Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Re entry

We are back. We repeatedly hold the cat up to our ears, listening for the ocean. Her purring will suffice. I just found a CD of Pacific Northwest ocean sounds - it too will suffice. We will go to Florida in March for the ocean there, and it will remind us of the sentiment we found on the Hawaiian islands. Sentiment chipped in volcanic rock by ancients, pictures of their inner lives. Sentiments etched in the sand by sea birds, shore birds, turtles and surfer girls. Sentiments brushed across the firmament in washes of silver and bronze at the end and start of days. Reflections of our faces in eyes moist with rain or something like it.

I have returned to fiction. Reading it. I am reading too many magazines that are no longer inspiring me. My inner life is lonely. I picked up a book recommended by my dear cousin Liz. The book was at first tedious, pretentious - a bit like me and my inner life - the book bloomed and I found myself lying late in bed this morning to finish it, relishing the language and glad of the writer's ability to voice the sentiments I have been unable to.

I am watching soft snowfall. The flakes vary in size from black oiler sunflower seeds to millet seeds, and are perfectly white and blue and gray. They remind me of the randomness of the crows at Loring Park coming in to roost at dusk, but those forms are black and the sky struggling against a rising moon. The sky this morning is a light leaden sky resisting the sun. All the snowflakes and the crows resisting gravitation. The larger flakes almost look ridiculous, wafting around with such substantial girth. They seem improbable, and I cannot look away, until Carolyn enters to say good bye.

Goldfinches just outside are eating from the feeder affixed to the window. Several of them have startling lemon patches at the coverts and throat. They all eat with jubilence and conviviality. I would have expected desperation with all the snow cover, but they seem pleased to share, until I tilt nearer to see them better and they scatter like the snowflakes.

Now a downy woodpecker has taken their place and is gorging, the tiny tip of its bill fitting easiliy and precisely into the small aperature meant for thistle estraction. Hers is a deft exercise, while the goldfinces are a little more brutish, stabbing at the opening in such a way that they sometimes miss altogether and strike the plastic tube or the metal guard around the opening.

There is always striving and acceptance of what comes, instead of what what expected. My heart is full these days with gifts of unexpected pleasures - a book, fat snowflakes, excellent chestnut flour chocolate chip muffins, a love, and more work.

This blog was originally intended to be a place where I could freely scrawl my thoughts. I find that as people have found it and read, I am inhibited. Although I am grateful for the compliments, I am also missing my unselfconscious times with this site. So it will go dark public view in a week or so. I'll continue to write here or elsewhere, but for myself again. Thanks for reading.

2 comments:

twinsetellen said...

Ah, I'll miss the poetry, even while I completely understand. Thanks for ending on such a sublime post.

MarkN said...

Take care, dear friend. Thank you for writing; your insight will be missed. I understand the "inhibited" notation.