usually work desk,"  drawing herself up to do battle, "Unless you have some Reason you need to?  Really though it's much too heavy for me in the back room, filling the boxes -  "

"No, no, perfectly fine. Just wanted to know where I'm needed."  Other days there are some volunteers who find the alphabetizing a little onerous, and are glad for me to relieve them, though thankfully I do not suggest this might be the case with her.  But my tone is still too bustling, and I can see the feathers are not unruffling.

So I step back to the warehouse, catch my breath, stroll around the shelves - to all appearances checking supplies but really just getting quiet.  And then come back in.

And feel glee rising in me.  Because this is something I know how to do.  It's a pity (or maybe a blessing?) that I don't know how to make this knack, this whatever it is  - pay.

But what joy in watching the transformation! As faces lose their tightness, eyes relax, open wider, begin even to shine sometimes, and twinkle.  Those intriguing pebbles full of fool's gold.  And I'm the fool that gathers them up like best treasure.

I was going to tell you how the thaw took place.  How she at length reveals she's been a nurse - her nursing degree at Missoula whose campus we both admire for its clean, wide brightness.  While she talks, the crisp white nurse's cap almost shimmers into its place on her head and I can see how her clean silvery cut still curves up in expectation of that badge of hygiene and progress.  The young man, who it turns out is her grandson, asserts and I agree that nurses in his grandma's day were certainly lovely beings. 

He loves to talk, swoopingly, dramatizing as he tells it - airing the heat from his collar and fanning his slender face, "Grandma has showed me her yearbook. Oh oo-wee! yes, they don't make nurses like that any more.  Now they all look like they're from California."

His sad and scornful tone when he pronounces the name of our neighbor state makes me laugh out loud. Which you may not understand unless you've had to live too much in the neighboring shadow of that unreflecting, water-guzzling. self-proclaimed capital of the world.  . . . Or, I suppose,  if you happen to be Canada or Mexico . . . 

But that's another tangent. 

I wanted to tell you every utterly well-scripted, self-revelatory thing they said: trenchant commentary on the undeserving poor ("Drank his breakfast, he did.  Almost knocked me out.  Did you catch  whiff of him?") - which explains the grimness with which she faces off with some of the clients.

Even if she says nothing, I can tell which ones she has no use for even before her grandson tells me why.

Though he does tell me why -- and so gorgeously: "So he's leaning up against the fridge like he was the cat's tuxedo and hectoring Grandma . . .

(who says "hectoring" any more?  And I'm seeing the sleekest Cary Grant of cat-kind.) 

. . . but when they give Grandma a hard time I can't abide that.  I was about to give him a fat lip and would too if I wasn't working here.  Lucky for him he didn't just quite cross the line."

He squares his slender shoulders.  Translucent skin and an utterly refined profile, twisting his beardlet as he talks until it curls up like a pale candle flame.  Grandma looks at him purringly, pleased to be defended retrospectively.

Though it doesn't keep him from comparing haggis favorably to Grandma's Lenten fish. 

Her only recourse is to counter with blood sausage:  "My dad used to butcher a couple of hogs and hang them whole.  Then he'd send word to the Austrian ladies who'd come and catch up every last bit of the blood. They'd work it and work it - with their hands! - while it was cooling down so it wouldn't coagulate.  It would surely make our stomachs turn, my brother's and mine, watching them." 

I love it all - the disgusted expressions of the pigtailed girl she once was fleeting across her wrinkled face, the nurse's easy and precise pronunciation of "coagulate."

They know the stories of most everyone who comes through the door. And do not generally approve of any of them.

"And so crabby!" they comment as one old grump approaches our door.

They tell me about the regular scams and outrageous demands of the ungrateful and indigent.  I make myself remember they are choosing to volunteer here, faithfully week after week, not the erratic pinch-hitting I do these days.  But I notice when I shake my head with her and then sigh, "Lots of sad stories come through that door, don't they?" that her face softens.

I wanted to tell you how he described sitting down at dinner at one of his friends': "it's like Asgard - " (I'm nodding, thinking that sounds familiar?  Famous restaurant? Or is that the Astoria?)  " - like sitting down with Thor and Freya," he finishes with complete unself-consciousness, as if everyone is on first names with the Norse gods.  And his love of all things bike - both motor and pedaled.  "Don't you ride an old school cruiser?"  he asks me.

