SUNDAY GRAB-BAG
The sun broke over the ridgetop at 6:50 this morning and now the room brightens and brightens. Bone pain woke me at 5:30. It was so cold. Got down in the 40s again last night, Fahrenheit. I think it must drop a good ten degrees lower in this watery little hollow than what the machines in town record.
Small sweet bird twitters coming up from the willows, and lark yodels audible from somewhere distant. The only other sound (beside the constant of flowing water) is this damned big black buzzy housefly that started up around six. I'll open the screenless east window and it may find its way out. ... Oh, there it went, right out. 'Bye! Sorry I called you "damned"!
So in addition to inching my way through this Elizabeth Bishop biography I'm ripping through yet another Hughes--Ted Hughes: The Life of a Poet, by Elaine Feinstein. And still so far all I get are the physical facts of things and scandals small and large. This is not what I want. Yet where may I find it? In Plath's writings and in various biographies and elsewhere I find hints and mentions of some method he used, some state he consciously put himself in in order to find his poems, to open himself to them. This is what I want to know about, but everyone glosses it over as though it meant nothing. I want to know. What door did he open within himself? What tools did he use? Must I reinvent some secret wheel? He recommended his process to Plath when she was blocked once and it worked well, but I can't find details.
I'm glad now I opened this other window to let the fly out. A little breeze is coming in along with the light, and the air is so sweet. Since I didn't put a vegetable garden in the fenced pen this spring (because I was moving to North Carolina), I should get some hens. Too late to bring up chicks. I wonder whether I could find a half-dozen layers and a ... rooster ... somewhere around here? I have a splintery old nesting box I've been saving, and that metal shed could shelter them in winter if I close it up well with canvas tarps and/or plywood doors. This we shall look into.
I've had two answers to my bulletin-board notice requesting an on-call care provider for my brother so I may go off on day trips to the city with a friend (should that possibility ever arise). I haven't answered the messages yet but I will later today, and meet them, I hope. I have not had respite for 10 years or more.
Did you know that the longer the tea bags steep, the less caffeine you'll get from the tea you drink? After two minutes the available caffeine levels drop because the tannins bind it somehow. I just read that somewhere.
I dreamed I took my mother to the Academy Awards ceremony, which was being held in auditoriums in a large (tall) hospital/hotel building. She was very pregnant and went into labor soon after we got there. There was much driving in the dream, and missing exits and backtracking and making wrong turns. Also some elevator strandings. I was frantic to find the perfect doctor for her. I wanted her to wait! wait! don't have it yet! until I finally tracked down the woman I sought. She lived right across the street from where the awards were held, it turned out. I brought her (the doctor) to the auditorium but Mom was nowhere to be found. Later I found her walking slowly down the street, still pregnant. I had her sit on a bus stop bench. This doctor person, though--what a character! She was big and dark, Jewish-Italian east-coasty bohemian, friendly, talkative, colorful--everything I love in a woman. She was my age, maybe, and was a lesbian who lived in a big rambling house full of color, wide-open, with guests and offspring and foster kids coming and going constantly. She was partners with another professional--businessperson or lawyer, maybe--serious and powerful and in the background. If they'd been Tarot queens I'd call them Pentacles and Swords. I never did get her and PG Mom together, and Mom didn't have a baby in the dream.
8:40:52 AM 
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