I should have a pen and paper next to me every time I decide to travel seriously into the Interweb. I always end up finding excellent websites and excellent leads for information and research. But then I make the most tenuous notes. Scattered scraps of notes that just go a-fluttering away. Or I decide that I will remember what led me to where. But then I remember something else or something else catches my eye and the original path that led me to that most wonderful vista is lost or left behind or simply forgotten.

Oh, Interweb. Who knows how much longer I will be able to roam through your ecosystems before they clear-cut you and make you safe for Steve Jobs and his horror show.

Work is a slow climb out of a deep ditch; methodical, irksome, tiresome, and always checking your footing. You slip a lot. You do a lot of standing at the bottom with your arms crossed in front of you looking at the rim while silently planning your ascent. You get slightly frustrated with yourself because it really isn't that great of a climb, and yet it completely stifles you. Eventually, you will get out of there with one furious burst of energy. It will almost be an explosion.

Today is another day at the bottom of that ditch. It comes on the heels of a rather pleasant weekend. At least, I believe it was pleasant. Any time spent away from home is good - for the most part. And any time spent in the out-of-doors is time well spent. I don't believe the the climate or the weather mar the experience, really. It can be cold and raining and it is still usually a good experience when you are outside. I tend to believe that the air's fragrance takes on new and wondrous aspects: wet leaves, damp moss, soaked twigs and branches, moist earth, the humus, the god-knows-what, and the this-and-that all adds their odor. Do I want to use the word 'odor'? No. I want the word 'scent.' That has a more benign essence. Or do I want 'essence'? Difficult. English is a wonderful language, sometimes...though, it can hold you up and deter you from finding easy meaning. Either way, a rainy day is as wonderful a day as any.

There was a lot I wanted to write today. Now it leaks out of my mind like water in an old cooper's barrel.

Perhaps I wanted to mention Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester with its nearly ancient cobbled paths and crypts and the hillocks and the weird knolls? How it is this maze-like park with strange trees and greenery all over the place? A beautiful park studded with tombstones aged well over 150 years? It is strange...because of their age, it is OK to walk over them and pay them little mind. It is high Victoriana. The crypts and mausoleums and decorated stones. The gated family plots and the stairways curling around knolls. The paths are more like deep-rutted holloways.

It is hard for me to believe that this was the first time I had ever been to this place.
More later.

I've failed to record anything in here for almost one month. It seems like I am one day shy of a month from my last post. And all of this lapsed time even after I told myself that I would be using this as one of my methods for getting back into the habit and practice of writing. Something written everyday just to get my mind running and moving in those directions. But didn't do that at all. And I really don't have a good reason.

Maybe there is a reason and it has to do with the catapulting of messages into the ether. I've been packing words like gunpowder into big drums and ramming them into the bottom of a 17 inch Howitzer...and then blasting them out into the distance. They fall like terrifying shrapnel on yonder entrenchments. No. Nothing destructive. It is all very productive. The words are being mined from the cavernous reaches of my mind like ore-slag and refined in blast-furnaces until a perfect iron-clad is removed from the fires to cool. Pig iron sent across from the frontier reaches and into the densely populated regions for some proper smithing. Or something like that. Something good is happening and I am writing - but like anything...like always...as always...I wonder if it is going anywhere other than toward the perpetual exchange of e-mails. Like post-modern pen pals or something. But I am gearing myself into the same rut I always gear myself into in these situations. I write, write, write myself into an open field after several days of rain and then try to hurry up and accelerate out of there.

[Can I mention that I hate sitting here at work and having to listen to the ninnies in the office? I despise them and their despicable lives. I hate their bitching, their shallow criticisms, and their all-around busy-body presence.]

So my writing gets sent off into the silicon ether in an attempt to further the slow movement toward...

I am completely overwhelmed by writing. Literature and history and philosophy and science and on and on and on. I cannot keep up with anything. Too much writing to read. I read the New York Review, The London Review, Harper's, essays, books, online journals, blogs, and this and that ad infinitum ad nauseum. And I am still left in the lurch.

