Ether Bunny

the hutch

 Two herons fly from close to water , at least one goes up over the red covered bridge. Fifty degree temperatures and bright sun. Nice day for visiting. Dead trout under the foot bridge at 12 marker, but that’s just water over the dam. Come to think of it, one of the fishermen was casting upstream at the mill bridge, contrarian!

4.5 Cracked Up to Be

eggshells

Just fine. Just the way I found them.  Just as they are.

How to Return a Day

  

Everyday

 

First you refold and wrap up the day in its original packing as best you can. You find the receipt. You put the day and the receipt back into a bag. You drive or walk back to the Day Store. You search for a cashier in the Daily Returns department; there is almost no one to be seen. There’s a long line of shoppers in Good Days.  You go from register to register. Finally you find someone stocking Days to Come and they point to the very back corner and say, there must be someone in Customer Service for Days Gone By.

   Customer Service waits for you to take the Bad Day out of the bag.

   “Did you get a Bad Day? Give us this day. Of course we will take it back. We stock only the finest and best days here. Who wants a bad day after all? First we must look for the Redeeming Value of the Day in Question. Did you misuse it? Not follow directions? Miscalculate the time or fail to go according to plan? You didn’t drop the day on its head, did you?

“Why no, of course not. I took the best care of this day I possibly could, but I didn’t care for it. I want to rescind it. It must have been given to me by mistake.”

“It says here it is Your Day Number —. It’s your day, all right. Did you not review and assess the day and find the redeeming value.”

“It seemed to me without value. Except to let me know to pick myself up and dust myself off and keep going.”

“So it did have value!”

“Not the value I had hoped for nor the value I perceived. I thought everything would go well.”

“Did you purchase a Good Day Guarantee?”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Everyday above ground is a good day. That is the Daily Guarantee.”

“You’re right and you’re not even the customer.”

“Do you still want to return it?”

“I think it has served its purpose. And I will keep it and let it go.”

“Take care! Have a nice day!”

If you say Brancusi, it’s Beautiful.

If you say Brancusi, it's Beautiful

   Where is the Sphinx?  He must be satisfied.

   Seamless, sensuous Brancusi. Clean, clean work.

   As for the Heron Report: Wednesday: Why is this a man walking with a raggedy toothbrush sticking out of the breast pocket of his shirt-jacket? I want to ask him why he carries such a thing around; do not dare open my mouth.

   Saw no toted toiletries today.

   Neither Wednesday nor Thursday saw heron.  A feather, though. A heron feather lodged in branches; looked like spider in a web.

Sweet 16th

December Sweet 16th

     The sugar plum fairy is getting to my sweet tooth.

   Swollen to twice its normal size Sunday and Monday and racing fast, the creek was rushing less this morning as sleet began to develop.
   On Sunday two ducks were joyriding the currents at the stone bridge and the word must have spread because next day several gaggles of geese waited in line in the meadow to get into the creek, like people at an amusement park queuing up for the super water rides.
   A raccoon crossed the path yesterday at 9:50 a.m. in the fifty to sixty degree weather and only three other people early on the trail today.
Many herons today. On Sunday they were all posing with a kind of over- the-shoulder artist’s model come hither look.Today they were elongated, stretched tall. One was on a rock that was submerged yesterday, so the water level has returned to normalcy. Also on Sunday was a trail of red jelly beans and foil wrapped chocolates leading from the seasonal train display. It seemed to me Hansel and Gretal had been there but had run out of bread crumbs.

Palm Pilot: Morning of a fawn

What good is a camera left at home and a pen without paper?

 Go ahead. Make me. Force me to use whatever means necessary - in this case, the left palm -  to capture the moment.

Brief recap:
Wednesday: warm and wet. The birds and the geese were all flapping, fluttering and flying.

Yesterday: dull and dreary; the night: drenching.
Finally Friday: beginning to clear.

Banner day for herons, seven in all. Rich colorations.

Also on the scene: red-tailed hawk and two red-headed woodpeckers, a pair of cardinals and a brilliant bluebird, chickadees and sparrows and close-range squirrels, gnawing and gathering along the path.  

 
Walking past the canal locks. Wondering why people feel compelled to dispossess themselves of water bottles in the drink there. Sun begins to poke through the clouds. Pull out cell phone (9:02 a.m.).

Suddenly, see a fawn at my feet.
Lying below the elevation of the path, it lifts its head. It blinks. It looks at me; I look at it. I look around.
No Mama.
All alone.
No Mama.
December.
Winter coming.
No spots on its fur, but still a baby.

How dear.

