Well, only unicorns because M has been describing himself as such lately, and that seems to be a fine accompaniment to rainbows. He was sitting with me during this one. As we slog through the asshole month, I have shoveled the walk twice in four days and tried to keep the temperature in control in the Bungalow. After stepping in an ankle-deep puddle at the grocery store, I felt like Spring was farther away than ever. Others have it much worse in places where such cold is not expected during winter. It helps to know that places and days and moods, as shown in this image, exist. Stay warm, y’all. Oh, the weekly poem will be a day late again this week.
Daily gratitudes: The little old cart man at the grocery store Finding a kindred mermaid spirit Hot, deep baths Warm, snuggly Mr. Man Oatmeal with blueberries
Quote of the day: “From my earliest memories, I was one of those who wanted to go places. When I couldn’t go, I would have my dreams about going. And, such wild dreams were seldom conceived by any other child.” — Anna Williams
One thing you didn’t know about me: I can’t tolerate horror movies. I don’t even like the energy of them in my house. I know they’re fictional, but one of the things I’ve learned in the life is that if someone can imagine something, then someone’s probably done it. That opens the door for all manner of terrible acts and all sorts of terrible people to commit them. I’ve probably watched four modern horror films in my life: Halloween (the first one), Nightmare on Elm Street, one from the 1970s or 1980s with a dummy (maybe Child’s Play? Or Magic?), and Jeepers Creepers 2, which I watched by myself in the Cottage alone late one night for no reason that I can fathom. I like bad sci-fi B-movies from the 1950s but those aren’t graphic — they’re more silly and psychological.
That’s it. That’s all. My mind always seems to go to the mothers of the children or teenagers terrorized and killed in the course of horror movies. I take horror movies personally and to heart, even though I know they’re just movies (and not snuff films, which I remember my Boston boyfriend telling me about as we took a walk in the Mews one early spring day.) It seems horror movies don’t bother most people (including K), and for the life of me, I can’t understand that. But… True crime is another thing entirely. It makes zero sense that I can manage true crime documentaries — in fact, immerse myself in them, as I did yesterday. These depict actual events that happened to actual people and you know that these kinds of programs try to make you feel the horror that the victims felt. Why do I find that more tolerable? I have no idea.
Yesterday, it remained too cold for anything, so I watched ”The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel,’ followed by the ‘Night Stalker’ (not the 1970s series, but the Netflix series). It passed the time., It also creeped me out to realize that one of the two Hillside Stranglers lived in Bellingham in the late 70s, and went to what K tells me was known as the ‘Murder Bar’ in that college town, a bar that has hosted the likes of Ted Bundy and the D.C. sniper. What draws serial killers to Bellingham? And to one particular bar? And why did K never take me there when I visited? Those are all thoughts for another day.
I know that many people find serial killers fascinating. I suppose we want to understand their state of mind, the rationale behind such brutal actions. In doing so, we can assess our own minds and (hopefully) reassure ourselves that we are not capable of such acts. It reinforces our belief in the good within us, that we are not monsters. At least most of us aren’t. Creepy.
I’m likely talking to most of the U.S. now. It’s cold. Here, right now, it’s 0 degrees and the sun is starting to set, which means it’s just going to get colder. Being a woman of a certain age, I keep the house cold anyway, so cold that K and M both feel like they’re in a meat locker when they’re here. It helps me sleep because I can get super snuggly and toasty warm. During the day, however, when sleep is not an option, I’m working under two blankets, my feet encased in Muk Luk fuzzy socks, and my insides warmed by mugs of tea.
That’s the standard for the Bungalow. Today has been an exception. In defiance of my upbringing of keeping the house cold, I’ve turned the heat up to (gasp!) 64. That’s kept my hands warm today, so I haven’t had to resort to fingerless mittens for computer work, as I did yesterday. It will be a challenge to keep the Retreat warm, because the ceilings are so high, but we’ll manage somehow.
When it was bitterly cold on Friday night, the Black Angus cows were covered with a coating of frozen snow, clustered together for warmth. I could almost hear them wishing that they were allowed in a house (not a barn) to warm up. My original Colorado house was across from a small ranch, run by a single little old woman named Charlene. I wanted to K to grow up with cows and horses visible from the big front window, and I succeeded. Charlene passed away a few years back, closely coinciding with K’s departure for college, and the HazMat crew was called out to demolish her small house. Apparently, she was somewhat of a hoarder, and I know that she would occasionally take her winter calves inside the house to hand raise. them. That’s what all those cows the other night wanted…to be hand-fed into front of a toasty fire in a warm house.