It's been awhile, which is infuriating because
I promised myself that I would make an effort
To write every single day,
Even if it was something mundane
(Like this)
Or something profound and eloquent.
I know better than to expect productivity
Every single day
But I would still hope that every OTHER day
Would suffice and be equally decent.
But you get what you put in.

------

I dislike businesspeople.
I dislike their eager faces and their
'Ready to please' attitudes
Because they want a share of your pie.
Their utter lack of curiosity and
Their inability to enjoy anything
For its own sake and outside of profit.
I cannot stand to see them in their
Polo shirts and slacks, with their click-clack
Dress-shoes observing everything in mock
Interest while the modulator in their
Brain converts everything into margins,
Percentages, overhead, and dollars.
I hate that they are respected so much
For what amounts to their triumphant greed.
Their humor curdles milk.
Their smiles would cover a tomb in frost.
Their interests are the pockets on a stomach
Riddled with Diverticulitis, collecting bits of
Seed and shell and giving the body an opportunity
To wallow in internal infection.

The light has fully changed. Autumn's gilt edge has lent itself to the quality of Sunlight and the last vestiges of Summer clarity has receded for the year. It is easy on the eyes and softens the appearances of even the most troublesome sceneries. Autumn makes even the long-abandoned, dilapidated, and ramshackle farmhouses around here look picturesque.

The air has changed. Even when the temperature climbs, there is a dullness to the heat...an Autumnal dullness and softening that renders heat ineffective. But while it dulls the heat, it crispens the cool. I think Autumn tempers the climate so as to prepare life for the rush of invigorating air that comes with Winter. But that is just my opinion.

I still have two tomato plants living and actually still throwing up a few blossoms.
San Marzano Tomatoes are the best tomatoes I have ever grown. They are considered a 'Paste' Tomato and are slightly smaller than a full-blown Roma, but they are great for slicing and just simply snacking, too. I've had great success with dicing them and rendering a little juice from them. Beautiful.

It is seed collecting time and I always love this time of year. All the different types and the pods and the seed heads and the drying and desiccated bits lying on trays or in jars waiting for final Winter storage. I like brushing through the wispy weeds and snagging the best looking examples or rooting about in the soil looking for fallen seeds. All the different forms are amazing...and year after year I am still amazed.

What else? I am sitting here at work and trying to avoid doing anything. I am thinking about myriad subjects. They are not racing around my mind, but they are gathering, peacefully and in a scattered manner, in my mind like picnic-goers in a park. A broad park like something Olmstead would have designed. (I actually had to give a moment's thought to remembering his name...I need to excercise this brain a little more).

More later.

The sky is a beautiful grey
And it's raining steadily in a very
Autumnal fashion, much as you'd
Expect without any of the Summer messiness.

But there is still a warmth in the air
That I associate with a lingering
Summer that cannot so easily let
Go and give up for the rest of the year.

And I drove through it without giving
Even the slightest thought to any
Precipitation or shade on that wondrous
Display in the sky of every grey in the book.

Which book? Probably the color book. One exists, right?
There must be a centrally located color organization that
Puts out a book every year with the recognized colors listed
And any shade that popped up in the last period.

There must be.
How else would we know exactly what Red looks like
Or just how blue
Is the perfectly correct shade of Turquoise or Lapis Lazuli.

I don't know.

I'm not really concerned with the state of color
And its regularization under a recognizable authority.
Regularization? Is that what I am trying to say?
It matters not; it is all bureaucracy.

It seems as if the rivers are too low
For me to set out on the barge
And the trains are running slow
And the roads are closed for some reason.

It is one of those nights that you wish
Someone were around with whom
To converse and spill and sputter
Some things that are clogging up my mind.

High and low.
Phone doesn't get through.
The Internet reveals nothing.
Smoke signals lost in the night.

