Three bluejays were triangulating their coordinates around a birdseed bell that Andy had hung in the backyard. We’d been expecting the squirrels to commandeer it like they did in a matter of hours when we last hung a seed bell there, but the excessive snow may be acting as a deterrent. Better than greasing the string I suppose. The blue jays make for a prettier scene anyway, their plumage matching the sky and bringing some badly-needed color to the surroundings.
On a day when that pesky and infuriating groundhog saw his shadow – six more weeks of winter supposedly – these bluejays flitted around the backyard, giving me hope that spring is indeed on the way.
This is by far and quite easily the best news of the year: the first full trailer of ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2′. The teaser snippet didn’t have me entirely convinced, but I’m fully on board for this one now, which looks to be lighthearted, visually-stunning fun, with perhaps some gravitas acknowledging the twenty-year gap since the first film. A lot can happen in two decades…
As the full Snow Moon subsides, we clean up the aftermath and begin another week again. That’s life in winter – getting walloped by the weather and getting back out there. No matter how frigid it gets, we manage to do it. We are accustomed to it. We are fighters. We are strong. Here’s the weekly blog recap…
Full-moon fuckery abounds, as the Snow Moon casts its winter spell. Drivers have taken entire leave of all their senses, most especially the common kind, weaving dangerously into traffic like they’re the only ones on the road, or slowing to an inexplicable crawl of indecision and flawed safety judgment. The moon is also wreaking havoc with technology and what limited engagement I have with it, such as my phone, which is telling me the photo storage is full and then not allowing me to delete any photos. (The phone is over three years old so Apple clearly wants me to step into their next model and I just can’t with Apple right now – talking to you, pedofile-enabler Tim Cook.)
Frustrating, yes, and an opportunity for learning acceptance of bullshit – something absolutely necessary in today’s fucked-up world. That we should have to accept it is another question for Job – though I’ve forgotten the specifics of that story, if I ever knew them in college. I’ve referenced such things as ‘Waiting for Godot’ and ‘Waiting for Huffman’ whenever I’ve had to wait for anything, without knowing what happened in either. Empty facades make the best facades – one doesn’t want the mask to land with a thunderous thud. Better to have it slip lightly away on the wind, a will of the wisp flitting like a spark and disappearing before anyone can be sure it was ever even there.
And when you’re done, when you’ve re-aligned yourself and acknowledged where you are, and where you might want to be, get back in the game. Get back to your life. Get back to your family and friends.
The sun has started staying out until I get home from work on office days. A good sign. A sign of progress, seemingly slow progress, but progress nonetheless.
‘Nonetheless’ – a somewhat strange term/word, and I wonder if I’m even using it correctly anymore. It’s one of those terms we sort of assume we know, but never really delve into what it truly means. I don’t feel like googling anything today. Nonetheless…
My silhouette stares ahead of me – I view it from behind and the sun is behind me – or am I viewing it from the front and my face is literally a blank space? Is this a super-villain or some tragically-masked anti-hero? Every few months I find my silhouette, and it’s often in the winter, usually late winter, when tree limbs are still bare and sun enters the house unobstructed. Sun not blunted by summer foliage – how bizarre to find a clearer version of the sun in this Winter Obscura.
The blank face of a ghoul, some demon exposing itself through shadow, the way some things only appear in peripheral view. Ghosts or visual spiders – or did I make all of that up? Silhouettes tell multitudes of slippery stories in hushed whispers, in whispered prayers.
In the words of the wise Rose Nylund, “What’s Irish and stays out all night?”
“Patio furniture!”
Here’s a look at our snowy patio furniture after fifteen inches of snow fell on us starting Sunday. It’s still falling out there as of this writing, so there may be a bit more by the time this gets posted.
According to folklore, and depending on whether the reader readily believes any of it, the smoke from a Palo Santo stick is said to smell especially acrid to those who have the most to cleanse. When I first started using Palo Santo, I found the scent of the smoke challenging, but not disagreeable. Over the years it’s wavered, but mostly I enjoy it now.
Last night there was a sourness in the smoke of the new batch I lit. As much for the newness, as for what has been weighing on the mind of late, I’m afraid. To offset the world, I find it best to up my meditation time. Gradually, just a few extra minutes a day, until we make it out of the winter wilderness.
