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.

Happy Hogswatch

We have once again immersed ourselves in the annual ritual of watching the film, "Hogfather", and I can only say that it has left me feeling comfortably grounded. It's not a cure for the yearly personal plunge into misanthropy, but Pratchett knows people without (apparently) disliking them -- as a species, anyway. He has a way of making straight sense of the swirling contradictions, which only send me into a tailspin of outward-spiraling ... disappointment. I am, I think, ready for the eggnog.

The light coating of snow helps, certainly. Not so much for instilling the holiday spirit, because the shoveling and slippery roads and wall of post-precipitation cold are just winter and nothing new or inspiring. But it's a dark time of year, and the white just makes it lighter. Probably a measurable physiological effect, and in that belief I drive down the road refusing to put the sun shade down so I get a double dose of insolation. Of course, it makes it harder to see oncoming traffic, but I come out of it that much more cheerful.

And then there's the ritual. Every year I look up in advance the Earliest Sunset, Solstice, and Latest Sunrise (in that order -- I crave order), and mark them on the calendar.* Then I mark the progress of the light, count the days and try to keep my bearings through the mad howl of the OTHER holiday ritual -- the expensive, highly sweetened and emotionally-charged one.** And then I watch "Hogfather"+, and I listen to Death's explanation for the necessity of belief++, the clever perennial deception which allows our species to build a safe framework in which to evolve, and I have some hope once again. The manifestations of that belief may be some of the most dangerous things we can inflict on ourselves and our biosphere, but on those rare occasions when we manage to get a handle on WHY we believe, perhaps we can turn them to the good.

That's my hope, anyway. So a Happy Hogswatch to all.

*December 8th, December 22nd (for we on EDT), and January 5th
**Yeah, there's the religious bit, too, but I'm just not a fan. The metaphor is so hopelessly muddled, it doesn't really say anything to me.
 +Don't worry, I read the book first.
++Not just deism and such -- big stuff like justice and compassion

Interlude

This is short because it is late, and I am tired.*

No poetry, I haven't a poetic bone in my body. I leave that to dad. He writes awesome songs too, you know.

Whilst trying to figure out how to begin this post I tried the old trick of closing my eyes, opening a book, and letting my finger fall on a random word.  I landed on “me,” which was singularly unhelpful.

So here’s me at the moment. Bulleted.

• ·         Tired
• ·         Happy
• ·         Excited
• ·         Pensive
• ·         Distracted
• ·         Stubborn
• ·         Looking forward to Christmas and the New Year

Honestly, why couldn’t it have been a word like “police”?  That could’ve been fun, but no cheating. 

Happy Gigantic Winter Party everyone!

*Not as tired as some people I know. All I have is post-finals brain. I haven't stayed up 'til five in 3 months, clearly I'm doing something wrong.

This is what happens...

... because Willa just can't be bothered to put a post in here. This is a poem I wrote because I get up too early and don't take enough naps. And a Vogon friend of mine said he quite liked it, so I thought I would share it. Really, Willa, you need to write something here so I won't do this again.*




                 Dawn  11/30/11

Because I know the patterns
of the brighter stars,
when dawn breaks through,
below the cloud deck
and above the spikes of fir
and winter-naked cherry,
it's clear to me when cousin planets
wheel around and bend the lines
we draw for constellations.
Saturn visits Virgo, paired with Spica;
Mars in Leo,
all for an eye's blink
of cosmic time.

And I, in early pre-light,
have seen them,
glimpsed in one fragment planet-dawn.
In another moment:
The sun has risen,
the clouds covered,
the moment gone.



*someone, please, stop me!!

