mumma yaga

 Mar. 11 The Cooper's Hawk, who lived on our street with her family in 2020.  April 15, 2020 Poor Rizzo!  Highway 427, Northbound, March 19, 2020, 11:50 a.m. The world changed almost overnight. Two years, since W.H.O. declared Covid 19 a pandemic on this date, 2020. I suspected it was the real thing on March 4. I did not foresee it lasting this long. I was wearing a mask and gloves in public then, because I was working at my mother-in-law's caregiving residence at the time and extended the practices from there.  It has been a silly fiasco since, with governments all over the world making poor choices, to satisfy the meta-economy, while sacrificing the poor but "essential" workers to continued poverty and illness. The billionaires and corporations went on making millions and billions while many poor people lost their jobs, or worked through covid and hardship to keep the world running. Corporations took covid relief funds and used it to line rich pockets instead of pa...

Mar. 10 Rocky and I were out early this morning; the walk was easy, the snow a hard walkable crust. Creatures' paw prints are everywhere: rabbits, little mice and a very little set, vole, perhaps, and coyotes or bobcats. It feels like a "waiting day", with clouds, disorganized, straggling east on a slow wind, pale sunshine intermittent, and a storm from Texas forecast for the weekend. Rocky and I went along the west trail today because the going was easy, and came down through the old saw meadow. (There is an old rusted saw left there for eternity.) Yesterday I saw the first vulture of the spring! It seems early: my calendar says first vulture seen April second and fifth on different years, in Toronto. The ridge stream is not to be stopped again, now that it is running free. It continues to collect melt as it travels between its snowbanks and it draws the sun's heat with its darkness, beneath the naked trees.  These two trees grew up together and formed a pairing. Les...

 Mar. 9 Dragon in the sky.  I asked for a sign. We had a thaw on Sunday and Monday. The temperature rose to 12 degrees and the creeks and springs began to run. Here is the swamp by the split rock and the plinth: later: Rocky is a good companion.  "She was there in the meadow, where the creek used to rise..." * Places where water collects melt first, as if there are small springs in the hollows.  From the top of the meadow, on our morning walk, with the west ridge on the right. Monday night it turned cold again. Snow and wind blew, and we lost power sometime around six in the morning. We started the fire and put water on the woodstove to make coffee. We had all we needed for such an emergency, so it was a good adventure. Rock and I went up the camp road in the fresh snow for our morning walk.      From the top of the meadow again: Blackie came with us up the camp road and down the meadow.  Just after I took this picture, Rocky went up over the rock...

 Mar. 2  seasons how impossible (implausible) when the snow falls around you  the sun is a pale star fields are cloaked  in white and trees are  black naked limbs reaching and it is cold and you hold to your breast the coat and wrap to protect  yourself, to remember the summer hot and the sky too bright to look at the field green and lush the trees thick with leaves you could go outside naked in the sun and close your eyes  open your arms free of the clutch in your breast. conversely how impossible when you are hot and bare lying in the grass and the forest is green and crowded on the hill, to remember the winter the cold naked trees and the world hidden under the blind blanket of snow. how impossible absolutely when you are living in the swamp with the cackling witch  where the dead logs are shrouded in a fur of moss  and nothing looks the same where the light itself is fermented and green where depression is the air you breathe damp fecund ...

 Mar. 1 Rocky and I have had our morning walk. A dog, and a human too, I guess, need some physical exercise outside, to be happy through the day, and healthy. A walk calms a dog, tires him and he is content afterwards to relax and enjoy quiet time while you get on with your day. My mental and physical health are improving too, from our daily walks. We went as far as the corner, today, and past the chicken woman's barns. ***** The Commission Near the end of January, Elf asked me to help her make a gift for her friend. A shrine, she wanted, to be a centre for meditating and other spiritual work. She had a handful of "relics" as we came to call them: items she had, or found in second-hand haunts. The challenge to create a shrine, artifact of magic, grabbed me. Elf and I began to consult; she ventured out in covid disguise to search her neighbourhood second-hand market and I searched through my mosaic stock, treasures and jewelry for things to use in the shrine.  I stopped at...