I wanted

...to call this post solace but it didn't seem right because while that's what I felt, I wasn't particularly in need of it.  I was grateful today to find all of my energy absorbed by routine; multiple objectives, common emergencies, manual labor ... and mostly, so much human contact.  I can appreciate extremes and while my experiences have been sparsely populated lately, and I always fear the transition, I love to stand in the middle of my day and marvel at so much activity.

 

I will miss the morning runs, and the three people and two dogs who were up very early with me to wander these paths, but I welcome the return to the workday and the anticipation of the hour of solace that follows.  For all the enthusiasm I had for each minute of this day, everytime I sneaked a glance out the window I couldn't wait to get into the snow.  

an update

...from our far-flung correspondent on Outville Road:

Thanks John!

notes

from the field--

Still wet.  Still warm.  I am more than a little nervous for the viburnum -- ready to burst, though there are long months ahead of Spring.  

barely

some theories

I was out trying to slow the passage of time today -- to put the brakes on this loaded train barrelling straight for the next year.  I composed a new theory based on this article I've been picking away at for, oh, 3 weeks or so, the gist of which is pretty straightforward but with lots of interesting research.  I'm a fan of empirical evidence -- it's not necessary, but it has its appeal.  It goes something like this:  A new experience takes longer for the brain to encode and interpret therefore the duration of the experience seems longer, while familiar experiences require less brain activity and therefore may seem to pass more quickly.  Think about the last time you were driving -- navigating to a place you had not been to before, and then consider the return trip, and each subsequent trip.  The initial trip seems to take the longest time, and each trip thereafter takes less time, until finally, the distance and time passes relatively unnoticed.  The perception is that time passes more quickly, while in reality, the elapsed time is actually the same for all trips.  

So to test the theory, I set myself today with the task of estranging the familiar and attempting to pay particular attention to all that might otherwise pass unnoticed.  Would this slow time?  Alas, I am a poor scientist and, while I like empirical evidence, my own experiments lack all of the necessary controls that might yield such evidence.  For instance, when I finally thought to look at the time, it was, of course, later than I thought.  

But I have another theory that I am also working on based on my research with the kitchen waste can; the theory that time is a big stretchy bag and it's my job to test the capacity.  I will push it every time.

cowboy poetry

Putting the Rodeo Try into Cowboy Poetry
-- In memory of Buck Ramsey
Let's begin with the wildest landscape, space
inhabited by far more of them
than our own kind and, yes we are talking
other hearts, other stars.  Fall in love with all
that is new born -- universe, seedling, dawn,
human, foal, calf.  Love equally
the seasons, know each sky has meaning,
winter the big lonesomes, the endless
horizons our hopes sink beyond 
once every minute, sometimes
seeming never to rise
again for air or light,
for life.  Fall madly in love
with the earth's fickle ways.  Heed
hard the cosmos cues, the most
minuscule pulsings, subtle nods -- no heavy-
handed tap or poke, nothing muscular,
no near-death truths revealed, no telephone
or siren screaming us out of sleep
at 3 a.m.  Forget revelation.
Forgive religion.  Let's believe instead in song
bird, or Pegasus, the only angels
we'll ever need.  Erase for good
"inspiration" from our Random Bunk-
House Dictionaries, from our petty heads
and pretty ambitions.  Poetry is not
the grace or blessing we pray for -- Poetry
is the Goddess for whom
we croon.  Sing and surely we shall see
how she loves our music in any key--
any color, any creed, any race, any breed.  Rhyme
if the muse or mood moves us
to do so.  Go slow.  Walk
then trot, lope then rock, and roll
for even a split second, our souls in the middle
of the whole storming world
getting western, throwing a tizzy fit,
our horses come-uncorked, just
as we were beginning to seriously think
we could turn the stampeding 
words into a calm
milling herd of steers?

Paul Zarzyski

More cowboy poetry here.

truth

Often I will fill up pages full of words, tangles of thoughts that go on, then read them and say to myself, too much.  How to fit this into a drop?

That which can be sensed by the skin, or the nose, or seen, heard or tasted, or maybe all of these, and at the same time creates deep emotion, can be distilled and presented simply (not to be confused with easily) as that emotion.  But how?  The enduring challenge, to represent and evoke feeling without the slightest hint of extrapolation, neither adorning nor belaboring -- to separate truth from all its distractors.