November 15, 2003

• Dark Days
  

  It won’t even be winter yet for over a month, but this morning it’s grey and raining. At 7:30 a.m. I’ve started a fire in the fireplace (which is a godsend to me in this season), opened the kitchen windows out to let in the fresh rain smell, and watched my 5 cats fall into their extended morning slumber in various favorite spots in the house. I have no outdoor plans today, except maybe a quick trip to the library, and this is good because some kind of tummy discomfort started yesterday evening, waking me during the night with pain dead center. Probably something I ate. I’m sure this will abate to nothing if I relax at home all day. But it’s a sign of my age, I think, that I can’t just leap out of minor ailments like I could just 20 years ago. Lots of time for reflection on a day like today, good for writing more on my autobiography where I’ve reached age 18. Lifetimes ago. Holidays are looming. Thanksgiving already planned and for once this year I won’t be cooking. Then the saving for Christmas, with already limited funds. Decorating, planning activities that cost next to nothing. And then just a few days before that holiday Winter will begin in earnest. We’re overdue for big snow this year in Portland, which I love and dread because I have to drive up a steep hill to work in it. But this morning, it’s just the beginning of the long season of night, time to hunker down, get real, and find reasons to be grateful to sustain myself through it.
  Deep Thought: If you’re a horse, and someone gets on you, and falls off, and then gets right back on you, I think you should buck him off right away.
  

  • 10:56 am
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