211012 Breathing October

Oct. 12

October: Thanksgiving. It was usually the last time we would go to the Hideaway, for the season. If we were lucky we went up Friday night, arriving in the dark, driving along the long, up-and-down, dirt road in from #6 to the coast, to be ferried across the bay to the cottage, in Hob's boat and ours, a weekend's worth of clothes, food, fishing rods, and a family of seven, unload the boats onto the dock. Then finding our way up the sand path in the starlight, between the furry black cedars, to the clearing and the dark cabin. Our hearts are perhaps always there. October: Halloween, pumpkins, raking leaves. Here, these leaves. They are falling now - one can see naked limbs. And yet the sun shines and the sky is blue and this is still not winter. It felt to me this morning as if I never before stopped to breathe October. It always was leaving summer, heading into winter.

That paradise is lost. as surely as Prine's, gone in time. * Gone with all that was our family, our birth and learning, And we are gone, and grey, even Matthew, my younger brother.

But here, in this distant land of old mountains and old ocean beds I have found a new paradise. A place of root and stone. I would like my grandchildren to know this paradise, to take it with them into their futures. And for their parents, our own children who never had a paradise: they could rest here, and sit in the sun, and climb a hill. For a season, or two.

*****

[ Sept.. 28

I am having a good day. It didn't start that way. I am so done with this constant pain. How do people do it? I know that there are those who have spent months and years in such pain. It seems so wrong with the level of medical knowledge that we have. I finally got stern and started to shake it off. Maybe my meds kicked in. I suggested a walk and K and I went up the camp road for a hundred yards just to see the sunlight through the trees: the ferns along the camp road have turned the pale green they were in the spring. Then I was inspired to go up towards the chicken house with the clippers and clear the winding path that was forming from our climbing the hill. I got two thirds of the way up, which is where the natural path seemed to stop.

I am sitting in the sun with my ipad shaded in a cut-in-half cardboard box. I can almost forget about the pain. I am actually working on a project: transforming an objet de fashion/clothing that I never use, but love, into something that I actually will use. ]

(12th: My apologies to the woman who sold this to me at the One of a Kind show. But I never used it in its original form, which was as a hood of sorts and a waist carrier of sorts. Now it hangs from my shoulder and has carried purse items to the store and apples home from the sisters.)

*****

[ Sept. 30

i am where i belong

(this test of pain

i did not do well was lost

no i never was lost i was always coming back)

with almost every breath one is aware of the here now

you see it, smell it in the wind

chocolate, and bread, sunshine, trees

how in the spring the frogs sang night after night sounding like a treachery of ravens at a dead thing

the way everything is real **

and how the trees are burning up this is already our second september here

k surprises me - the subaru, just like that, drive to whitby and bring it home

the way he observes the colour on the apple trees in the late afternoon sun

the way he watches the valley

... it's geese honking

three then more but it's late at night

it's like they are lost in the fog ]

*****

[ Oct. 7

The bluebirds are still here - at least four of them are hovering about the birdhouse. They must have just fledged, as I haven't noticed them particularly since returning to the vineyard, in spite of living on this porch for four weeks. They are sitting about on the house and the fence posts, and take turns flitting down to snatch an insect. ]

Oct. 12, again, still...

Robin (he's six) called on Sunday morning and I suggested we have a Zoom talk. So Robin explains it to me: "Just go to your computer and when the notification from 'messages' comes up on your screen, just click on the link and it will be my Zoom meeting." During the meeting he teaches me about the app features as he uses them. Poor Gramma, she is old and pre-digital. As if we haven't had a computer since Elf was a baby, as if I am not the Jezzmaster: a million points, 50 balls shut.

*****

The new baby, and his mother and father, are doing well. He is nursing well and getting bigger. Today while I was having a lie-down, Rain brought the baby in to lie down with me. He was soon fast asleep.

The writing is a bit broken. The pain changes from day to day, but I believe I am getting better. I need a dog - a dog would help me heal. Thank you for visiting. Be well.

Mumma Yaga

Jezzmaster: JezzBall was a computer game. Still is.

photos ...

This is the coyote under the wise witch. He ate some apples and then trotted up the west meadow.