It’s Sunday here.
A day of rest.
Frankly, I’ve been resting all week long, it’s been too hot to work, there is/are:
*the issue of a heat induced eczema flare up on all the fingers of my right hand (keeping me awake at night even though I’m sleeping with ice packs on my hands)
*the fact that by noon every day my studio feels like a furnace (and I’m not a Shadrach, Meshach or an Abednego — it’s scathing and rather killing in there)
*perhaps a sort of creative apathy here has me barely keeping my head above water, I can’t even sketch, lifting a pen to write or putting a camera to my face takes so much effort — I have these spurts of emotional expression dropping into metal but nothing I can sustain…
*a trio of dogs who insist on sleeping directly on top of my feet which is very sweet and snuggly but far too warm
*cold baths, too many to count, in the middle of the afternoon, every day
*long runs in the heat of the day (why do I push and punish myself like that?), dipping my head in the spring creeks along the way, up to six times over the course of nine miles — I have to run, there are so many things I need to distance myself from right now, the pace creates space…
*a forecast of thunderstorms — oh I pray, I pray!
*RW over in Oregon leaping out of planes into wildfires — remote and smokey, drifting about on up-air like a graceful jellyfish
*daydreams of the high country, snow capped Sawtooths, frigid mountain waters
*daydreams, I daydream so much these days, possible realities seem locked up in my mind and heart, I play them over and over, dusty pantomimes in my right brain that hold the promise of sparkle and gleam
*the slow and steady hunt for the perfect, gutted Airstream trailer
*the slow and steady hunt for the perfect, gutted Airstream trailer
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I’m ready for winter. If it snowed tomorrow, I could die tragically young and happy.
I think of sitting in snowbanks, cheerfully brushed all over by ice wind and early nightfall.
Doesn’t that sound delightful?
Even turning pages of a book takes so much effort.
I feel stifled.
I am stifled.
I yearn for tundra.
Somewhere North of here, the snowshoe hares are thinking of turning white,
a squirrel is prideful about his caches of nutty debris,
a bear is fat on carrion and blueberries.
I’m drowsy with the rouge of heat.
This weather just won’t do.
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Even in the heat, there is clarity:
I keep realizing, repeatedly, that some things are just plain ridiculous.
There’s no point in taking them seriously.
So I don’t.
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In the meanwhile, the parlor is the coolest place to be.
Rhubarb is chasing skittering seashells across the floor, the dogs are passed out on
area rugs and the breeze has picked up, billowing the curtains like spinnakers
and I realize the cool is coming
in the rain and lightning, in the turning glances of fall,
in the promise of snow, skis and short days.
We’re in the calm before the storm now with huge dark clouds looming and hinting at wrath above us. Let it rain.
Oh, let it rain.
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