"I left behind what weighted me down/my dipper on a branch click clack."



"The logical mind will never allow man to expand beyond the ego or the flesh...modern thought is the prison of the soul and stands between man and his spiritual mind."



"The temple bell stops/but the sound keeps coming/out of the flowers."



"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude."



Lovely deep snow sung away by the wind while new hampshire sleeps like an enchanted prince under ice and the glorious black earth reveals itself churned and open the honey stubblefields the sky now blue then pink then grey. more crows. enormous goose communities on the water. a dampness and wild fluctuation of weather. this tree in the house. the negotiations and the empty howling dread. i love to lie in bed at night and listen to the wind blow.

"Any kind of expectation creates a problem. We should accept, but not expect. Whatever comes, accept it. Whatever goes, accept it. The immediate benefit is that your mind is always peaceful."

All the fields are this color, the color of my first two dogs, i remember walking on the mountain roads and the woods on either side of the road and the boggy cornfields and the coyotes. one wood in light and the other in shadow, the precipice turn and the oak leaves in winter. the hawks and the farms and the far view. and the two dogs the color of the fields, caramel and earth, wheat and roadside weeds bloodless and stalwart in december. now its down a road between pastures and private property, posted. with two dogs, black and blue. sundays are quiet on this road, in any weather. hawks and farms and the far view, dogs on chains and no one otherwise about. its a raw cold dry day, but good to feel my blood rush beneath the skin, feel the clean cold air in my lungs. feels good to come home to warmth and the news presented by #4 and the npr lego crew. lots of interviews with sculptors and magicians and me. made gingerbread and dinner bread drank coffee and wine. told the truth. in my dream was a brown bear and a blood-tusked boar. i forgot to ask what they had to say.

"I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope/For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love/For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith/But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting./Wait without thought for you are not ready for thought./So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing."

Yesterday i drew down St. Lucia and strode the halls in a brown woolen cloak and seven league boots, braids and makeup. today im back in tired jeans and haphazard hair, delivering copies, wielding the red pen. the peace doesnt last very long between us. the snow falls gently tonight, i knit and tidy and have hope. i remember now in the dream the woman in the enormous black cat costume fell quaking in a heap. we finish the story of Oz, i much prefer the book to the movie, of course.

"Letting go is the real path to freedom."

Craving deep hibernation. woke to snow. just about to crawl back to bed when they call me in but i wear my annie hall suffragette hat and get to stand out in the cold breathing sweet and heard stories about wee small bears and pie eating turtles and wondered why in the world anyone would begin a childs story, "Mother sheep had died," and the child is required to read aloud the anthropomorphic wailing of, "Maaa-maaa, Maaa-maaa." for me, it was too much. but home and coffee and twenty minuted under the dishtowel with my feet up and im good for another few hours of dinner and knitting. the woman at work was furious at how her decorative christmas pillows were handled and the other woman was crying. in my dream a woman had small glass jars of curative colors.

"So the darkness shall be light, and the stillness the dancing."

West on wheels farther afield to this enormous grand crumbling city i goggle at and even the litter is huge and soaring through the corinthian canyons up toward the obelisk monuments the traffic in the roundabouts is determined and relentless. i quickly learn the circuit i swim waiting for my ward but drop the thread out of the labyrinth and its a sad path back east until a scholar at the college points the way and my co-pilot finds the signs and were on the road the two sisters working their canine magic to soothe and cheer the weary traveler until hes resting in a long moment of raga. almost home we turn on the conversation and its man inhumanity to man and darkness on the face of the water. home, and a hot supper for the boys i had the sense to prepare this morning. then #4 and i settle in for a few chapters of Oz and i show him how compelling solitaire can be. early bed as it begins to snow.

"November is beautiful as the word sounds, is gray, is bare,
Is compact of wind, of leaves blown and the thin, tall rain;
Brought back to our care are the dead in November,
and the air of these days is charged with their pain.

For these are not the free dead, not the remote, bright crowd
Of our picture-book, or our image of nebulous heaven:
These are caught, tangled in a web comfortless as a shroud—
These have not familiar place, nor flight, nor oblivion, even.

They have not escaped yet-they are close in the clouds massing
together;
At the cold first drop you will stare on the dark ground and remember.
They are the accent of autumn, they are the source of the tone of this
weather.
The heart is reached by the waiting dead, in their month, in November."

Thinking of you, Molly Bloom.

"When I grow up I want to be art."

Having a mad affair with my sisters brother-in-law and theres some raging gun waving man firing rounds into a desk. my friend crashes a flamenco demonstration and we totter down steep stairs lined with tropical plants. i explain the genetic relationship of one plant to another. the man has a big house cluttered and lonesome im walking down the road with a woman who cooperates with a man to smuggle some persecuted demographic out of the country so the oppressors cant kill them and theres an agent outside in a car listening and im waiting at the bottom of the hill and the agent is watching me waiting and when she emerges from the house she shoots the man helping the oppressed and i understand she did that so the agent couldnt torture him and the agent is waving his pistol around and im lying on the ground with my hands over my head and were back at the house and im considering a wardrobe change. all day with the wee ones and im inspired to live more mindfully and free pastry and she said there werent such things as witches and i cant find my hat.

What im knitting.

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."

Dreamed we went into the baptist church with a huge white dog but the guy wasnt thirty seconds into his sermon and i had to leave. learned how to I-cord. knit some mitts for the granddaughter. thirty seems balmy, the snow melted like march, the hearth heart of the home bright and beating. the domestic storm passes leaving a quiet calm that i can breathe in. they had a benefit for her and no one came, but i knit a sock and sang along to the bar band covers of james gang, badfinger, grand funk. the cloud is clean but grey and this deep season may call for something new. flannel fitted and cotton duvet cover. setting goals and making plans to dance in the new calendar year with my Higher Self. grateful for what is. trying to raise them. raise them Up. lemon tea and local honey, wrote lunar, loner. read oz with #4 as the snow fell. remembering to breathe.

Something in me in Deep Hibernation. Something sleeping, waiting for Spring.

Sunday. a walk west for the crest of killing season the woods were quiet and peaceful and the wind blew through the branches and made a sound like water over stones. small chores and the boys back in the evening i just go blank and wait for bed. the hearths in tomorrow and a long week before we begin the holiday through long darkness into light.

Dowager cat gets huge squirrel left in the leaves by the bathtub planter. O. and L2 go to dog spa but the power goes out. i ache. to the city for dinner with sister who doesnt say much and N1 is pre-med next year doesnt like children pregnant women or old people. she drove the car into a berm but the berm works. stress and television we discuss our favorite car wrecks and the lost farm. im the laughing liberal mincing from room to room as the ignorant vitriol sloshes through the house. the menfolk watching an old black-and-white made entirely with dogs in prison outfits. everything seemed pressed through a mesh strainer, strained. the dogs ate my nation magazine.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who are alive.”

Not much. Not even the attempting to seem useful. H1 came over with the Bts. and they played legos with #4 and we figured it was about time to get resigned. bought a dog book and an austen flick and stovepipe and called it a day. couldnt sleep, contemplated housework. slept.