"I do."

"I thought I'd seen you around town.  I love those old school rides."  He waxes eloquent on the lost values incarnated in Vintage.  How it's more human, more full of sweat and courage.  His close-set green eyes are freshly clear.

He starts to trash-talk the yuppie-riders who clog the roads on organized rides in their skintight Lycra - though, when I laughingly  admit I might be one of them, with a gracious wave of his hand absolves me of any guilt by association.

By the end of our four hour shift, she's confiding that this is a hard town to make friends in.

"It can be," I say.  Because I can see how it could be.

And she tells me, a little shyly, how she hopes we end up working together again.  "Oh me, too." And I tell her what a pleasure it has been for me, too, talking with her and her grandson.

Because this is one of my deepest pleasures -- this connection that can be made. And that's what I wanted to tell you.

But I never did. 

Instead, throughout all this month it was to my own marginal questions I kept coming back, " . . . it's a pity I don't know how to make this knack, this whatever it is, pay" because I realize what I really want to do with the rest of my life is wander around getting people to talk to me.  That's it. 

But do what with it?

And also, the exhilaration I  feel - which is unlike the deadened and damped down way I feel after a day . . . doing other things. 

How I feel incredibly alive (filled, fed - this grey little town we live in, this cold rainy day - bright and vivid and deeply dear) but also chagrined - who is this easy, open,  laughing, helpful stranger and what is she doing in my body?  And why won't she come home and talk with Fritz this way for me?

It's these questions I keep turning back to whenever I mean to write up these notes. 

Instead of shaping this post, I keep writing something else for somewhere else or getting up and leaving without writing, asking myself - why can't I make it pay? 

Until I begin to ask instead - Well, why can't I? 

And instead of  - Who is this person and why won't she come home and talk to my loved ones for me?,  I ask at last - Well, why doesn't she?

I keep asking myself that.

Until I think that I can.  Until she does. 

Which is, my dears, something else I wanted to tell you.

in different lights

1)

Finally the weather has turned cold and we are promised snow . . . maybe.  But no one has been complaining at this stretch of unusual sunshine instead.

I never valued sunshine much, growing up in its relentless brightness, insistent clarity, bossy cheer.   No scope for the imagination.  Gray days - when they came, which was rarely - full of heavy clouds and a kind of plummy moistness in every breath, tingling with repressed lightning - promised, by withholding and obscuring behind fog and bluster, so many mysterious - read: superior - possibilities.

It's only now, at the rainy northwestern edge of my life, that I can welcome sunny days.  I still love gray days, charged as they are with portent and urgency.  But I have room in me now to feel glad for the dumb goodness of sunshine when it comes.

2) 

- Did you hear what Z was saying? Middlest asks me, Z being a friend of hers who's been over lately, regularly, as he makes his way through his own changes.

- No, sorry.  I was busy. What was he saying?

- He was telling me how sweet you and Dad were together.

- We are very sweet of course.

- He said you were watching that thing about families and both got teary-eyed and then you leaned over and kissed Dad on the top of his head.

- I suppose we did do that.

- He says he's always wanted that.  The way you are together.  He loves watching you.  He's always been afraid he'll never have that.

- You'll have to reassure him that if we can have it, probably almost anybody can. 

3)  

If we made a talking action-figure of Fritz, it would

1. be permanently crouched in bike-position
2. come with non-removable helmet
3. say, "The hills are your friends!  The hills are your friends!"

So many times has Fritz said this, that we've all found ourselves building our lives around the saying.  Calculus, said Eldest when it threatened to do her in, - it's difficult, but it's being hard? That isn't a reason to quit. 

It's just a hill. 

And I know how to climb hills.

 

4)

I made Fritz laugh during prayers the other day.  This is my gift, making him laugh when he's decided to be serious.  We were praying together, just the two of us.  When I gave thanks for our "supple marriage," he let out a startled snort-cough and afterwards, gleamed at me over the top of his glasses, grinning still a little reluctantly, Supple?

- Yes.  Don't you think so?  Isn't it amazing when you think of all we put it through and still it's strong. Supple, not brittle.  Aren't we lucky?

Later: talking with our biking friends, a couple married a dozen or so years longer, also juggling mostly grown children and diminished parents.  When I tell how Fritz laughed at supple, the husband lets out a shout of laughter, Sounds like a tough old piece of leather gnawed down into subjection!  While she laughs, risingly. They turn to each other and begin to nod. 

