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Mid-January, Rain - January 13, 2012
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Saturday, Noonish, Sunny - November 05, 2011
October, White - October 31, 2011
October, 2011 - October 04, 2011


June 26, 2011

8:37 p.m.

Thrush Sunday

A little rearranging of furniture in the living room helped today. I'm rearranging my head a little.

The wood rick finally got emptied -- one good piece of hickory left, some light deadwood that burns in a flash, and several pieces of the unburnable poplar -- one of those logs put OUT two fires in the woodstove before I gave up on it. The rick itself went into the basement, and I reclaimed the space between the two doors. Everything else on this half of the shoji screens got relocated, and it feels good.

I managed one more load of laundry today and a couple of errands. Some pruning of brush hanging over the driveway. Mowed the path I cut through the rye into the center of the garden for my coming-home ritual last week. I want to keep it accessible. The rye will brown soon, I imagine, and fall over or become thin and seethrough. But it's cool to have this circle in the middle where one can sit and contemplate... if one ever takes the time to sit, which I haven't yet.

My interactions with Teller opened some doors into my soul where I still found pain, so I'm (leaving them open but) shutting the front door gently. He's clearly not the person with whom I should be contemplating intimacy, if there is any such person at all. But we do enjoy our movie nights, so if fortune favors (a phrase Karl and I have adopted instead of the wrongly-used "hopefully") and if he's not unsettled by the nice email I sent him on this subject, those should continue as planned. Meanwhile I cried and cradled some old wound, or some current loneliness, and managed the day as best I could. How I miss having someone to stand next to, closely, to hold hands, to feel comfortably bonded with, to flirt in the realm of the unknown with. (Fuck the prepositions at the ends. Who cares?) How intoxicating it was, briefly, to entertain that and even to step into the room.

That might be why I didn't get a whole lot done today, but I certainly didn't sit doing nothing.

Smidge brought in a little baby turkey this afternoon, which she had already dispatched. Poor thing. It was still warm, and I put it out at the edge of the meadow, building a sort of log crypt around it so she wouldn't trouble it again. Voles are one thing, but a turkey... I love the birds, and they're no threat to anything here. Of course she doesn't distinguish, and this will happen sometimes. The loss of a bird makes me very sad.

In better news, the thrush, or a thrush, is back. It's been a little maddening so far -- I've heard it on a few different days, but every time I dash outside to hear it better, it STOPS. It sounds a little different from last year's, so I wonder if it's the next generation. Was it born and fledged here? Where do they go in winter? Why do I only ever hear one per summer? In NH, at the colony where I did the retreat a few years ago, there were many in the woods. How ethereal they sounded, echoing over the miles of forest. I'm starting to distinguish more bird calls here -- I saw a robin singing along in a tree a while back and never realized what a wonderful call they have. Now when I hear one I know what it is. Likewise the cardinal, and just a few others. And then there's Gus the rooster at Hil's, crowing in the distance. I suppose my peace here will just be disturbed when I install the chickens. I don't think one can do without a rooster in this place.

Karl is utterly overwhelmed at work and with home projects, and nothing is really getting done here that he has been long-term planning. The upstairs bedroom has been torn apart since September waiting for him to run conduit in the basement and rewire the upstairs. The brush he pulled out with the tractor weeks ago to make room for the chicken coop (not begun), and the trees pulled down there -- everything is rerooting, and the forsythia is coming up everywhere, even where it wasn't before. It's largely my fault, that corner, for not getting the chainsaw out and cutting the tree into manageable pieces, hauling the small brush across to the burn pile and continuing to mow behind the house. And there was nothing stopping me from mixing up a gallon of R0undUp and spraying the gobs of poison ivy that's coming in everywhere. But did I remember to do it? I have the same continuity issues that he has, maybe without the anxiety. I wish I had help, though. Two people can make jobs like that much less tedious and daunting. I have a couple of friends willing to do yardwork with me; I ought to just call them and plan a work party next weekend. I get thinking I can't ask anyone for help, but I can really step out of that box if I just pick up the phone.

It's bedtime now, though. The angel isn't telling me to go to bed, exactly; she's just sitting quietly, looking at me with understanding. I don't know how she knows about loneliness, but there it is.


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