Pig and farm report

 

this morning I was finally able to go outside and breathe I stood on the front porch and inhaled the scent of rain soaked forest then I went out to the deck to take that photo of a sugar maple in my yard I opened all the windows in the house put the screens in then drove to the beach there is some stuff going on with my mental health that I am not ready to write about here and so I am stopped from writing anything at all for now last night I dreamed of a giant cabbage and women with weary intelligent eyes and huge dogs I am okay but not okay I will be okay just checking in here to say hello hello

Ruth Bader Ginsberg

Bone Lullaby

Cante la arena blanca,
sal rota sobre la playa, 
corazón del delfín
montando su onda lisa
en la noche.

Cante los huesos, 
la cáscara quebrada. 
Cocos hablan en le voz del Dios,
derramar la leche al mar.

Pig and farm report

 

I’ve been having a panic attack all day a panic attack for ten straight hours it’s a real doozy it is medium dark all the time now like a deep summer night in Alaska my son strapped two of his many bungee cords to my fan for a makeshift air filter it rained for a few minutes but it didn’t change the air quality index this is one whiny post

Pig and farm report

the sky is brown full of smoke ash tar creosote and whatever else trees exhale as they burn as they die that picture is not current I just put it there because it is a portal I only stepped outside once yesterday to grab the CSA box from the porch and I held my breath while doing so no baking no frying no vacuuming (not that I was going to vacuum) and no running the dryer we are quiet inside both of us with raging headaches the house full of invisible smoke waiting for rain there are no birds flying or hopping around no birdsong the leaves on my rhododendrons are drooping my trees cast their eyes to the south toward Seattle and Portland which is now on alert to evacuate half a million people that amazing green place burning burning with an administration that has been steadily and quietly rolling back environmental protections an administration that does not believe in science an administration that disregards the entire west coast because our governors would not stoop to kiss the nasty man’s ring

my son is here because the fires were raging toward his orchard which isn’t really much of an an orchard anymore but acres and acres of lush green land in the Okanogan Valley because his dad refused to spray his trees with chemicals and the surrounding orchard owners complained because if Jim’s trees got infested then it could spread so he removed most of his fruit trees and sold a lot of his land and became very very rich I completely fell off the track in this paragraph 

but behold! all is not bleak! last night wee feral cat Hal caught his first mouse and jumped up on my bed with it crunched between his pointy feral teeth (not carrying it neatly by its tail singing a kill song as Jupiter does) I quickly dispatched the mouse into the forest and commenced giving Hal highest praise and catnip and strokes and thanks for his brilliant gift there hasn’t been a mouse in the house for over a year I’m sure it was just seeking sanctuary the second goodness is that two days ago I started to read again finally I read Iain Reid’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things after watching Charlie Kaufman’s brilliant film based on the book because I was so intrigued and mesmerized by the film (on Netflix highly recommended) and yesterday I read halfway through Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments I read the way I’ve read my entire life nonstop lost enthralled and happy like there had never been a long stretch of time where reading left me my most beloved portal

after I eat my egg this morning I’m diving right back in but with even more love for the art of reading now that I know such a gift can be lost to me

I hope you are safe wherever you are

Pig and farm report

tomorrow I see the doctor not for anything special except for the billion diseases and maladies I’ve imagined for myself since my bloodwork plus a very real case of what might be ringworm which I have not had since I was a very small child but this quacks like a duck and if it is what I suspect it is then it came directly from my friendly neighborhood veterinarian and the whole idea of it causes me terrible stress and dreams of my brother and needles 

mockingbird wish me luck

 On Tour with The Billy Tipton Saxophone Quartet

A woman walked toward me stuck her fingers in her eyes to avoid looking at me it’s like playing piano she said (that easy) like playing Bach she said (that easy) or running with a broken champagne flute in your mouth easypeasy she said. I rubbed the hairy wen on my left wrist. It pained me to think of his constricted chest the muscle pull yet I would gleefully take hot tongs to his tongue nothing worse than feeling duped than waking up to cold meat and beer. The Portuguese boy in the cigarette factory lopped off his thumb he said I’m no performing monkey when the ambulance drove away lights pulsing as cuckoo-shrikes rose from the mud to announce their lack of water. Darfur water conflict. Tibet water conflict. Sudan water conflict. Water stressed countries. The next day I discovered a velvet bag in a chicken pot pie. I was not the best hostess. I had to play Snow White in Port Townsend that night. I wore paper slippers the blue and yellow dress my skin white as an egg. I rode the ferry first car at the prow. I let down the chain let down the wedges at my front wheels let down my pinched bodice let down my windows and slid into the Pacific Ocean.

