Thursday, November 4, 2004

There must be some significance to the black storm that bore down so swiftly behind the closing of the polls. It cloaked the coast in violence and lightning; here it brought a dull cold and sidewise snow that lasted all that night and next day, too. I stayed inside except for chores, and fed the stove the wood I'd split the day before, and started moving furniture from room to room. I've brought my bedroom up from the downstairs den into this little cell I'd been avoiding, saving for guests, but they can have another room. I'll claim this one now, and move the sofa and big chair to the vacated space, where the little woodstove lives. Then into that empty space--the old living room--I'll move my office, from up to down, the first thing you'll see when you come through my door--my machinery, my screens--and plant the iron bedstead in that ex-office upstairs loft, instead, for friends to sleep on when they come, or for my own little trysts maybe someday down the line again. Then the storeroom attic has been emptied pretty much; old computers and peripherals have new homes in crannies under stairs, along with boxes of uncut cloth, old clothes. My shelves of children's books will stay, and stuffed toys, bowls of spools and buttons, marbles and shiny rocks, and the rollaway bed, and Christmas stuff, in case my grandkids visit here someday; I adored a good attic when I was small. We (Greta, Ruth, Piffle, Apple, Sally, and I) slept in my new bedroom cell last night, half-moved-into. The bed up there is comfortable but I'm unused to firmness after the old iron thing with its exposed springs and foam topper. My back is out of whack today. Or maybe that's from carrying all this furniture upstairs and down, moving moving, shifting heavy things from place to place, trying to make sense of life, trying to effect change here, at least, trying to know a little control. Speaking of control, I'm experimenting with some challenging verse forms. Here's this morning's elementary little assay into the Welsh awdl gywydd. Gold Paint The gold paint I bought is yet unused. Bet me when I'll pry the lid and dip in the hairs of my best brush. Prayers, cries, lies, songs wait like leaf to fall across the walls and bare sills of my unsealed rooms. A shrine I'll make, a shining, a dare. 10:35:38 AM    comment []