You just keep questioning yourself
And putting yourself on the stand
For a never-ending cross-examination
Consisting mostly of soliloquies.

Thucydides telling lies in obscure
Ancient Greek and translators
And scholars today using those lies
To advance petty concerns.

This is what sits in the puddled path.
This is what I mention?

So where am I going with this?
Nowhere, apparently, and just then
Only as far as I went today, which was
To the woods out back for a piss.

If you squint your eyes and strain them
While driving fast and mindlessly down the expressway,
You can usually force yourself to think
That you are on your way somewhere exciting.

This morning, that did not work and I
Was forced to admit that I
Was on my way to work, again, along with
All the other Unfortunates.

I suppose that it is good to have a mind
Clear of distraction and delusion on these
Sparkling, vintage September mornings when
All is gilded and polished and the rising Sun is soft on your eyes.

You can review the bewilderment of being told
How much you are cherished and adored right before
You are quietly dismissed and summarily forgotten
And abandoned for some imagined higher ground.

You can also battle with the tangled and gnarled roots
Of your mistrust of bureaucracy and officialdom as
You wrestle with the idea of returning to finish a higher education
That you never really started in the first place.

You can fall into and out of love with your best friend's wife.
And you can do that a couple times a week - because she is
Understanding and listens to you and because she exudes motherhood
And empathy and eases your thoughts with tender eyes.

But that's ok because it is impossible not to fall in love and everyone
Expects it and it only lasts long enough to get you to empty out your
Thoughts on whichever it is that is troubling you - because confession seems
To demand love. Then all returns to normal and friendships reign supreme, again.

Then you get to work.

That 'poem' was terrible.

Apologies.

He gets used to certain states;
Riding alone in the morning
With the radio inaudible under
The whoosh of air coming in through
The barely opened window -
Then there is going alone to parties
And then leaving alone at the end of the night.
Sober, too.
Always sober. Alcohol lost its allure.
Baudelaire was a pussy.
Anyway, he got used to being alone.
Not Baudelaire.
He wakes up alone and stares at the clock.
He goes to the store alone and looks for
The food he wants.
He has never had to consider someone else
Or counted on anyone else
When it came to food choices
Or sleeping positions.
Not overnight, at least. Not when it came to
Actually sleeping and waking up
On a regular basis.
Ruts and portage trails running between Wilderness
Lakes in a far more fresh environment.
Either way, those ruts run single-file.
A lone horseman passes.
Get it?

Some weeks ago I prattled on about someone. I asked if I should continue on like some callous-handed Appolinaire. Perhaps I should have.

Don't be fooled by enchantment. Enchantment disables reason.

Trust nothing but fact and empirical knowledge. There is nothing to be gained by following after anything that is chimera. That is, full of nothing but words.

I am not making sense. There is a reason. I will not elaborate.

You aren't reading this, anyway.

It's a good life if you don't weaken.

Really. Scrape yourself together in the wee hours of the morning, take a deep breath, haul yourself along the highway, and make your way into the hole. Sell your soul, offer yourself to the meat-grinder. Drag yourself slowly away and retreat for the night. Repeat.

Don't weaken.

Sacrifice. Work hard and always without cease. Collect your money at the end of the week and deny yourself the things that you thought about during the week in order to sustain yourself in the darkest moments that tried your resolve. Deny. Hand over large portions of that money to support people who will slowly suck the life from your bones. Support people who cannot support themselves, who were left to your watch by a man who weakened.

Again, don't weaken.

Don't flinch.

Don't think about alternatives. Don't. Just don't.

Get used to this grind. Get used to never resting long enough to fully recuperate. Your shoulders will ache. Then your feet, your knees, your back, and finally your heart. Your mind will forever be in pain. Thought will be laborious.

It is a good life, I suppose.

You could be in the Sudan. Or The Congo. Or Afghanistan.

It's a good life, if you don't weaken.

