December 23, 2008

Agate sky at morning.

Have been feeling fragile and achy of late, and vowed to do something about it, especially if– as I refused to accept–it was the onset of age. The vow was made in good time, for I woke this morning boiling with energy and feeling like a twenty year old. I never paid correct attention to my body, so never learned to identify the rhythms, the highs and lows that pass through it. I strain to remember if a certain feeling had been felt before, and, for the most part, plunge on until whatever ails me goes away, as it almost always does. A man at church is dying from cancer which first manifested as a backache, so, as my backache lingered into its second week, I supposed I had that. Then someone says, “Oh, I had a stiff back for six weeks,” and suddenly I am reprieved, if not exactly encouraged.

Evening of a fine day. I wrote hard on “The Stolen Child,” then went to the studio, where I worked on a painting on paper and a construction utilizing pages from my old BCP/hymnal, which I replaced last Sunday, after twenty one years of use, with a new one. A window was flapping open when I got there, and the room never warmed up, so exhaustion from the sapping cold prevented me from working as long as I might. Alex’s dog visited me, snuffling around, taking this and that into his mouth to test it out. At one point he returned with a tennis ball, even bouncing it a few times in case I was too stupid to know how it worked. Aside from progress on various projects, I felt my old self physically, and every sensation, every step climbed, every wind to tighten my coat against, was fascinating.

Waking dream, or a moment of a backward perception. I was looking out a window into a little woods, except that it was the front window the house on Goodview Avenue, and the woods was Crine’s woods, a sight I have not seen awake in forty five years.

Circe sleeps with one paw on the keyboard when I sit down to write.