My Facebook memories are rubbing my nose in the cold today, as usually M and I are somewhere tropical and warm at this time of the year. So I keep seeing images of Belize, of Abaco, of Cozumel, of Costa Rica, pop up. I’m grateful that I’ve had those times, and we’re happy that we’ve dodged this kind of weather well the past four years. It’s worth it to be here as we continue to shift to the Retreat.
Stay warm, my friends. Here’s the dreaming of tropical beaches.
She stole out from the shadows of the trees Into the light of the moon and the sea Abandoning herself in unseen turquoise Letting the slow waves Sway and carry sway and carry Dipping beneath the darkness reaching and seeking only to find That the treasure was herself.
Because I have spent the last ten hours editing, I don’t think I have a post in me, but I do have Mary Oliver’s poem “Angels”, and I want to share it with you.
Angels
You might see an angel anytime and anywhere. Of course you have to open your eyes to a kind of second level, but it’s not really hard. The whole business of what’s reality and what isn’t has never been solved and probably never will be. So I don’t care to be too definite about anything. I have a lot of edges called Perhaps and almost nothing you can call Certainty. For myself, but not for other people. That’s a place you just can’t get into, not entirely anyway, other people’s heads.
I’ll just leave you with this. I don’t care how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s enough to know that for some people they exist, and that they dance.
Daily gratitudes: Chicken noodle soup A warm house Sweatshirts That Mr. Man forgives me for the disasterous attempt at using a saline nasal spray on him
Astrology: yes or no? Believer or scoffer? I honestly am not sure. I’m a Cancer (I hate saying that, because it sounds like I’m a disease). And I could be the poster child for Cancerians: a sensitive, ocean-loving, moonbeaming, moody, wanderer — well, not the wanderer part, because Cancers are supposed to be homebodies. Other than that, I suppose there’s some validity to it. I studied up on it quite a bit, along with herbology and palmistry, during my esoteric semi-hippie early days in Colorado.
It was also terribly in vogue when I was in high school. There seems to be a resurgent interest among K and her friends, which makes me wonder if it’s something that captivates us at that cusp of adulthood, that perhaps we hope to gain understanding of and direction for ourselves as we gaze into a future shrouded in fog. Because of her, I’ve developed a renewed interest in the subject.
Back in the days of yore, the go-to astrology text was Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs. I gave K a copy for Christmas a couple of years ago so she could see how things have evolved since the 1980s. You wouldn’t think astrology would change, but it seemingly has — becoming more detailed and specific. I did have the pleasure of staying in Linda Goodman’s former home in — who’d have thunk it — Cripple Creek, Colorado, which had become a Bed and Breakfast. And a haunted Bed and Breakfast, no less. I was in town for a ghost adventure at the former jail (and an adventure it was, may I say) and made the mistake of telling my hostess at the B&B about it, which led to her having me go into the basement to see what I could pick up from a ghost perspective (also an adventure). The next time I went to town, this particular B&B was closed; the ghosts may have been too much for her.
I’m a fan of Rob Brezsny’s astrological divinations and musings in his Free Will Astrology column/email. Having just googled him, he doesn’t look like what I’d expected, but he looks exactly like what an astrologer should look like. Who really knows how sound any of it is, but I’ve found his insights and predictions to be pretty on track over the last ten years or so. He also seems to tap into a certain esoteric level of rational thought that I very much appreciate. I’ve enjoyed his book Pronoia, which also amused a crew of market researchers who visited my house some years back to interview me on my love of Toyotas.
K has introduced me to Co — Star, which is an app instead of a column, but I guess that’s what all the cool kids are doing these days. It’s very specific, based on one’s date/time of birth. I (of course) know my birth date, but am not so sure of my birth time. My birth certificate doesn’t list it and my folks are somewhere in the stars themselves now, so I can’t ask them. But I’ve made my best guess in the hope that, whatever this app produces based on birth time, close enough is close enough. The little astrological messages are somewhat cryptic, which is both good and bad, but intriguing and make me ponder. For example, today’s central message: “A tongue that lacks self-control is a fire.” That one is pretty self-explanatory. But the “Dos” and “Don’ts”, I’m not so sure of: Dos: Ice cream, Sunshine, Venting. I don’t have ice cream and there has been very little sunshine today, but yes, I have vented to K. Don’ts: Clutch pearls, Pathos, Narratives. Not a huge pearl-clutcher, but it could have happened during the venting; not really expressing Pathos (took care of that last weekend); and Narratives….? Well, I guess this is one, so that really should have been part of the “Do” list.