Curled up in the grass and some leaves it lies, with a rise in the bank to its back for protection.

palm pilot: Bambi and The Heron Report

After I sketch its portrait on my makeshift palm pilot, the deer (little Bambi) stands up and shakes.  It shakes and shakes. It shakes the water off its coat like a wet dog does, only wobblier, on its stick legs. It shakes again. That was quite a rain we had last night.
It goes to graze on the strip of land along the creek and I continue on my way.
How will it survive? It will, or perish, and the memory of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’  The Yearling flashes through my mind. Remembering the Broadway play: making me feel a strong sadness. Precious life, we all perish. How dear.

Festival of Lights

Tall Tree in the Morning

What a Great Cat!

A pair of sketches for today: one a memory sketch of Jedi and the other of a decorated tree from the park this morning. Yes, the tree was leaning a little left!

Illuminating Prospects

   Is this the visual equivalent of hearing voices? I’m walking and seeing faces in the bits and blotches of snow left from Saturday night. Not quite the same.

   One person on the trail, who is Terry, who runs in black and powder blue. Who is greeting on the run:

   “Cold enough for ya?” asks Terry.

   Yes, how cold is it? The herons (3) outnumber the people.  Although a man in a van leaves a courier packet at the park center. Does that count?

   Ornament on the rail of the wooden footbridge past the 10 marker. A wooden cube painted blue and with gold V and I; a wooden snowman has come off the top of it. It would appear to be from the same set as the caroler ornament that was on top of the 9 marker on November 27. Interesting.

   “Have you warmed up yet?” asks Terry on the return trip.

   “Yes,” say I. “Have you?”

    Up go the black gloves as if to say room for warmth here.

   It is cozy in the loft at home. Miss the black cat.  A concern: did I take too many showers at the YMCA this past year, depriving Jedi of one of his primary pleasures, the opportunity to let the force be with me?

   Jedi used to give me after shower hugs, two of his very favorite things. What other cat will hug you naked after a bath? Now, there’s a happy face! =)

Illuminating Prospects

Wire One

  The landscape contains five hardbound books with the number 64 written underneath across the pages. And, three paperbacks with the letters IND on them, also on the bottoms of the pages, hand-printed in black marker, all three in caps.

  What the giver and the writer intended, I would need to ask him. What I interpret: Sixty-four is the number of hexagrams in the I Ching and, therefore, a number signifying change. It is a truism – or a cliche – change is difficult. Change is hard. Question: Does it have to be?  Experiment: When is change easy?

   The IND? For independent, independence. Soft covers. A study in contrast, hard and soft. Free.

   The books total eight, 5 plus 3. The feng shui number for health and balance is five, three for growth and family, eight for wisdom, knowledge, higher education, enlightenment. So the interpretation of the books alone is healthy growth leading to wisdom. This is just the odd wanderings of the Sizzyphusian mind. The writer could have meant something entirely different.

   Independent, change-oriented thinking. “Let me think for myself!”

   As for the topics, well, the three paperbacks are all the same size and type of edition. Uniform. These are the James, the Descartes and the Maslow. They are also all three, philosophy. Love of knowledge.

   The five hardback books are stack-able. In graduated sizes; Horace’s odes, being the smallest and red, which rests on top, which I like. On the bottom is the Children of Odin . This stack contains things made up: the myths, the poems, the short stories, with the possible exception of the travels of Marco Polo.

 

   This is not intended to be a treatise on the I Ching, however, hexagram 64 denotes Before Completion and from my Blofeld edition, the symbol, fire above water reads: The Superior Man takes care to distinguish between things before arranging them in order.

Red Phone

    From a vintage book called The Red Telephone or Tricks of the Tempter: WIRE [chapter] IV “THE PREDIGESTED SHADOW” the author, Lilian Heath writes: We do well to adopt new methods of oiling life’s machinery, making study interesting, simplifying work, and economizing energy on all planes of activity.” She describes the unfortunate instance where meals, tasks, lessons and sports are made easy for a child – hence the Predigested tag – and continues: “Life was not meant to be all ease, to any human being. Some things must be a little hard, or the body and mind, lacking exercise, cannot grow as they should, and when growth of any kind is stunted, there can be neither health nor happiness.”

   This hardback book declares on the frontispiece: BEING MESSAGES FROM THE UNDER-WORLD OF SINS, AND HOW THEY ARE ANSWERED. 

   And how they are written about in 1905.

And I’ll Raise You…

…with whatever vintage, found objects and paperphernalia get in my way in the next 27 days. What did I say? Write a book in 4 hours? Let’s make it four weeks.

Warrior and the Big Kahuna!!!