I lost my glasses -- the good ones -- in an ex-Soviet Pioneer camp outside Darkhan in northern Mongolia. I was dancing with the school kids on the pavement outside the dining hall, and I just had them hooked over the front of my shirt. Hopefully some child picked them up and put them on and is now stumbling around looking cool and somewhat dizzy, dealing with the bifocal effect.  That's how they worked for me, which is why they were hooked over my shirt front instead of on my face. I think the spare, not-so-good ones are in the top bunk of a sleeper car somewhere on the Trans-Mongolian railway. Those, too, had served me well, but for three bucks I came up with an identical pair at OSJL. Now it's only a matter of time before I dig out the old prescription to replace the good ones. But I'm enjoying kidding myself that I don't really need them.

Mongolia is not a place I would have chosen to visit. The circumstances that took me there are complex and emotionally charged, but it was unquestionably important for me to go. And, well, now I've been to Mongolia, right? So that's kind of a starting place, and now it's back to life as I knew it, except that life as I knew it now seems to need to be taken by the scruff of the neck and shaken a bit. Also, I think I need to learn some Mongolian. That's going to be very difficult, and the reasons why are even harder to explain. But suffice it to say that it's not an experience to be put behind me; it's more of an introduction, and there again not entirely of my choosing.

Ah, well, it's past my bedtime. I think I'm over the jet-lag, but when I close my eyes I still see those weird rock formations and the Argali skulls and the broken vodka bottles glittering in sparse greenery fighting to survive the chronic overgrazing of huge herds of goats and sheep and cattle and horses. In some ways it's romantic, and in more ways it's absurd. Perhaps, with contemplation, it will still balance.

Garlic Chicken

I was bouncing a tennis ball off the roof and the dachshund was trying to catch it -- really sort of feigning enthusiasm, because at best it seemed to bounce exactly where he wasn't , unless it hit him in the head. I was having fun, and discovered when my right arm got tired that I really can't throw left-handed. It was sort of like that alien hand syndrome, and I swear the thing was wired to somebody else body -- probably the dachshund. And as I tossed the ball, I gazed over the roof at the tops of the redbud maples flowering on the other side of the house. "This is weird", I thought. "Astronomical Spring has no bearing whatsoever on the onset of real Spring weather. Stop it." Oddly enough, this time the weather failed to heed my command. The buds are swelling, the chickens are savaging the garlic, and I've been raking the lawn and doing all that middle-aged male puttering that usually can only happen seriously in late April. Uncanny, but nice.

Anyhow, it's supposed to snow in a day or so. We'll bury all this hyper-ambitious vegetation under an appropriate layer of white, refreeze the muddy roads and prepare to do it all over again in a few weeks. I'm even managing to contract a bit of a cold in order to properly humble myself before the return of the Frost Giants. Not something I like doing, mind, just as the season traditionally dictates.

Here's something that Spring brings, too, the weather notwithstanding. We have our first goat kids. Dear old Rose manged somehow to produce quadruplets who thus far are all surviving. The effort took a lot out of her, and she has very little milk, which looks fairly grim for the dairy portion of the agenda, but hopefully that will come on with time. It means lots of bottle-feeding, either way. The economics are entirely unsound and the hours are tedious. That's what Spring is all about, Charlie Brown.

Okay, now I'm thinking about Creme Eggs and jelly beans. Must be time for chores.

Late night writing

Fortunately, my father is a patient man* as regards my blogging, or in this case not blogging, habits.

Meanwhile, I’m temporally challenged at the moment, and not just in terms of blogging. I’ve been convinced since noon today, which is now yesterday, that tomorrow, which is now today, is Friday, which it is not yet, even if you live in Australia.  This wouldn’t be such a problem if it were any other days of the work week that I was confused about. However, if it was Friday it would mean I would be playing pipes in Much Ado About Nothing, then working most of the day, then speeding around like mad packing for my travels and checking out my residents’ rooms, then going to a party. Whereas for Thursday I’m merely supposed to go to class, work on proofs O_o and play bagpipes. As you can see, getting them mixed up in this case could be rather humiliating. I think I just desperately want it to be Friday, or even better, Sunday, and this is my unconscious way of trying to get there faster. And no, it’s not all due to yesterday being a leap day.

I can never decide how to approach time. Fortunately, it doesn’t give a damn. I like to imagine that if time had a physical human form it would be a rather chubby gentleman/lady who laughs A LOT. How could you not laugh if you were Time? Constantly surprising people and seeing their faces when they wake up one morning. I guess Time wouldn’t make many close friends because if you’re time it would just hurt too much after a while.  Either way, talk about interesting people to have over for dinner. But that’s all just hypothetical because I find the idea of Time having a physical form besides existence itself, (or something) hard to believe.

Also, here's a nice song by Tegan and Sara which many have probably heard before.