On the purely pragmatic side, I love the stars themselves. M and I have a wonderful memory of driving to Santa Fe one dark night before Christmas when we first started dating, and we’d never seen so many stars. That memory still stands, even after seeing nothing but stars during a power outage in Costa Rica. And on the anniversary of our first date, we drove up to a meadow in Gilpin County and froze ourselves sitting in the bed of the truck watching a meteor shower. But anyplace under the stars with him is perfect. My horoscope said nothing about being sappy.
Daily gratitudes: Fingerless gloves The woman who crossed herself before driving away from the Emergency Room My marvelous niece who has a birthday today The new way Mr. Man snuggled in last night
This should be a poem. I feel a poem brewing in me, but it hasn’t steeped enough yet to be birthed. So I’m putting fingers to keyboard for a half-version — a “po”, if you will. Something that expresses the sentiments without the lyricism.
Depression has been a constant companion for me in this lifetime. I’ve done all the right things — therapy, anti-depressants, herbs, diet, exercise — and 90 percent of the time these days, I keep it at bay. But when it comes on me, it comes like an avalanche, and I don’t have an avalanche beacon and I’m buried under tons and tons of weight. I always dig myself out. Always. Because of promises I’ve made. Usually, it’s bad for a day or a night, a short, yet tolerable length of time. This bout has been particularly vicious.
I haven’t slept well in four days, plagued by nightmares (a rarity for me), hot flashes (also something that hasn’t happened in years) and thirst. I mourn for everything — people, opportunities, choices — and cannot find solace in the many blessings and joys in my life. I yearn for sea breezes, for a future without a set date, when we are settled in the Retreat for summer and living on a beach during the bleak, cold, grey-brown of winter. This darkness has been my companion for two days now, which is not long in the grand scheme of things, but feels like an eternity while I’m in its midst. Digging oneself out from under an avalanche is slow-going at best.
Tears come easily and of their own accord, triggered by nothing, something, everything, Not in a deluge, but in a welling, a prickling in my eyes, half-formed (like this po), and unwilling to spill. I find myself inconsolably lonely, grieving the past and the people I’ve lost.
I say a prayer each night, that tomorrow will be better, but so far my prayers are failing me, falling not on deaf ears, because that’s not how prayers work. Which means there’s something I am supposed to learn from this. There’s always a lesson, isn’t there? Some are just harder to puzzle out. So I force myself to eat. I have some sweet warm tea. I take a shower. I do a load of laundry. I sort through some clothes, setting some aside for charity. I do 100 sit-ups. I change the sheets. I look for words of comfort in random places. And I find the merest crumb of peace. I scan the darkening skies for a metaphorical dove with an olive branch. And I hope for a better morning.
“The happier the time, the shorter it seems.” So said Pliny the Elder in the Year 105. I don’t know that I agree with this statement. Time and I have been curious companions since my teenage years. The events that are most clear in my memory are those in which I found myself most present — giving birth to my daughter and watching the passing of my mother. In those instances, I was more conscious of the here and now than at any other time in my life. My mind didn’t fly off on tangents, thoughts of what to do next, or old memories. There’s a lesson in that for me, a lesson of being completely present at all times, and not lost in my own head, as I am so wont to be.
For decades, I’ve considered myself something of a time witch. I often can slow time down if I’m late for something, though I’ve not mastered the ability to speed up time when something is unbearably long or dull. I’ve experienced interruptions in time. Like seeing someone walking into a pool at the hot springs, and then seeing them ACTUALLY walk into the pool. These kind of things are disconcerting, but not upsetting. They make me question the linear concept of time, as well as the reality of what we perceive.
Most physicists maintain that the future does not exist because it hasn’t happened yet. I know next to nothing about physics, having only been instructed in it in high school by a former nun who played the fiddle. Besides, my mind just doesn’t work that way, perhaps because of my skepticism about such things as time. Ex-Pat always said that logic wasn’t my strong suit. I disagree. Scientific logic, while provable, does not take into account the mysteries of our existence.
There are so many things that are inexplicable in this universe. Why do we recognize people whom we’ve never met before? What is the origin of those dreams that are so vivid that we wake up physically feeling an item in our hand that we were holding in the dream? What happens to our spirit upon our death?