I am currently reading Petér Nadás' 'Fire and Knowledge.' It is a mixture of short stories, essays, reportage, and miscellany. Nadás is a Hungarian writer. I don't remember where I heard of him, but I can assume that I read in the NYRB a review of one or the other of his works. I am sure of it. It might be the London Review, but I see those two as a trick-sided coin. Either way, I enjoy the fiction more than the non-fiction, which is rare for me. The stories are all told from the point of view of a younger person in 1960s or 1970s communist Hungary. There are subtle little bits here and there where something catches your attention as being radically alien to you; you follow the little flash of light down the path and a giant wrecking ball smashes into you. For a laugh. You get caught trying to sympathize or, worse, understand and identify with the people in the stories. You get smashed because you can't understand any of it as a lazy, unthinking, spoiled-brat American. And I think highly of Nadás for employing that technique.

I just finished a collection of stories by Roberto Bolaño. He was Chilean, but he lived all over the Spanish-speaking world until he died several years ago. A lot of the stories took place in and around Barcelona in the mid- to late-1970s. Which made me stop and think; they speak Catalan in Barcelona and isn't it weird that so many Latin American writers fled dictatorships in their homelands to go to a place where the memories of a Dictator were as fresh as raw milk and cowshit on your boots? Either way. Brilliant. It has sparked and fueled a rising interest within me to read more and more Spanish-speaking writers.

Some time ago, I encountered some poems by Borges. They were in the original Spanish, but, with the remnants of my extremely rudimentary Spanish from school, I was able to slightly discern what the poem was saying. This excited me and I have since been reading more and more stories and poems by Spanish writers. I have ordered bilingual editions of Rubén Darío and Cesar Valléjo. I have ordered two more books by Bolaño. I have some Neruda and my Borges. I am going to try and make some sense. I like the idea of it. This is the first time that I have actually appreciated that I learned Spanish in school (and college) instead of French. I still would have loved to have learned French, of course, but now I appreciate the richness of Spanish. Like Lorca and Neruda. We shall see.

Another topic itching at my brain has been the Iroquois Indians. The Haudenosaunee. People of the Long-house. They of the Five Nations. They were the original inhabitants of my home region and more and more, day after day, my fascination with their culture and history grows. I have been searching for an Iroquois-English Dictionary, but, remarkably, there do not seem to be any that are easily found or accessed. Not too shocking. Academia in this country only seems interested in the Native Peoples after they've been dead for a couple hundred years; then it is only their bones and pottery with which they want to deal. I did manage to find an Ethnobotanical study of the Iroquois, so that is a start. From the ground up, it seems, will have to be the direction I travel in this respect.

The Nation that lived here where I currently live was the Seneca Nation. They were the largest, I believe, of the Five Nations. They built villages and maintained large tracts of cultivated fields. Their hunting grounds stretched from Vermont to the Ohio River Valley and down into Maryland. They had songs and poetry. They now maintain a couple casinos and fight to protect their tax-free cigarette sales from the greedy bureaucratic claws of New York State. But the history and culture of the Seneca is as great as any peoples on Earth. Perhaps even in this Cosmos? I don't know. I cannot speak to that. I really shouldn't speak anymore about it until I am properly informed so as to not appear to be so ignorant.

Does anyone even read this? Hahaha.

I am basically writing this to stave off the real feelings that are welling up in my bowels. Probably because of the anonymity that this provides. And because nobody is reading this anyway. It makes it easy. Sublimate. Absorb. Release waste bi-product as gas. Move on to next adventure. Move on, again and again.