Pig and farm report

I kept busy today but my brain refuses facts refuses the fog that feels like cotton refuses the noise the muted hum of a typical Sunday with its repeated news and its weird 

yesterday I was inflicted with a terrible kind of self pity that led to me to wandering the house Ophelia-like in my white nightgown and also eating six or seven meals I lost count not big meals I had a huge salad at one point then I had a half a cup of brown rice with broccoli tossed in then I had three baby bok choy that I sautéed then later I had a huge soft pretzel on a bee plate and much later still I had two corn tortillas with butter and pretty soon I started to feel like crap and I still feel like crap I think it began with me trying to make my own iced coffee and I'm still not sure how much coffee I drank inside my experiment but I couldn't sleep last night I dreamed I found a huge U shaped bright orange pumpkin with octopus tentacles wriggling around the tentacles were grabbing at me and I was grabbing them and they were slimy 

I was making pretzels and when I pulled my hands out of the dough they looked like hooves and I was a disgusted with myself I felt like my life had just opened its eye I felt pain in my back and the weight of writing from a place of meaty violence the wolf world holds me in its wet soft mouth I worry that I might be the last person to believe the plague is behind us I might be the last person to leave my house into normal into the after I seem so much more worried than everyone else barely fledged and now carried into another season foolish and sentimental 

if I am reading one paragraph at a time does it still count as reading? I read this fantastic work in the Yale Review by Dana Levin not a long piece but it too held me in its teeth and took me two hours I am so glad I finished reading it’s deeply moving my difficulty with reading right now breaks me I feel not here like a forklift ran over my jello brain in an underground parking lot like my soul is a ghost limb begging for a scratch not being able to read refuses blood and butter salt and honey I chide myself for it here but believe me it is the worst punishment my brain could have concocted for me it is not a joke but I have to hush now Ophelia is back knocking like a hungry wasp on my screen

there is the little house in the tree I took this picture by hiding myself on a side street in plain sight you can see the little white picket fence they’re building and the basketball hoop attached to the stairs I feel pretty sure this place holds deep magik like carnivals and Florida and rivers

my son has asked me three times now if we’re going to have a Christmas tree this year and I assure him yes each time and that’s all I know of the future that question and its exclaimed answer but will I be last to go into the green?

Owls video attempt #4

Owls

All the Montanas live in me

 Counting figs and wasps

I followed your dither through the maximum amount of Christs and a small helplessness to see how things looked after the dustup my day-glo dress yielded a razor and a couple on a sidewalk near a pub in Chicago 1947 held hands she hummed he frantically searched his pockets there were holes in the wall of his belly I insisted beyond names until the day we woke the rats and elk in the clearing startled up their flanky desire

Pig and farm report

today I stabbed the lid of a Tupperware container with the tip of my big butcher knife because I couldn’t pry it off

Pig and farm report

I feel equal parts energetic and rebecca-small-r tragic yesterday I baked this delicious and amazing loaf of bread stuffed with gruyere cheese roasted tomatoes and basil from my garden today I swapped out my spring duvet cover for my winter duvet cover then I paid my property taxes which were not due until Halloween actually on Halloween which is altogether hinky but I kept thinking about the enormous sum of it the Halloween of it the power of the receipt in my hidey place kept creeping up on me and I’d worry worry worry and so I just did it I paid online early then I bought myself a pair of bright red boots they’re good for navigating out here and that’s pretty much all I wear now boots in the winter surfer flip flops in the summer the rebecca-small-r tragic part is me feeling like I should be a super woman who can read a pattern and sew a mask sew ten or twenty masks! sew 40,000 masks! masks for everyone! but I can’t even read a book these days and when I look at a pattern the lines and measurements swim across the paper or website or page in a distressing way and I refuse to explain myself further or be shamed by my lack because fuck it look at this biscuit light loaf of deliciousness that I baked and I paid my property taxes like a grown up and also no one can rock a pair of red boots like I can

I have been tending to Hal’s cold by locking him in the bathroom with me for twenty minutes twice a day with the shower going full blast hot and the fan off so we both get the benefits of a sauna me for my girly complexion Hal for his crusty boogers I also attempt to smear erythromycin ointment into his literal eyeball which is enflamed and trust me he is still very feral when it comes to having anybody poke around in his eyeball and I am too I’m taking him to our covid free vet Friday which means stuffing him into his wee crate then waiting in my car in the vet’s parking lot as they check him out inside their office I am okay with this arrangement because I have not forgot last January when after wrangling Wolfie to the hot vet office I fainted right there on the goddamn floor like a Victorian spinster though I did not fall I just sat on a chair quickly then sloped onto the floor Hal is a little better today he has been howling for attention and he ate mightily and he “helped” me swap out my duvet covers but he surely does look like a drunk little pirate with his sneezes and his wonky eyeball 

this morning I met this basketball sized wasp nest hanging from a slender madrona branch behind my house hello I said to the many many very busy wasps while slowly backing away from the nest there is no way I’m crawling all the way up a ladder at night in the pitch black woods to contain them while they sleep nope we have agreed to live together peacefully yay nature

I spied a tiny house in a tree near the beach not a treehouse and yet a treehouse all the same with windows with lacy curtains and a proper pointed roof and power and a tiny tiny yard with weird small playground toys in it now I go there every day and just stare at it as it is fabulous beyond belief I can tell someone is living there so no picture but still I keep staring as I pass because it is pure magic