These sorts of experiences that have no real connection to our present-day lives speak to the possibility of so much more than linear time. They suggest parallel realities, past lives, fractures in the fabric of time. Can we live in the past as well as the future? Will we someday understand the root of such mysteries? I think we must let go of our own rigidity and our fear of the unknown in order to accept such flexible realities. That’s a huge challenge for most, and not one that I would even know how to start investigating. Just like how some of us completely lose our sense of direction in some places, as if our internal compass has been tossed out of the car window (but we’ll talk about that later). For now, I’ll continue to play with time, as it plays with me.
Island time is another well-known phenomenon that I’ll discuss in a future post.
I echo Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s feeling on the month of February, so well expressed in his poem “Afternoon in February”. The first stanza reads as follows:
“The day is ending, The night is descending; The marsh is frozen, The river dead.”
Trust me, it just goes downhill from there, ending with the line “Like a funeral bell.” You can imagine.
This February, in particular, is rough. I have finally reached a point of being fed up with not being able to go out to dinner, shoot pool, have a drink at a bar, cater a wedding. Colorado, too, seems to have changed its tune wind-wise. We’re having chinooks in February now, instead of January, and as stated in yesterday’s poem, I’m just not a fan of the wind. M told me when we met that he just thinks February is an asshole. I always thought that was January; he’s now converted me.
But to be peppy and upbeat (which really is not me all the time), here is Seasweetie’s Positive February Thought List:
The days are getting longer. It may not seem like it, but I can judge this well, because we usually drive back from the Retreat right around the same time. A few weeks ago, it was full dark by 5:30. Now, we can enjoy a longer twilight, which also means more deer spotting and cautionary driving, but it’s gently beautiful.
There are fewer days in the month. That’s nothing new, but thank the heavens for it.
Valentine’s Day. Yes, I know it’s sappy and trite, but I love it anyway. I like giving presents and while I don’t need an excuse to do so, I enjoy having a little celebratory reason for it. Besides, the origins of Valentine’s Day are fascinating, with not one, but TWO Saint Valentines being beheaded by Claudius II, and the christianization of the pagan celebration of Lupercalia, a fertility festival. (I suspect they dropped the goat sacrifices, the whippings, and the drawing of eligible young townswomen’s names from a giant urn to find mates for the men.)
The occasional sense of spring can be felt if you pay REALLY close attention to the feel of the air.
My twee-woo bird is back. I don’t know what kind of bird it is, and I’ve actually never seen it, but it always comes back as a harbinger of spring, like the swallows returning to Capistrano (which supposedly happens on March 19). It has a very distinctive call (hence why I call it the twee-woo bird) and I like to think it’s singing just for me.
I’m anticipating that I might see a few green shoots of something (snowdrops, grape hyacinths, crocuses) on a walk this month.
We’re one month closer to getting into the Retreat full-time than we were one month ago.
Of course, usually by this time, I have a plane ticket in hand and am making packing lists for somewhere warm and tropical with turquoise water and white sand beaches. But everybody knows that when you buy a house and start to move, you become house-poor and that lasts for at least a year. Such is the case with us. We’re having to do things like figure out fire mitigation and snowplows, and home improvements for the Bungalow and M’s house, so I am facing the reality that I won’t see an ocean until July. I’ve been blessed by being able to travel as I have, and it will happen again. Just not this spring. This spring, I will have beautiful hikes and slight sunburns and deep snowfalls and good music and a few perfect days. Let’s just get through February.
Daily gratitudes: My stir-fry Leggings with pockets Dancing My neighbor’s chickens Carrie, the wonderful lady on the phone at the insurance company, who didn’t mind that I cried, and started to cry with me.
Wind whipped her, Flailed her, Sending fragments of her to flight above The captured clouds Walled in Behind the mountains.
Reminded her of a fairy story, A morbid favorite of her childhood In which A magician whipped a sobbing young woman as they flew on the winds, punishment for some now forgotten trespass.
That rude wind that No matter how many bright sides she tries to find Always Just always, Beats her body Fights with her soul Shortens her temper Makes her long for some gentle soft breeze Ruffling the palm trees On a far shore.
Instead, the cruel wind sweeps her inside To sulk in hot water, Soothing her spirit in the cold west, And listen to the chimes being blown in the night.
Daily gratitudes: Hot water Soup Good choices by elected officials That the quasi-quarantine is keeping us healthy
A Writer in the Pines 