The Palo Santo always smells sweeter in the spring.
Sometimes it bleeds gray, drained of hue, drained of shade.
It’s hard to find much hope when we’re still in January.
Still, I follow the light. It shifts, it slides, it changes ever-so-slightly.
When the sky begins getting that Maxwell Parish glow, and the clouds look painted when the sun hits them in the afternoon, I know spring is on the way. Maybe not arriving tomorrow, maybe not next month, but not long thereafter.
“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
There isn’t much more to say about the past week in this country – a country I no longer recognize, as much as I am unsurprised by where we are. Most of these silly posts were programmed in advance of recent days, but there are a few that address it because our silence is our complicity. People may not like political posts, but when politics become a question of morality, it is our obligation to speak up. Now, a look back at the previous week, when just a few days ago things felt only slightly less awful…
A post of pause upon the murder of yet another American citizen by ICE.
Hey MAGA, didn’t many of you vote for Trump to protect your 2nd Amendment rights? Well, the government just shot and killed a man for legally carrying. They took his gun, THEN they shot him, point blank, multiple times. It’s on video and we can clearly see what happened. They are treading on YOU.
Sitting down to a cup of peppermint herbal tea, still scalding hot and sweetened with just a spoonful of honey, I would normally send out a volley of texts with the photo you see here, captioned simply, “This is cafe culture.” A silly and foolish way of staying in touch with friends.
Today, it feels pointless and stupid and too sad to do such a thing, as our own government just ruthlessly murdered yet another American citizen on our own soil. Watch the video and see for yourself; don’t listen to the media or the White House at this sad point.
You wouldn’t know it here in the sanctuary of a cafe. The staff still serves its coffee and tea and food stuffs. Clients still find their friends and sit down amid laughter and bonhomie. Talk of football, snowstorms, and the typical winter banter spills out from other tables. Because really, it’s just another Goddamned day in America, and this is what we supposedly voted into office. Well, not me, and not most people I know, but too many to stop what some of us knew was coming. Here we are.
And so I pause.
I read. I sip tea. I meditate.
Selfish self-preservation, because no one seems to care.
What’s important is that I’m here, sitting in the cafe, honoring ritual and tradition and carving out a new set of habits to see me through the winter.
These words are mostly hollow and empty – vapid vessels that give my hand something to do in pushing pen across paper – and it’s good, it feels good. There is joy enough in physically writing, in finding the flow of letters, slowed in my head for having to write them all out. Writing, in its physical hand-wrought form, is becoming a lost art, and a favored indulgence.
At one of my early jobs with the state as a Keyboard Specialist (now called Office Assistant) I remember the head Secretary (now called Administrative Assistant – we have come so far!) being given something to type out, and the person doling out the assignment asked somewhat sheepishly if she would mind typing it out.
“No, it’s been a while since I got to do straight typing, and I kind of missed it,” the Secretary said.
I understood exactly what she was saying, how good it felt sometimes to execute a routine, especially one at which you excel and do well. Going through such physical practices can be soothing, almost meditative in a way.
There’s a similar feeling I get as I write out these words on lined paper. It is structure, it is order, it is ritual – all at a time when those things move further from comfortable reach. Most of all, it is a process – and I’ve always loved the process and the practice more than the result and finished product.
The little pockets of time in which humans sometimes have to wait have always fascinated me – and I usually attempt to make them mean something more than the killing of time. What an awful phrase and concept – killing time. I’ve always hated the expression, as time is one thing I’ve genuinely valued, perhaps more than anything else.
When given a time window – for furniture delivery or furnace repair or that hour for letting a batch of cinnamon rolls to rise – how do you prefer to spend the minutes? While I say I’m going to read or write something, more often than not I simple pause and let my brain roam wildly, recalling all those other suspended hours of waiting – the day I waited for a new bed in Boston, watching th sun slowly pass over the hardwood floors – or the morning I spent in the waiting room while Andy had his most recent medical procedure. Losing myself in thoughts is how I spent those moments, and a little philosophical exercising is good for the mind.
