Week 7 - 2022

Days 45 - 51

14 - Snow blindness

Using the batter
rejected then stirred and baked
making due with less

Interjected. Rejected. Reunited. Spur of the moment decisions lead to irrational stretching. Day by day the icicles grow longer and the mound of roof snow grows taller. Like clockwork, another storm is on the way. Like clockwork one problem leads to another. We watch it happen in real time on the largest stage imaginable.

15 - The high tunnel blues

the art of mental
is it sickness or genius
or the two combined

Never thought we would have to harvest snow for water, but here we are, and there it is slowly melting inside. We were supposed to have a system in place by now, but things being as they are... delay. Winter delay. Pandemic delay. Life delay. 'It will happen eventually' is becoming a mantra that I would rather not repeat daily.

16 - Mine your own business

the books of mica
hillsides covered in quartz chunks
rock-hounding again

Missing adventure. Planning adventures. Canceling adventures. Rejiggering adventures. Getting our hopes up only to have them dashed away by circumstances. Sometimes I'm okay living with it, sometimes I lose my mind. Hard to tell which state will manifest the next time we're faced with the great rejigger. We've lost our sense of time, and maybe of selves.

17 - Shortened by syncope

in how many years
do you forget to follow
the winds of past lives?

The grief is tucked away tidily. It is carried along through life one day at a time. It never goes away. Some know/experience more grief than others, but everyone will experience it one day. It is a fact of life. It is a fact of living. Circumstances altered irrevocably. The burden is inevitable. There is light in grief. It is a slow burning flame. It is recognition. It is love. That we have love, give love, take love, lose love, in an unsyncopated rhythm is the dance between hope and hurt. Sometimes it overwhelms in its synchronicity.

18 - 100 For

do ordinary
people respond to approach
extraordinary?

There are ways of being that presuppose the cut-and-dried. The moonlight sparkles in freshly fallen snow, and sways in strong breezes. The commonplace cuts through BS like butter. We let them go to seed and multiply - the more average the merrier. The common dream is commonly ignored, it's too prosaic, routine, run-of-the-mill. We want low viscosity flow.

19 - Don’t Step in the Tracks

searching to witness
without questioning the why
searching deep within

The stillness and quiet of winter has seeped in deeply. It's hard to overcome inertia. It isn't stuck-ness. There is a surprising amount of fluidity in stillness. The other morning I caught a cottontail war on the bunny cam. Charge, leap, stare. Charge, leap, stare. To human eyes there was no clear winner. And then they disappeared along with a gradual change of seasons. There is always something new to see in the trees freshly thrown into green.

20 - Turbid mohawk toes

The ordinary
day to day chores and headaches
cutting my toenails

The feet are in the forefront. Standing tall, taking it in stride. Piss and vinegar. Sloughing wildly and sweating in leather. Make do make strong make janky come alive. Willowing. Waddling. There's a lot of waving outside. The dog is barking more deeply now that it's neutered. Strange sounds at the fence at night. Coyotes or creepers one never knows. There's a blinking light in the distance. Trouble or troubled or aligned in sight.