Snow Guys

When my kids were small and the snow was right, we went through a phase of rather elaborate snow sculpturing. Sometimes they were the classic fortresses, but if so they were more decorative than defensive. It was always more interesting to build towers and bridges. And significantly more engaging than that was the construction of snow guys. They had to be snow guys, because "guy" was really pretty non-gender/non-species specific. Bizarre was good, taller than the builder was almost inevitable. I seem to remember horses, dragons and any number of Calvin and Hobbes-inspired creatures sporting extra appendages and large teeth. Once the temperature started to drop and the construction-grade snow was refreezing, I always enjoyed looking out over the yard full of our handiwork and imagining some sort of life there -- static, albeit; a moment of alternative reality frozen in mid-expression. But all that energy put into their creation, how could they not somehow embody a bit of life, even if it would never express beyond their moment of stasis?
          The other morning I went to the barn to do chores, only just awake. And it was just after 5:30, so there wasn't much light -- more from the waning moon than waxing dawn. And whether it was a residual bit of dream from the sleep I'd just left, or some other inspiration from still having a soft night brain, the sight of the horse walking the fence line anticipating her breakfast suddenly made me ask the question, "Why life?" Well, I guess the obvious answer is "Why not?" And since I'm neither a philosopher nor a scientist, I can't really have an informed opinion. But it was amusing for me, because the minute I was watching this horse, I was also thinking about the Big Bang*, and all that energy starting from zero and endlessly dissipating. And when I considered it like a clock running down, each moment somehow less energetic than the previous moment (however time might be quantized), that was when I found myself marveling that life would trouble to be at all. Like gravity drawing matter together to form stars, galaxies and planets, is life as easy and predictable an expression of the aging universe as any star? Life is a medium for burning energy, after all. And the universe specializes in this, although admittedly it works against itself, what with that endless expansion business. Then there's that whole embarrassing mess with Dark Energy** which lends more than a little desperation to the scenario.
         Well, I've thought enough about that for now. It's clear why religions are so popular amongst so many members of our species. Sometimes I crave those boundaries, too. And sometimes when the snow falls wet, and it's just right for sculpture, I'm suddenly seized by a knot of creative energy -- who knows, maybe nudged to coalesce in me by a random wave of Dark Energy. And I'm inspired to dress up and go outside and build a snow guy -- a great huge snow guy, taller than me, with multiple heads and teeth like daggers. And when it looms all menacing and ugly in front of the gate, I'll pause for a brief meditative moment, hold my breath and feel its moment of frozen reality. Scary stuff, indeed.


*Dull, dull, yes, but what's in a name? -- well, in this case, everything (as it were)
**Yeah, we're good with names.

To Market

I spent a fair portion of my day yesterday piping at a local Farmers’ Market.  It was pretty awesome. I was just busking, but the citizens of Troy were kind and either way it was certainly quality practice time. 

I got more than money, too. I garnered a bag of fresh, lovely greens, and the vendors across the way who were from a local orchard gave me a bottle of cider and an apple. Best of all, a very young boy, who signed his name “John,” drew a picture of me*^ piping and left it in my case. That’s definitely going on my wall.

I also met a very nice relative of mine, previously we were only known to one another via the magic of the internet. It was, all in all, a very rewarding morning.

Farmers’ Markets, and particularly this one, are great places to watch people. There are the people who don’t seem to see or hear you, the people who shuffle by looking guilty, the people who nod stiffly and avert their gaze, the people who smile and enjoy and drop a bit of money, and the moms and dads who I watch out of the corner of my eye as they put a dollar bill in their 3 year old’s hand and make the familiar gesture to my case, “go ahead and drop it in. It’s safe.” ** To all of them I extend my hearty thanks, they all provide something.

Then there are people who come up and start dancing and clapping, which is interesting and entertaining, or people who try to talk to me while I’m playing assuming, I think, that I can talk because my mouth is free,***  unfortunately for them, I cannot. It takes all my powers of concentration to summon even the phrase, “thank you” while I’m playing. To do that I have to tilt my head to one side so all my remaining free brain cells can roll together in order for me to form an understandable word. Even so, whatever I’m trying to say still sometimes ends up rather garbled.  More often I try to stick to nodding and smiling. No matter what some of the hardcore feminist authors I’ve had to read lately say about women smiling too much, I still feel that it's a pretty good way to get you into, or out of, almost any given situation, or at least make it better.****^^

*I’m assuming it was me anyway because I was the only person there with pipes; I have super-cool purple eyes in the drawing. 

^Oddly, this is not the first time this drawing thing has happened.

**I try not to look too scary when I play, it was easier in this case because I was using bellows pipes.

***These asterisks are to represent all the dirty jokes I didn’t make here and that you may be thinking.

****Unless, for example, you’re a little kid and you’ve just accidentally set the house on fire, a situation where you’ll almost definitely smile and where you definitely shouldn't do so when you have to go explain to your parents.

^^ And I don't mean smiling in a "womanly wiles" way. 

