I so need that.
At times I feel like I'm ogling others, though. Believe me, that is a VERY odd feeling to have. I have the urge to reach out and touch, feel thigh and shoulder muscle, and strong buttocks. I know --- cringe, cringe -- I hesitate to write it, but it's the truth. Muscle and strength are what we come equipped with, in this animal world. They are not there for decoration: they keep us alive and kicking. And I, suddenly lacking this precious thing I have always had in some measure, want it back!! (It's mine --- you can't have it, oh mine enemy, but you seem to be helping yourself anyway, curse you!!)
Let's hope I don't show up on the Police Blotter of my hometown newspaper, caught reaching in the wrong situation. But at least you'll know what was happening: I was reaching for Life, Substance, Solidity, Reassurance.
I have had good days. Precious good days to celebrate fully and hold dear. I have been able to walk the lane, walk down to the river that runs nearby within a 20 minute walk of my house. On one of the Good Days, my daughter and I visited a beloved sycamore that leans out over the river at a good angle for scrambling up. The same tree generously reaches down with one smaller branch and offers a nice horizontal section low enough to the ground to make a good perch if you don't mind some upside-down moments as you monkey yourself up onto it.
With a little help, I got up:
Raven, Anu Garg’s word of the day (https://wordsmith.org/awad) is “precarious.”
ReplyDeleteYes to your family inheritance, long may it live.
I have at my desk here on Raven Hill a handful of printed-on-paper email correspondence with your father, winter of 2003–4. In one of them Martin comments on a chapbook I’d sent him about a solo getaway in northern Minnesota, and you can perhaps hear him speaking these words: “Your voice is both inward and outward. Often I hear it as speaking to ravens, waters, lichens, yourself, the whole shebang.” He goes on to speak of a mutual acquaintance, of “polished stars,” of “missing out on much data and opinion” due to technological shortcomings (clearly not worried about it), and of amberat, the crystallized urine (“and, I think, skin gland secretion”) of woodrats.
Solidarity and gratitude, good days and otherwise.
I am thinking of you several times a day, as I go through my mundane me stuff, I compare what I'm doing to what I think you might be doing, I'm learning stuff this way. I'm glad you reunited with a good tree friend on your good day. I have such old friends scattered across my stomping ground, they are so comforting. Love and hugs to you Raven
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