It is nice to be sitting here on the far edge of August, dangling my legs over the ledge and waiting on the cool September breezes. Most people seem to give Summer up for dead when September comes along, just like people give Autumn up for dead when Thanksgiving comes and goes. I can't say I disagree, but I think we should give these interesting lame-duck seasonal periods their due. September can be scorching and dry just like December can be pleasantly crisp and green. But that isn't the point...well, I suppose it is. September and December are bothersome unpredictables and ruin the 'purity' of each Season's disposition. December is usually at its snowiest and coldest in the early or middle parts of the month, when it is still Autumn (though, I should add, that I like to separate the season into 'Autumn' and 'Fall' just for this reason). September usually bears the first frosts and the earliest mentions of color change when it is still technically Summer. I suppose that irks people. Or it doesn't and they don't even give it any thought and it is just me sitting here musing on something about which nobody cares. That is probably so.

Actually, my mind is restless. I spent the entire weekend working outside and reading to keep my mind from wandering too far afield, but also to keep it from fixating too closely on any one thing. Actually, any specific thing. Actually, a specific person. But that is neither here or there. Or is it 'nor'? I would think 'or' because, with 'neither' in the sentence, 'nor' makes it a double-negative. I really don't want to waste time thinking of this, but there you have it. Once again, I am laboring to keep my mind away from fixating. That is largely why I am writing here now. At this hour. At this moment. I write because my phone calls and messages go unanswered and I don't hear and word at all and my mind overthinks it all and believes the worst. A run-on, incoherent sentence basically sums it up. There you go.

Have I ever mentioned how much I like some of Enya's songs? Ha. I don't often admit to it, but some of these songs really make you hear just how incredibly ethereal her voice is. I do not usually find myself enthralled with the ethereal, but sometimes you have to take notice. Sometimes you have to forget about the rational and Reason and let yourself swim in those murky waters at the bottom of the glen. Does it make sense? Perhaps. I won't pretend that it does. And I won't deny that it doesn't. I will stay mum. I just happen to find her songs soothing on a level I normally don't recognize. So there is that.

There is more to say. Maybe tomorrow.

The Summer is fading slowly and luxuriously. It is like the sliding knob on an old light fixture. Or the laboured cooling off of a cup of coffee over the course of a good breakfast. The air is changing. The colours are changing. It is mesmerizing.

I've been watching Summer simmer down for a couple weeks now. Scrub bushes are going red and then drifting into a desiccated brown. Spectacular sunsets set-up spectacularly hazy night skies. The Moon competes with fog and mist and the accoutrement of seasonal battle. I love it all desperately. I love all of the seasons, really, and I could never really be forced to choose one over the other. But it is now the end of Summer and the advent of Autumn, and therefore I will choose to love this time of year the most...for now.

And, like the seasons and their moves toward battle, I am moving tectonically toward being in love. Oh, the slow pace of physical geography! Is there no better way to move into such feelings? Is it not better to savor the world around you and translate it into how you express and interpret your feeling? I cannot imagine anything more proper. I hope she thinks along similar lines. I hope she imagines me moving along fault lines and volcanic chains. I hope she understands that my movements, while slow, are imperceptibly strong and decided. That there is change and flexibility, but also permanence?

Her hair smells like rain. Like Spring rain, to be exact. It is the scent I detect every April when the winds begin to change into breezes. When the first green buds and shoots contribute that initial burst of fresh oxygen into the breezes that pass gently over the gumwood sill over the desk I sit at. I smelled that in her hair. Just as I saw the placid waters of the Finger Lakes in her eyes. No seas or oceans in that blue...no. No, that blue is as the waters of giant freshwater lakes tucked into the folds between glacially mounded hills and surrounded by vineyards, fallow meadows, forest, and golden strawfield. Without any doubt. I see it in my stolen glances.

Shall I continue like some callous-handed Apollinaire? Shall I speak of her easy smile that hangs like a phantasmigoric Crescent Moon in the night-time sky of her cosmologically profound face? Is that awkward? Yes. Do I care? No. I am grasping happily at straws and waiting for cars, buses, trucks, bicyclists, pedestrians, baby carriages, demons, demigods, ancient warriors, Druids, kings, earls, re-incarnated Lamas, pashas working for the Levant Company, and the ugly traders plying the backwaters of the Hudson Bay. I am waiting for all of them to pass by me so that I will have more time with her alone and away from the things of man. Away from the encumbrances of modern life. Away from distraction.

