Week 4 - 2022

Days 24-30

24 - Misaligned and out of touch

Welcome back the sun
that emits the scent of sage
and renews the Earth

Something in my shoulder went offline. The disconnect leads rapidly to distraction and exhaustion. Hoping for relief with cups and heat. After two days it clunks back into place, more relaxed but still twingy. A month later holding cloth overhead for several hours it starting to ease offline again. A lack of precisely placed makes for poor working conditions. Scratching things off the itch. A temporary reprieve from the jackhammer gets us overly excited. Snow fall means playtime outside, another distraction in the always playing catchup game. When I fall out of practice my fingers forget how to move with alacrity. They are as sluggish as the pandemic puff body, and maybe equally puffy. The slow crawl back to some semblance of life is proving more difficult than initially imagined. We have learned to cherish the cloudy days, but always welcome back bathing in the light.

25 - Two states of water

The Ho! Ho! Ho! is
tempered by oh! oh! oh! and
a scene of new fears

We have friends that live on high wires. I don't know when I started calling them friends. These friends are hawks. We say hi every time they are out as we drive by. I'm not sure when we started thinking of them as friends, they just are. Friendly or not. There is one that stalks on the neighbors flagpole eyeing the cottontails, pocket gophers, and field mice. Who may or may not also be our friends. If the friendship is one sided is it still a friendship?

Maybe what i'm feeling is more of a kinship - a family-ship. Hello, I'm here and so are you, can we happily coexist? When I look out into the wide open my eyes race back to closer to home to pick up the nuance in the machinations of the desert. The smaller becomes necessary to understand our place in the larger space of things. We must tread lightly and always step in the dead center of the ring muhly.

26 - Surrender to the cheesus

Stuffed poblano meal
making most of dairy pause
worth it for pleasure

The morning starts with a surrender to carbs with a hint of zesty goodness. A reprieve from a surrender to ordinary. It is time, past time, to get back into regularly scheduled. Everything these days seems to be A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT WITH !!!!!! but an extra exclamation is not piercing the pandemic pea soup. The murkiness is barely penetrable, even by snow angles in fresh blower. Obviously been mired in the malaise for far too long when I can't even remember the word hamper. My clothes are still waiting to be put away, and the thin clouds are slowly parting. Only one green light was illuminated this morning but it was more of a flashing yellow in scope. Spoiler, it was not a fried dough ball.

27 - Marginal views

Twenty twenty two
starts in a new planner now
what change is ahead?

Feeling left behind by my own self. The blur out the window is a drive by surrender. Was that a piñon or an Afghan? In this case size is the tell-all tall tale of growing slowly under persistent drought conditions. They have a long view that we do not. That may be our un-doing, mired in the technology that could otherwise save our simulation. Don't observe too closely, it might hurt your brain.

Twiddling our thumbs for more snow and snow play time. Feeling betrayed by a stiff body puffed. Ticking things off one by one consolidating in one ear and regurgitating out another. They'll roll away unapologetically when the hammering gets too loud. There will be simmering to the point of boiling over watching the bunny eating snow. When 1+1 = 50 there will always be another to dig a hole to soak in the sunshine or hide in the shade.

28 - Eraser nose meet tongue-o

Around the fire
watching the logs burn and snap
waiting for the snow

There are certain soothing sounds of a fire that make me nostalgic, wistful, or warm - swoosh, crackle, snap... the slow roll of cinders falling. These are small magics in space. Hauling in firewood is a collaborative effort that doubles as a cozy balm. Meditative staring and warming bare bums in front of the fire is in our future.

I haven't been this excited for snow and extreme cold temperatures in years. The excitement stems partially from a lack of shovel. It's pointless out here. I'll just drive down the driveway several times in 4WD, and call it good. I would rather spend my time stomping through the snow, watching cottontails bounce, and following coyote tracks to see how close they pass by the house. Closer than I expected. It's all a process of learning and becoming part of the patterns of the desert in winter.

29 - Puff of magic blow

First real winter snow
biscochitos and zoomies
winter fun begins

When you observe something closely what seems static is in constant flux. These slight shifts please the senses. That salt bush over there, wasn't that a cowboy yesterday? Hallucination or observation? The two are intricately linked. Weather weaves in weekly obfuscating the familiar. Grand vistas require a special kind of attentiveness. Sometimes the attentiveness is exhausting, sometimes it is exquisitely insightful. These insights are more vital than any toxic self-care regimen whiplashing densely packed neurons. Are we really suckers for superlatives or just ten years too late? The desert is a ghost story - otherworldly and deeply familiar. They appear only in fragments, fragments that do not always seem to connect from our view in the dust.

30 - Following animate tracks

Omicron surges
cancelling the New Years fêtes
so done with all this

How many times can the disruption of flow happen before you completely break? How do you break when you are already broken? There is tension in joy. There is surrender in joy. There are breaths that you forget to take in the budding of joy, and ultimately in its release. Joy is eternal and ephemeral. It is an entity of vast temporal and spatial dimensions. We don't know what it is in the first place, except it is here. There. Everywhere.