He says, Isn't that the truth?

She says, I'm sure it's been me.

He says, My fair share. 

They laugh, looking into each other's faces, touching each other's shoulder, ear, tip of the hair, sleeve.  Very tenderly.  Laughing.

5)

(more tulips here)



good enough to be going on with

Things I Will Stop Doing Sometime Soon


#1.  I will stop disrespecting myself.

Yeah.  And I guess that's enough of a list for now.

Maybe we could even break it down into tinier steps ~

1. I - as in me, remember me? loyal sidekick all these years of mortality? That friendly girl in the mirror with the sturdy-looking hands?  Bridge-person. Honeybee-person.  Bright little boat bobbing along.  Remember me, my soul? 
2. will - which means "can" which means "may" which means "you have permission" which means "why not"?
3. stop - as in leave off, cease from persisting, let go of the kite string, no longer hold the line, no longer hold the lie, shrug off, surge past . . . maybe there are even more verbs waiting out there once we get past these?
4. disrespecting - This is the tricky part.  We don't mean stop caring, but do stop carrying burdens, can't you?  Stop crouching. Stop cutting down to size.  (Whose size are you aiming for anyway?)  Stop apologizing to the world at large for who you are and what your life is - haven't you over and over done what you did with the best you had in you at the time?  And when you haven't - well, you haven't.  But you  know where to turn to turn back to the path, how to learn how to mend what's worth mending, how to carry forward what will carry you through.  That's good enough to be going on with.  And while we're at it, do stop apologizing to your younger self - she didn't know what life was bringing, she likes you anyway,  she's still here holding your hand.  Start talking to the wise old woman you're going to be.  Let go and turn away from the things you do that offend your soul - latch on to the graces and blisses that make you feel alive - which is what repentance is meant to mean.  Live in this body:  respect its needs for the hill-work, for early sleep and early rise, feed yourself as you would feed a cherished recuperating guest.  Grant this mind access to the work it needs.  We mean something like that. We think. It's anyway a place to start.   
5. myself - Or just move the period over one word, eh?  Just stop disrespecting. Loose myself to run in the meadow and enjoy the promises with all the other children.

So what's so hard about that?

tongues of love, the lettered heart, and other bad translations

Yesterday, Valentine's Day, Fritz brought me white tulips - unos tulipanes blancos.  They are even prettier pronounced in Spanish.  New sounds to mean the same old thing, tongue and teeth shaping themselves around the unfamiliar words until throat and mouth themselves become the flower - la flor.

This flower-giving is uncharacteristic of Fritz, though not out of character.  Especially as no words were offered, just flowers, with a silence which is a corrective, I believe, to the too many words said lately. 

(When I am an expert in eldercare, I will write a chapter with a useful chart of all the words that ought not to be said.  Especially by those who should be taking care.  I will know what they are, because I will have said them all.)  

Without opening his lips, Fritz handed me white tulips.  And I was touched, moved even, though our hands barely brushed.  It was, if you like, I like to think, a kind of speaking in tongues.  A purer kind of language. 

Or at least, less open to bad translations.

A mother and a daughter are driving in the car:

- I'm sorry.  I'm interrupting you, 

but I just can't stop feeling this anger at everything.

- So scream.

And so she did. 
Suddenly.  And for several seconds.

A sound frightening, bereft and furious.

Studying Spanish, I find something is happening to my inner brain.  It's like I'm closing in on some deeper definition to words I thought I already knew.  As if another word for the same things allows a triangulation of the meaning. 

She hadn't known she could make that sound.
Though still she kept a steady hand on the steering wheel.

Then cried into her free hand,

little huffing, breathless, exhausted sobs.

The daughter said nothing,

made short soft pats on the mother's back.

- Thank you for making it safe for me to do that.

- Glad to be there.

- I don't feel so angry anymore.

- That's good.

- Am I going crazy?

- Not at all.

- If anyone had been driving past they would have thought so.

- They would have thought you were singing.

Very energetically singing.

Which sets them off, mother and daughter,

into whoops of gulping laughter.

There are tears in their eyes.
The daughter so wise, the mother so confused.


But shouldn't it be the other way around?