Island

I've spent a bit more time on the island lately than I probably should. Every time sit in the boat and push off from shore, I feel a little twinge of guilt. From somewhere low in my stomach, it spreads up through my chest and out my arms as I start to row. But soon the effort of powering the boat and holding course drives it away, and by the time I scrape bottom at the island, I'm only thinking about pulling the boat onto the beach and making my way to the hut. I'll want kindling, and a fire; fresh water and coffee from my stores, and a tin of something salty and food-like. I will eat, clean my dishes, and watch the fire until the stars come out. Then I 'll sing the three songs I know; the tragic one, the happy one, and the sad one. The flames will flicker down to coals, and I'll retire back into the hut and dream myself awake, and wonder when and where I left the island. And where did all these people come from?
     There are a lot of us, aren't there? Many individuals, yes, and small groups and large groups; clusters of belief and bastions of defense. I was watching the Canada geese on the neighbor's pond, and they seemed to be doing the same thing. There were posturing geese and conforming geese, geese with mostly family matters on their minds, and geese that seemed to be trying to drum up a following with load proclamations and preaching. Conflicts, of course, although nothing deadly as near as I could tell. I don't know what they were saying, because they're geese. But you could see ideas rippling among them like wind on the water. (That's a goose simile, which they don't use because it's very cliche. Obviously.) And predictably enough, most of their conversation would have to concern the fact that they were all, without exception, assembling there at the pond with the full intention of leaving and going South for the winter. Lucky geese.
      Today for the first time this season, the weather man has threatened us with "significant high elevation snowfall". I'm not happy about this. Only this morning I was reading in a gardening book about growing winter vegetables in an unheated greenhouse in a zone 5 climate. I was excited about this, and I looked out the window at the cold rain falling on the remains of this year's garden and suddenly I felt very, very tired. I don't want to garden now. I want to rest up for next year, whiling away the winter with the seed catalogs and watching the swirls of snow drifting over the barely discernible bumps of the raised  beds buried somewhere there below.
     And when I'm tired of that, I'll make myself a cup of coffee and retreat to one end of the couch. Some dog will jump up and curl into a warm, snoring doughnut shape against me. And I'll cradle the hot cup and close my eyes and push off from shore, dipping the oars into the water with just a twinge of guilt. Before long, I'll be well away. And soon enough, I'll be back on the island.

People

Hello there,

It’s been a while and dad’s done double duty in my absence. Many interesting and wonderful things have happened to me since I last posted. This piece though, is just a small thing.

I walked by a woman the other day on my way to class. She was sitting at a picnic table under one of those giant cloth umbrellas that may or may not be called giant cloth umbrellas, and she was smoking a cigarette and staring reflectively into the distance.

We had actually worked together, back in the days when I was a (somewhat reluctant it must be admitted*) worker in the college's catering business.  Only a couple times however, enough to justify comfortable eye contact and a smile, and at most some pleasant small talk. Today was no exception, I had decided she was too deep in thought to try an initiate contact, but just as I was about to continue on my merry** way she spoke up and said “gorgeous day isn’t it?” To which I made all pleasant and necessary responses until we’d thoroughly discussed the glories of the weather and made our farewells.

Of course it left me wondering what she was really thinking about while she was sitting there. It really could be anything. I remember when a friend of mine asked me what I was thinking because she said I was looking very intense and far away, or something along those lines. I replied, with some enjoyment, that I had been thinking about how much I like bagels.

So what had the smoking lady been thinking about before she decided to appreciate the weather with me? What she had for lunch? Her significant other? Her daughter? Pain in her left foot? The weather? Politics? The question of why anyone would make a smurf movie?

I haven’t the first notion what was going through her head. Or anyone else’s. Many people cause me to run along this thought pattern. Not the ones who obviously have some sort of agenda. Anyone with platinum blond highlights, high-heeled fancy boots, lots of large ugly jewelery, a giant handbag, perfectly straight hair, and  brand name clothing I generally*** am not as interested in. But people who have obviously seen something of life that changed them; parents, bag ladies, bus drivers, in short, anyone who hasn’t had an unusually easy life, intrigues me to an extreme. Sometimes, when I’m not totally wrapped up in my own small and wonderful**** life, I wish I could stop all those people and ask them questions, with no awkwardness or worries about time and social rules, and not just discuss the weather. And don’t even get me started about passengers I see on the bus*****…

*It was the uniforms that really got me, and I spend a significant amount of my time running around in a kilt…

**Approximately, I was probably on the way to documentary class, which I enjoy. I probably wasn’t whistling though, so on a scale of 1 to 10 for merriness I’m going to guess I was around a 4.5.

***I do form some opinions about people based on their clothing, I admit it, and on their bearing. In fact more on bearing I’d say. However I’m perfectly willing to change my opinion about someone if I get to actually know him/her well.

****Well, I think it's wonderful, but then, I'm biased. I'm also using the word "wonderful" a lot lately.

*****Many of them it probably wouldn't be a good idea to talk to. Some telepathy would be useful here, but not too much.