Oh, sing. Write like Neruda and dance like Borges in his mind. Read them all in the original Spanish and feel the breathy heat in their words. I guarantee that if you read the Spanish original aloud, you will feel that heat. You will feel the dust of the Pampas collect in the back of your throat as you makes your way across Patagonia toward Tierra del Fuego. And back North. And sing. Again.

Sometimes the major propellant through life is something akin to the shrug of the shoulders. Lurching forward one shrug at a time. Like a muffled breaststroke through soupy waters. Well, at least, that's how it feels to me sometimes. Information trickles in and I respond as the glacier responds to gravity.

You know, I am really not getting to the point. I am avoiding it and trying to sound word-y. Verbose. Whichever.

You become enamored of someone over the course of a couple years but never say anything about it because it doesn't at all appear to be headed anywhere. She comes and goes and you follow those comings and goings and you let it flow over you like a small creek. One day, she comes around and - as if she has read your mind - she tells you that she knows how you feel. And she says that she feels the same way, but that because of so much baggage and uncertainty, she cannot reciprocate or let anything manifest itself in her life. Which you agree would probably not be too good an idea.

Then it becomes like every other time. If-it-weren't-for-this-or-that-we-would-be-perfect. There are always so many conditions that hinder anything from moving ahead even an inch. I never see the need to challenge any of those conditions because I do not want to lift them up and be exposed to what is actually underneath them. It is better sometimes to just accept the facade. It is better sometimes to just be a mensch and swallow your pride and your self-worth and move ahead without them. Which, essentially, is to move ahead alone.

I spent the last couple hours before I went to bed last night trying to find something in my reading that would give me something to mentally rally-round. I wasn't into it. I couldn't find anything because I couldn't get my head going to begin the search in earnest. This is no case of melancholia. No. This is simple disappointment. At least she left me with glimmers of hope. That is more than I have ever received.

I am too lazy to write complete sentences and paragraphs. I am not in any mood, really, to order my thoughts into correct grammar and sentence structure. I suppose that makes this worth a little less than it normally would had I felt the need (and had the energy) to write it out fully, but c'est la vie. Right?

Where to begin? Summer. Hot. Unseasonably hot for Upstate New York. Unseasonably hot and dry for this land of perpetual clouds and fresh water. Mosquitoes and flies by the thousands...even this late into Summer. And despite the dry-spells. And so on. Everything is two weeks ahead of schedule. Plants, animals, weather. Even people. Kind of. Not really. But the idea is the same.

Tomatoes are catching a bit of the Early Blight and the Fusarium Wilt. Yellowing leaves and some small splotches of brown. But the fruit is forming and there has been some success with the Zebra Stripes. Even the nearly and apparently dessicated Italian Heirlooms are producing. I cannot complain too much.

Peppers are dead, killed by a disease that wasted and runted them. I assume it was from the nursery I bought them from. Next year I have resolved to grow everything - everything and anything from flowers to Eggplants and Peppers - from seed. Finally.

Corn is seriously depleted. There was a heavy rain several weeks ago that basically drowned the corn. It has yet to recover fully. Along with Cucumbers. And some of the Sunflowers. But whatever.

I had a good, long look at Jupiter the other night with the telescope. I could make out five of Its moons (forgive me for forgetting the names...I believe Ganymede and Io were two of them) and I could faintly make out two dark, almost red-ish stripes on the planet itself. I understand those stripes to be elements of the Jovian atmosphere. Jupiter is beautiful, but it does not have the same enchantment as Saturn with its spectacular and almost unbelievable rings. The Moon is a constant source of amazement. At 4:30 AM, the Moon is half-heartedly illuminated in its particular phase, and the whole of the Moon is somewhat visible as a darkened grey in contrast with the bright, white Crescent. It is all so gorgeous and it takes your breath away.

