mumma yaga

 May 23 Eddy Izzard: You may know him. He is a comedian, out of Britain. I first encountered him in Glastonbury at my cousin's house. My cousin's house was four hundred years old, flagged with great slabs of black - was it some sort of slate? The walls were several feet thick, of some sort of plastery cement. Windows were tunnelled through to the outside. The door tipped one straight onto the street. My cousin played us a video, in the days of VCR machines, and I was an instant fan. That was twenty five years ago. I saw him, Izzard, live, recently (well, sometime, just before the pandemic), in Toronto and I absolutely fell in love, though I loved him already. Izzard draws out the humour in grocery stores and the universe. But he never uses racially hurtful material, never sexist,"aren't women a drag?". On the contrary he promotes peace and inclusivity, and shares his love of the sciences and of history, humanity.  Stan Rogers: I have known of Stan Rogers less than...

 May 15 I am "being here now": looking at the world, seeing what it is saying today.  I wonder about these trees. Are they normally late to leaf, or are they dead? Or just not well and so leafing later. This groundhog was on the road when I drove out yesterday. He did not go far up the tree, but waited to see what I would do. I was able to take a couple of pictures and then I thanked him and left him before he felt the need to run away.  This tree coupling is not uncommon. I have seen several such younger trees embracing an older tree, as if borrowing from its strength.  These two are growing by the car, at least the car spot is next to where they are. Violets: Azure bluets, I realize the name is a redundancy. ***** top shelf. if you get it, you get it. ***** I have not noticed before how golden the dandelions can be. I am sure that it will rain today, although the weather stations are saying tomorrow noon. Bumblebee: We noticed that the dandelions grow in a swath ac...

 May 14 Mother's Day #1: I have always wanted to skip mother's day. My poor children were not encouraged to celebrate or express their love on this day, because I could not stand the hypocrisy of society! My objection is that mothers get no credit the rest of the year, and are blamed for everything wrong with their children. They pick up after, cook for, clean up barf (and worse) for the children, in addition they do most of the housework for the family, cleaning of bathroom, laundry, dishes. None of this brings money into the home or into her pocket. And then one day of the year, it's "yay, mom, we love you!", but not enough to ensure you have food on the table, money in your pocket. To see the value that society puts on mothering, you have only to look at the pay that day-care workers earn, while the mothers of the children go and earn enough to pay daycare and anything else that the household needs. Yup. If you add in the fact that many pregnancies are unplanne...

 May 9 I am here. I had forgotten what magic is here: the sisters in the moonlight, the old witch beginning to leaf. The blind witch is being later; she is old. I note with interest, since there are several dead trees fallen this winter, that the old witch, the hawthorn, is not a tall tree, and spreads out like a hat brim rather than grow tall and subject to winds.  The moon rose late in a perfect sky. The big dipper is high in the west. In the morning the flickers were calling in the trees. Rocky is a dog in his element. Outside, about the house he is making the rounds, without collar or leash at last. He was as good as gold at 48. He would stay on the front lawn and watch the world, like Fig, except that Rocky needs no chain, while Fig wandered. I wonder if he would have learned to stay on our property if allowed to. Rocky only left me twice in the five months we were in Etobicoke, when he went to the field by himself, and when he went off along Tyre Road for several blocks ...