August
After a time, pain becomes defining, it becomes who you are: I am exhaustion. I am pain. One examines the philosophy, the sociology, the spiritual dimensions of pain. One attempts to escape it, tame it, defy it, deify it. Anything.
Trying to retrieve dreams is like chasing bubbles; the moment you grasp them, they dissipate. People gather to examine everything I've done wrong, all my mistakes. A long, dark corridor; a black dog; a puff of dandelion.
august heat
the roses
bloom again
After a time, pain becomes defining, so that even in dreams one is in pain, or astonished at the lack of it. In dreams, stairways become mountains, or, the opposite – one dances gracefully, painlessly, in a cloud of gratitude for the ease of it.
Walking the dogs, grasshoppers keep crossing our path. They are huge. The dogs ignore them. The air, hazy yesterday from forest fires, is clear today. Blue air. Dragonfly.
sun at the bottom
of the pond ~ the goldfish rise
to the surface
Yesterday, Abigail came to visit, and brought me a brioche. After some discussion with my internal parent, this is what I had for dinner: a cup of cocoa, and a brioche.
This morning, walking the dogs, an eagle flew upwind & upriver. Fighting the wind, it hovered in front of us. I wondered, is it eyeing me? Eyeing my dogs? (It is so difficult to resist making the world be about oneself.) For a long time, it hovered there, then plunged into the river and came up -- fishless.
Today another friend comes to visit from far away. Yesterday spent clearing surfaces of mail, magazines, books, long-lost & scattered notes. Pointless, really, as he and his partner are considering buying here, so will soon enough know my daily chaos anyway. Add illness to a messy & readerly temperment, and one has this disorderly mass of paper, plus dust, plus cat fur and the odd buried hair clip. I become the spinster crone.
There was a tiding of magpies in the park this morning; young ones, I think. One caught my eye, then flew directly at me and rolled in the air about six inches from my face, showing me its lovely belly. I did not flinch, wince, cringe . . .
(Digression: flinch, wince, cringe -- aren't these lovely words? They feel in the mouth and ring in the ear as exactly what they mean. To say wince is to wince. Clench -- there's another one. )
How did I know that this youngster was not attacking me, that it was only saying good morning? How did it know that I would welcome its greeting?
What cues do we read in each other to recognize no danger here?
I float through my days on a soft cushion of medication. I am in a big blow-up raft, high, and dry, and well away from deep water. I focus on minutiae -- the foam bubbles at the surface; reflections of sky and trees. Softly up, softly down, the current carries me where it will.
At mid-night, startled from a dream, I open my eyes to the glare of the full moon.
September
This
is what I woke to the other morning -- a raccoon managed to bend the
iron bar with the 'squirrel proof' bird feeder and bring it down nearly
to the ground (it usually hangs at the same level as the suet feeder in
the upper right of this photo.) It also managed to get the lid off of
the galvanized steel bucket that holds the feed -- and bent the entire
bucket so out of shape that the lid won't fit anymore.
[Note: I say "it" not to deny its personhood, but because I don't know if it's a girl raccoon or a boy raccoon.]
It also left raccoon prints at my neighbor's house/ building site -- I'm glad for that, since I briefly feared it might have been a bear. We get bears in Missoula, but not generally this far into town.
Now I must come up with a more raccoon-proof feeding system. At least it did not get any of the pond goldfish.
rain, and a dark moon
a nuthatch breaks seeds
on the limb of the lilac
Everyone is settling in for winter. Sparrows, chickadees and nuthatches fatten on autumn berries and my offerings. A neighbor who is moving to the edge of town (up the Rattlesnake) bear country, brings me squirrel and bird seed she cannot put out at her new home. This week the roof went up on another neighbors' new house.
The past few evenings, as the dogs and I walk along the dike above the river, we startle three beavers -- one! two! three! -- into the water. Great splashes! By now, I think they are not startled; they know who we are. They know we are coming, and that we will pass without harm.
Still -- Splash! Splash! Splash!
rainy nights
cool mornings --
summer's end
In the park this morning:
I watch a dipper harvest the riverbank, until it sees me and skitters off.
A park worker cuts sod to enlarge the volleyball court.
Five geese seem to argue about which direction to go -- two want to go west; three want to go north. After a time, west wins.
Crows, magpies, ducks. Bees and grasshoppers. Crabapple trees catching fire.
Much pain and fatigue this past few days. It is hard to see the world around me.
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