What is this slim black cylinder? My fingers manipulate one end of it across a vacant plain and a black line follows, looping and weaving, where it moves. Have I done this before? The activity is familiar.
I can't account for these days of silence. Even today it's taken an effort to turn from Things That Need To Be Done and force myself to write.
We had rain all Friday night and gray most of yesterday. The air as the sun came over the ridge yesterday morning reeked of sodden lumber. I suppose it was the scent of this wet unpainted house.
This morning we've had sun for an hour or so. The sky is hazy but bright, almost white in the east, as if the sun shone through a sheet of rice paper. On this side of closed windows I still can hear sapsuckers calling in the junipers, the muffled rumble of rushing creek water. In my room, the computer hums, a fly buzzes, and from my brother's room across the hall come the creaks of his wooden chair, his little whispers and sighs as he draws and writes at his desk. He loves the noise, the little pop, when he removes the top from each colored pen.
Over on my desk chair Ted purrs furiously in his semi-doze; his middle name isn't "Loudpur" for nothing. Ruth bathes herself in a spot of sun at the foot of the bed, with dainty little slurps. And alongside me here where I write, Apple snores softly.
The local paper, a weekly, came out on Thursday with my for-sale ads, and for the first 24 hours sales were brisk. A couple of people bought large things--the chest freezer, picnic table--and said they'd be right back to fetch them. I haven't seem them since. I didn't get their names or phone numbers. I did get their money, though, so I suppose they'll come back eventually.
My online used media sales the past 24 hours all have been to persons on the other side of great bodies of water. A John Adams CD (Gnarly Buttons) was bought by someone in Australia; Mozart's Requiem will go to Honolulu; and five minutes ago I sold Jamie Sams' Sacred Path Medicine Cards and book to someone in East Sussex, UK. This is unusual. All the week's earlier sales were in Louisiana, North Carolina, Texas, New York.
Oh wonderful--outside the meadowlarks have started their competing calls. I love their complicated music, the way they repeat with subtle variations, their joyful yodel. I may have to open a window.
10:00:26 AM 
|
|