Or as if translating from one language to a second to a third helps to plot out the actual dimensions of the truth.  The truths  our words approach only as approximations.  Like playing that addictive Minesweeper.  Where you click-click-click on empty squares around the hidden target - which is a bomb that will blow you up and out of the game.   Each safe click turns the empty square over, reveals a number: how many bombs border that safe square.  Eight is the maximum number of potential bombs bordering any one square, because a square has only that many sides and corners.  It's simple.  Lucky clicks will sweep out whole areas that are safe and free of bombs, and bordering those open areas more safe squares that helpfully give you the number of bombs nearby - so that you can avoid them - after you flag them as dangerous.

It is of course about something that barely matters.
A third thing that stands in for the closer issues.
A man and a woman stand at the head of the stairs:

- So let's get rid of the dog then.

-Oh, yes. Why don't we, that's a great solution.

And the next day, standing in the same spot,
locked in the same unspeakable question:

- I've called the animal shelter and for fifty dollars

they're prepared to look at taking the dog.

- What? That's not what I need.
You're not listening to me.
You haven't been listening to me.

The man makes his way down the stairs, and in the background

their son begins to drip silent tears

squeezing out of his tightly folded face:

The son says:

-No, it's okay. If you have to take her away,it's okay.

If it's too hard to take care of everything.

Why is it so hard to take care of everything?

For example, take la escoba.  In Spanish it means broom.  Since learning it, the word will not sit still in my mind.  What? what? I keep asking it - there's a word it reminds me of, what is it?  Rushes, reeds, scouring - escoriating - that's not a word - what?  Excoriate, excoriating - as in "The candidates have publicly excoriated each other throughout the campaign" - is that it?

Probably that's what I was thinking of.

Though excoriate is from the Latin ex (off) + corium (skin, hide) - in other words, "to flay," "to strip the skin from."  And escoba is from the Latin scopa (which means, unsurprisingly, "broom") and enters English only as the scientific term scopa from the Latin scopae (plural, 'twigs, branches/sprigs tied together, i.e. broom') and refers to

• a small brush-like tuft of hairs on some insects, especially that on which pollen collects on the leg of a bee

Not so much scouring out, after all, as gathering up and carrying in to nourish the hive. 

I'm chagrined to recognize a familiar pattern in my characteristically dire mistranslation.

 

A mother and a daughter are walking out of the local WartMall:

-You know how Mila says people always  smile and talk to you
more than she's ever seen.

-Mmm?

-Well, that's why.  How you asked the check-out clerk if she had a dog

and what she did to keep them calm after being spayed.
Because your dog had you at your wits' end.

How you really wanted advice from her.

- Hmh.

- You talk to everyone like they're real people.
I think most checkers have people treat them like they're servants.
But you really care what they have to say.

- I just don't think.
I open my mouth no matter where I am.
Or who I'm talking to.   I have no appropriate filters.

- You don't see differences.
You take the world with an open heart.
I think it's good to be so open-hearted.

- But better probably to be more close-mouthed.

Silence is golden.  Discretion is the better part of valor.  How would you translate that into, say, Spanish? A buen ententedor pocas palabras bastan.  One word to the wise is sufficient? 

- Do you know what that dog means to him

right now?

- You said it was too much for you.

- I said I was overwhelmed.

- You agreed it was a good idea.

- ! I was being ironic.

Or take the Spanish phrase la carta amatoria.  I know this means "love letter" but how can it be just that?  Isn't Magna Carta booming in the background?  I want la carta amatoria to mean Love's Charter, declaring the open ways and rights of love, spelled out in sections and articles.  With room for amendments.

I want la carta amatoria to be an Anatomy of Love, a doctor's chart with every vein and muscle fibre of the heart labeled in unquestionable Latin.

- You had too much to do.

I found you a solution.

- Look, we could just as well say,

Let's put your mother in a nursing home

as, Let's dump the dog off at the pound.

Translating, see? 

into terms he'd understand?

Isn't carta a word for map? I want la carta amatoria to mean a kind of Map of Love - the kind sailors make once they're safe returned, with all the hazards they've escaped inked in carefully:  the squally reefs where they weathered storms, where their ship's helm was splashed but never swamped,  the places where monsters be and kraken writhe thoroughly charted, tight corners they managed nonetheless to sail past, the rocks where they did not founder after all.  And all the peaceful harbors clearly marked.

Something so clear, it doesn't need translation.