Monday, October 11, 2004

Partook of fried potatoes and champagne late yesterday with my friend. It was wonderful, but alcohol does not compute in this body (luckily), so I was awake most of the night listening to my heart flutter. Oh but at 6 a.m. the silver of the crescent moon, a convexity so fine and bright, a pregnancy, a breast proffered to the trees, with its Venus ablaze nearby--I watched it , from under my heap of bedclothes and animals, travel up over the hill through my bedroom window, making its happy quiet arc, unmarked by many, but celebrated by some, I'm sure. Recent nights have brought hard frosts. This oddly constructed house is a challenge to heat. Until I get familiar with its winter persona we will shiver night and morning. The woodstove in the back room where I sleep is pretty--I love falling asleep to the flicker through the glass--but its inadequate maw provides little heat. The great iron cookstove in the kitchen, which I have yet to light, is meant to heat the main part of the building. Drafts come up through the floorboards in places. I've turned lights and lamps and space-heaters on the tropical animals I'm caring for. Poor Gunter tortoise hunkers in the frigid nighttime greenhouse. I never know where he'll fall asleep and it's dangerous to let his temperature fall much below 60 degrees. And because, at almost 70 pounds, he's more dead weight than I can shift around, I find myself following him around with blowers and infrared lamps and keeping a worried eye on the thermometer, which falls into the 40s each night, anyway. It's a brisk and windy and bright fall day today, and I'm grateful for it. We'll order hay today for the llamas, and bring in crickets for the spiders, and send a shout out for Yoda, gone these three days. 12:23:16 PM    comment []

A Slant of Sun on Dull Brown Walls by Stephen Crane A slant of sun on dull brown walls, A forgotten sky of bashful blue. Toward God a mighty hymn, A song of collisions and cries, Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells, Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans, Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair, The unknown appeals of brutes, The chanting of flowers, The screams of cut trees, The senseless babble of hens and wise men-- A cluttered incoherency that says at the stars, "O God, save us!" 12:21:01 PM    comment []