There are moments throughout the day when the pressure of loneliness almost tugs at my chest. And my mind and its attendants rush into the fray to dislodge the invader.

There are no maps for this region. Wandering with no instincts for it at all.

Wedding Season. One this weekend and one big one next weekend. Terrible opportunities for contemplation and reflection.

I've never made up my mind on contemporary poetry. Or any poetry written during or since Modernism. I do not know if I love the democratic spirit of the hyper-personal high-school journal poetry that is widely written. I should love it. I don't. I hate it. I hate that is exists. I want more Frost and Jeffers. I want poetry that speaks to everyone and to the personal. I don't just want radical free verse filled with ultra-inside information and self-referential bullshit. But that it is out there should really make me happy. I should really love the widespread application of poetry. I should. It should please me. I am still torn.

I hate you Jorie Graham. I love you.

I wish I knew Russian right now. I wish I could just know it so that I could go and read all of Akhmatova in her native language. It would make me feel better about reading her work. And after Akhmatova, I would read Mayakovsky. Because.

Barn Swallows are incredibly aggressive. They are also incredibly resourceful and quick when it comes to nest construction. And inventive. Their nests fit into every nook and cranny. I am constantly amazed - even when they dive-bomb me when I walk out to the garden.

What is the term for the idea of being oriented toward travel in three directions but traveling nowhere, relatively speaking. Bursting to go in one of three directions, or all three, and still staying put. Is it inertia? Is it some sort of Quantum Mechanical term? I am sure there exists some elegant mathematical equation. I hope there is, at least.

The flowers I am growing for my friends' wedding are doing rather well. One of the varieties has already begun to bloom. A couple others are a week or so away. I am hoping that the others will be ready and spectacular by the wedding. Of course, the flowers will be the easy part. Despite the fucked up year we have had climatologically speaking, the flowers are fine. There is, of course, something more I would like to say about this, but it hasn't fully come up to the surface, and I do hate to force things.

Some people are simply too beautiful to even consider.
You wonder what makes them tick...
What makes them talk to you.
And what would make them talk to you forever.
And if they would consider that,
And if you should even consider them considering you.

The sky has been amazing the past several days. All pinks and oranges. Colors that really change the look of the entire landscape and make you want to question the appearance of everything. I have to imagine that in more pre-historic times, Dawn and Dusk were seen as times of altering or changing or transformation or metamorphosis or something. Maybe not. Maybe I am reading too much into it.

The night sky has been spectacular, as well. Now that it is Summer, the Milky Way spans overhead like a bridge. It is a brilliant and smudgy smear across the top of the celestial zenith. I have only had the telescope out a few times, but the gazing has been brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Venus shines like a small moon. I make time by it as I would by the Big Dipper. It is beautiful clockwork for now.

I am slowly trying to get myself writing again. Lurching. Glacially. It feels like I am re-carving the landscape and making deposits of soil and rock. You know, like a continental glacier. Carving out a Great Lake or five. Or six if you count lonely Lake Champlain. Which I don't, but we should at least consider it. It is a beautiful lake and I really haven't seen it since I was a kid and my father took me to Fort Ticonderoga...one of the most militarily useless forts ever constructed. Just ask Ethan Allen. Anyway...yeah. I am trying to get myself writing.

Every day is another micron or so ground off the cog; it is only a matter of time before the cog disappears entirely with a frail, muffled whimper of a collapse. That is how it proceeds.
But you move along.
Like the Canadian Corps. at Passchendaele.
Like the Turks at Gallipoli.
Like Cleveland.

Ah.

It has been far too long since I've written anything - and I am not simply referring to this blog - which I started with high hopes two years ago in a tizzy of creative-feeling. I really don't know what happened.
I simply stopped writing.
I also stopped typing.
I haven't given myself any time to think anything through.
I don't think too deeply about anything.
I let too much pass over and past me.

My hands are in the soil and my thoughts are there, too.