Saturday, January 28, 2023
In bed at 9:30, up at 10:10, unable to sleep, off to recliner to open my laptop and read and at some point nodding off, back to bed at 12:10, up at 4:55 &let Lilly out into the 15 degree darkness with wind chill at 5 degrees, wind 7 mph NNW, expected to range from 4 to 14 degrees, gusts to 22 mph today and a high temp of 22. Sunrise 7:11, sets at 4:58, 9+47.
Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. You can take the boy out of the Church, but you can't take the Church out of the boy. Irish Catholic variation on a lot of other 'you can take --- out of the ___, but . . ." sayings. Reading an article on monastic practices in the latest New Yorker ("Eat, Pray, Concentrate," 1/30/2023) reminded me of my Kitty candle, the votive candle I bought for myself after I sent another to Kitty to keep her company during her sleepless nights and to remind her that her brother was always with her. I've been focused this past week not only (though mostly) on Tom's death, but on losing him within the same year as losing Kitty. I light my Kitty candle in the early morning hours when I am awake before dawn. This morning I lit a Tom candle along with my Kitty candle and also burned a cone of frankincense to watch it reduce to ash, to dust, in pulverem. "We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
FB post this morning: "Reading on my laptop this morning, I saw an ad for what appears to be a handsome overshirt that reminded me of my friend Tom St. John. His many other friends will know why by the words that are printed on the front of the shirt: "That's what I do - I fix things and I know stuff."
LTMW and wondering if there is a predator hanging around in our trees, Cooper's hawk, Red-tail hawk, falcon? I filled up the tube feeder with black-oil sunflower seeds yesterday and it remains filled today. No visits from chickadees, sparrows, red finches, woodpeckers, et al. Not even an acrobatic squirrel. No visitors to the full suet cake out there either. OTOH, nothing seems to scare off the goldfinches from the niger feeder. Que pasa?. . . . 20 minutes later or so, just saw a snowbird/junco land on the tube feeder, but s/he seemed to turn up its nose at the sunflower seeds. I hope I haven't put nasty seeds out there.
Cheap thrill, or a very expensive one? I find all the I43 freeway construction that's been going on between Silver Spring Drive and Grafton kind of thrilling (teaching for the right word.) I am just so impressed by it -- by all the planning, all the scheduling, all the coordination, all the procurement, all the required joint human effort it represents -- I am just really moved by it, like a little kid, like I was when Emerald Avenue during my childhood was torn up for sewer replacement. I wonder at times if I'm in a minority to experience all the traffic disruption as thrilling, excited contemplating the finished product. I think at times it's a cheap thrill, till I remember this is a $500,000,000 project.
Chantal Ackerman, Dis-Moi. I watched this on the Criterion Channel this afternoon. From a French tv series about grandmothers. Ackerman interviews old women who survived the Holocaust, including her own mother. Very Ackermanesque. Each old woman reminded me of Mary Oliver's line "I see each one as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular."
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