a late February quotitidan

 

2. Sipping: home coffee, after two weeks of espresso in Mexico, delicious, yes, but to have my Black Mountain beans ground in our old grinder, a paper filter fitted into the drip cone over the enameled blue coffee pot, and then the dark strong coffee poured into my green pottery mug: morning perfection.

 

3. Reading: catching up on a month’s worth of New Yorkers and Harpers. Somehow I missed this article in Harpers, a response (sort of) to the Unravel show I saw at the Barbican Art Gallery this time last year, and I have been thinking about it, responding to it in a letter to the editor which I suspect comes too late to print.

 

4. Thinking: see above, and also I have been thinking about a dream I had the night before last, a dream so unsettling and seemingly profound that I have been trying to parse it ever since. I dreamed I was driving home from the mail boxes or maybe the lake, somewhere north of my house, on our highway but somehow it was divided into two sections by a verge which was sunken, like a ditch. Nearing my driveway, I realized that 3 horses were huddled in the verge, lying down, and so I stopped the car. A chestnut mare, with her young foal, and a white gelding. They were scrawny, emaciated, their coats uncared for. What could I do, I wondered. The white gelding was wearing a halter and maybe I could lead up to the house and then what? Give him some of the rolled oats I buy in big bags for granola? I had no hay, no where to house these sad animals, apart from the woodshed. What could I do?

 

5. Remembering: in Oaxaca, we celebrated the 46th year of our meeting, at a poetry reading in Victoria, and we went out to dinner at Catedral, a really beautiful evening.  And since then, I’ve been remembering the years (They tell a story I used to know…)

 

 

6. Wishing: I have so many wishes and it’s too late in life for many of them to come true.

 

7. Eating: Last night we had spinach pizza, the crust made with a little of my sourdough starter, the one I call Artemis, and spread with last summer’s pesto. It was delicious.

 

8. Finishing: I’ve been going through the manuscript of Let A Body Venture At Last Out of its Shelter, in preparation for a meeting with my new publishers and editor later this week. I’m almost finished checking to make sure I’ve included all the source material. This is the first time I’ve read it in its entirety for some time and I’m surprised by it, which is a good thing. I think.

 

9. Watching: In the greenhouse, the bulbs are coming up, the rosemary plants are in bloom, and the first anemone bud is about to open. I am watching for spring.

 

 

10. Wearing: Chanel 19.

 

11. Loving: Kate Wolf.

 

 

12. Hoping: that somehow the chaos of the world will settle.

 

13. Enjoying: this morning I swam in the pool for the first time in a couple of weeks (though I swam every day in Mexico) and I loved the extra length–both pools in Oaxaca were shorter, one considerably so and one perhaps 3 or 4 meters shorter–and I loved having my window lane and what I didn’t love was that it was warmer than the pools in Oaxaca so it didn’t feel quite so bracing.

 

14. Appreciating: the quiet, though I am hoping I didn’t miss the owl courtships by being away. Barred, great-horned, saw-whet: every year I lie in my bed and hear them in the darkness and I know at least that some things continue, the owls carry on their mating rituals, the coyotes mate, the bears wake up and come down the mountain, pushing over boulders for the grubs underneath, the elk cows go away to have their calves, and suddenly the Swainson’s thrushes are calling at dawn, the robins are singing the salmonberry song, and it’s spring.