* But not when he was trying to teach me math… Still, for that I cannot blame anyone but myself. I believe I made ‘glassy-eyed’ into an art form. Sadly, I haven’t changed much where math is concerned, as I fear one of my professors will be discovering tomorrow. At least now though, I try. (Sorry, dad).  

can't be spring

For two days now I have thought that I heard a Red-Wing Blackbird. It's early for that, but not impossible. Try as I might, however, I have yet to confirm a sighting. Today when I thought I heard the call, I was midway between the woodpile and the house with an armfull of wood. I took it on inside, and grabbed some binoculars. Once back out in the yard, I followed a black silhouette of a bird from the top of one tree to another. There was the call again, except that it wasn't quite right. It was kind of wimpy and strangulated. I've heard Bluejays imitate hawks in order to scare other birds away from the feeder. So I wondered; was this just a wily faker tossing off a bad approximation of my favorite harbinger of Spring? Or perhaps just wishful thinking on my part? I watched the candidate bird through the binoculars for the longest time, messing with the focus and trying desperately to steady my hands enough to catch a ruffle of feathers that would expose the white and red epaulettes. He was just at the furthest range of effectiveness for my glasses. That much I might have seen, but not much more. He wouldn't fly, he wouldn't flash, and he wouldn't call.

Well, this is February, isn't it? In the turning of the year, it's really the middle of nowhere, the middle of nowhen. Gardeners are perhaps planting their alliums. My goats are looking large and pregnant. Trouble is definitely brewing, but there's still a lot of winter to hack through. It might even snow -- not that I'm hoping it will. Some people loath this month. I don't mind it so much, because I always notice how much warmer the sun has become if you can stand out of the wind. And I think, okay,  it's going to be all right. It's definitely warming up again. The days are longer, the stars are different. If you stay up late enough and ignore the cold, it can look like a summer evening out there in the sky.

Besides, time goes by so fast. Last year went quickly; this year is even more headlong. And here I am, running pell-mell down the slippery slope of February in oversized boots, looking back behind me and heading for a tree. Just wait, now -- oh, yeah. Just wait for March.

Is Ice Another Word For Snow?

It was another one of those lovely mornings graced by a slick layer of ice, school closings and delays, and having to hazard another vehicular ride down the hill, regardless. But I like the school in the morning when nobody is there. It's warm, it's quiet, and it's reminiscent of when I used to work nights. If teachers stayed on too late after the kids left, I would sometimes suggest to them that it was time they went home as well. I would point out to them that everything would still be there in the morning and they would want to be as fresh as possible for the returning tide of children. This often brought to their faces a look of dark and quiet fear; the realization perhaps of the fact that nothing they could do in that evening would prevent tomorrow morning from coming.

Except possibly a snow day. Or an ice day, which is the hallmark of this particular winter. We've had several. One morning when I came in, fully expecting that I would have the empty building to myself, there was already a teacher there. The auto-alert system had failed, and she had missed the follow-up call because she had needed to leave earlier than most since she lived so far away. She sat at her desk,  tears running down her face. She explained that she usually went running every morning, so she could face coming into school. She hadn't been able to run that morning because the road was too slippery.
   "Love your job?" I asked, none too kindly, I suppose.
   "I hate my job!" She said emphatically. "Day in and day out, trying to teach these little fuckers! The kids hate me, the parents hate me..." She choked back a sob. "I'd better not say any more." Then she swallowed and looked over her shoulder at the projection on the white screen behind her desk. "I'm learning all the countries of the Middle East. Somehow I never got around to that before."

One of the things I like about working at the school is this cat that lives in town, with some residence adjacent to the school. He's a hefty cream-colored fellow, and I've known him since he was a kitten. One evening (sigh...when I still worked evenings), I looked up from my work vacuuming a classroom in a room slightly below grade, there to see this half-grown cat watching me. As I pushed the wand of the vacuum back and forth over the carpet, he followed my actions with the full motion of his head, back and forth. When I saw him watching me I thoughtlessly stopped and laughed out loud. He looked startled and hastily ran off. In subsequent years, he continues to patrol the grounds, always walking a route around the school building. When I come in to shovel snow before the kids arrive, I will invariably see his tracks ringing the building, passing every exit, under every window. When he was a kitten, he had a brother, a black and white fellow with a bib. I know this because they used to travel together and I asked their owner, a middle schooler in town, what their names were. She told me and I forgot. Wanting to have a name to call them by, I asked the middle schooler's mother for clarification. She looked at me quizzically. "We don't have a cat," she said. I don't know what ever happened to the brother. Probably the kid's mother doesn't know, either.

2012

I told my mother that my New Year’s resolution is to embrace my dark side.

She was not amused.

I hope you all had a good holiday, Hogswatch or other. As dad waited despairingly for me to post on here I got distracted with Various Things. Now though, it’s the eve of my return to college for my final semester and I could expound at great length about being 21 and having the world and my fingertips* etc. However, the speakers on the computer keep making a strange hissing/spitting noise even though I’m not on any site or program that has sound anywhere. (I did stumble across a site with an eerie tune floating around it while I was looking for good pictures of Shelob** but that was a while ago). I can only assume that  it’s aliens trying to communicate with the household.  They’re probably really looking for my father, who has always had an affinity for outer-space types. They will be disappointed as he is (wisely) sleeping, and I really feel I ought to log off so I don’t accidentally say or type something offensive. Best to leave first contact to the experts.

Still, I would like to wish everyone the best in 2012, belated though I may be.



*Student loans aside
**Being an RA doesn’t put me in nearly as many strange situations as being a piper does, but it has its small moments.