February 4, 2021
Awoke still angry about the vaccination. Awoke from a dream of being at a resort with a bunch of others (DJ and JK among them) and suggesting that we all go to an 11 PM showing of the movie Caravaggio. No one was with me. When I woke I was still deciding whether to go by myself. Truthfully, I was thrown into a terrible mood. Sat in the living room missing my dog Bimbo. Certainly that is gratuitous self-indulgence in response to gratuitous cruelty, however small.
Yes, I know I am the least unfortunate person on this planet. There are moments when that realization does not help.
On the other side, my hawk perches very near and stares into my windows, as he is welcome to do. He fluffs up comically in the cold, like he’s wearing a red barrel.
I glanced at the pond and couldn’t figure out what I was seeing, until the image (gray on gray in the winter snow) resolved into a heron, stalking and stabbing at my fish, glittering orange in her beak when she got one. I watched a long time. She waded out, waded back in, took her leisure on the ground at pondside, apparently at home. I looked at her through the binocs, where she seemed a mosaic of a heron, flat and vivid, her yellow eye suddenly quite disturbing, as though my pond had been ravaged by a dinosaur. Hawk flew inches over her head and she didn’t flinch.
So God said, “Does the heron make up for yesterday’s dirty trick?”
“No. But close.”
“Ah, yes it did. I can tell. You’re jolly now.”
“Well, maybe, but don’t pull that shit again.”
God gives me one of those impossible-to-interpret looks.
Phone rang. I answered it instantly. “We have been trying to reach you regarding your automobile warrantee–”
February 3, 2021
I’d been keeping my phone by me every hour of the day, so that when the call for a Covid19 vaccination appointment came, I’d be ready. Yesterday a call came, and the monitor on the phone said “This is Spam.” Not only did it say that, but the little span likelihood monitor was as far to the right as I’ve ever seen it, meaning it was the one call I ever received most likely to be spam. I ignored it, and, of course, it was the call for an injection appointment, the opportunity now lost for the foreseeable future. It has been a long time since I was so angry, so disgusted at gratuitous–and this time dangerous– cruelty.
February 2, 2021
Unless the groundhog was very alert and stuck his head out at exactly the right time, he did not see his shadow. Very blustery bitterly cold, and I went out only once, to get cheap cuts of meat at the Sav-Mor to experiment with the hawk, to see if he could be fed like an ordinary bird. When I pulled up in the drive, there he sat on a limb not ten feet from the ground, not moving as I went from car to house. I tossed him a meaty pig joint and–yes– he swooped down and it was gone. One of us has the other trained in the space of a day. It is a glad thing for me. I hope it gets him through the winter, though I hope it doesn’t discourage him from keeping terror in the hearts of the squirrels. Two appointments cancelled, and me twice breathing “thank God!”
February 1, 2021
Bitter winter day. Dowland is right for the melancholy twilight.
When I cook and there’s gristle or fat to be gotten rid of, I throw it out the kitchen door onto the drive for the crows. It seldom takes them long to find it, even if they were not in evidence when I opened the door. Today I had some fat and a marrowy bone from a lamb steak. I tossed it, and before I turned back to the house, a great, vivid-colored shape, clearly not a crow, swooped down and seized it. My hawk had struck, the image of his white claw seizing the bone frozen inside my eye. It was a wonderful thing.
January 31, 2021
Calm day, writing, sending out manuscripts, napping a tremendous nap full of vivid dreams.
Thinking of the first time I had Fritos, at my grandfather’s fishing camp. Have associated them with adulthood ever since. He took me in his boat and said that I’d turn into a merman of I fell into the water. The water was green and thick, not like water I had seen before. I believed him. I pictured myself way down in the depths, being a merman. It was not frightening at all.
January 30, 2021
Snow. Unexpected snow. First Vestry meeting. I don’t know what I’m able to do, what I’m expected to do. I feel that I’m meant to hurry things along in a group that loves to linger, return, re-open, rediscuss, but one remembers we are Episcopalians, and lingering and returning are what we do. The direct road seems crude to us, lest one of us has not reiterated her position as often as she likes. This is to say, what can I do in the next three years not to appear the boor? How much will be too little and too much? I do not have the talent of some of finding dangers and pitfalls in things resolved upon. I always assume we can make them work, assuming good will.
