Whiteout

whiteout–noun

1. Meteorology.
   
   1. a condition, found in polar regions, in which uniform illumination from snow on the ground and from a low cloud layer makes features of the landscape indistinguishable.
   2. a condition of heavily falling or blowing snow in which visibility is very poor.
2. an act or instance of whiting out with a correction fluid.
3. a white correction fluid used for this: a bottle of whiteout.
4. a mistake, as in typing, that has been whited out with a correction fluid.

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Winter is my second favourite season, after autumn. There is something so clean and crisp about new fallen snow. And it does have the same effect as whiting out the past. A new snowfall is a fresh start. It wipes away old mistakes. It is a clean slate. Perhaps this is why the ancient Celts began their year with winter approaching. The Celtic New Year is celebrated on November 1st, when the earth is dying. Winter is the season of the wise and wizened crone. When the sun is born on the winter solstice. Yuletide. The longest night of the year gives birth to the beginning of longer days as the sun begins to stretch and lengthen his fingers towards the longest day of the year, the summer solstice.

This isn't why I love the winter, though. I do feel a thrill over how the earth is blanketed in white. I adore when boughs are laden, when fences look frosted. But the primary reason I {heart} winter is because it is the season when I've tended to fall deeply in love, to fall with the soft, sensual slowness of huge, fist-sized flakes. The bulk of my memories of feeling first love or new love are tied up somehow with the sound of crunching snow underfoot on a walk holding mittened hands. With the breath of whispered words hanging solid in the cold, crisp air. With the memory of the aurora dancing above a first kiss. Making out to the crackling sound and smoky scent of a logfire burning. The first-time, butterfly-flipping and laughter-drenched lesson on how to do donuts in your car. How a full moon lights up the trees during a midnight cross-country ski. The sparkling blue diamonds of a snowy landscape at dusk when one's heart is filled up to the brim like a steamy mug of hot chocolate.

Whiteouts make for poor visibility. Love is blind.

This is why I love winter. Tis the season for cuddling, snuggling, for bundling up. For seeking warmth. For finding someone to get warm with. And this winter I've my own little bundle to snuggle. To share sticking out of tongues and tasting of snowflakes. To eke out the imprint of angels with flapping arms.
 I look at the snow that fell from the sky last night and painted my landscape a bright, new white. I will let it be my clean slate, the erasure of long-ago mistakes. A new beginning in my breast. And this winter, for the first time, my very own newborn son to celebrate. Yuletide approaches... Hallelujah.
*definition taken from an online dictionary.
Music: River, Joni Mitchell

Sophistry versus Sense

So tonight the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) hosted a screening of the Munk debate on climate change going on live at the University of Toronto and because I'd been given a heads up by a woman involved in what is known as the "evening edition playgroup" (this is a group of moms getting out for a drink and a bite at a local pub on Wednesday nights sans enfants - of course, I bring my sonshine when I attend as I'm still nursing him) and because he and I were already in town, I stroll him over to hear the four speakers hash it out.

A quick aside that it literally astounds me a debate is still going on as to a need for the reduction of carbon emissions at this stage of a very real global warming crisis!

The resolution being debated, and I quote, "“Climate change is mankind's defining crisis, and demands a commensurate response.” Speaking for the PRO side of the debate were Green Party leader, Elizabeth May and environmental activist, George Monbiot. On the CON side, author and professor, Bjorn Lomborg as well as author and former politician, Lord Nigel Lawson.

Now, I've attended a few CIGI events before and it's always a distinct pleasure to walk into the former Seagram's museum that houses this organization. The building itself was part of the original distillery founded by Joseph Seagram in the mid-1800s. It's an architectural masterpiece, visually stunning, and its melding of 19th century copper piping and racks of oak barrels with 21st century technology is both fluid and cozy. It has an old-world vibe with a new-world vision.

Tonight's debate did not disappoint. It got pretty damn lively and both May and Lomberg were actually given a "time out" at one point so they could both calm down a little. May was right on the money about Lomborg's sophistry, in my opinion. He seemed all show and no substance. Of the four speakers, he was the one donning a t-shirt and jeans. No idea if this was simply an attempt to distract his audience into identifying themselves with him and what he was saying or an attempt to put the "cool" in his book, Cool It, which apparently argues a gross, global overreaction to global warming. He made some truly outlandish statements, in my view, leading me to question whether he'd smoked something before coming onstage and inspiring my new nickname for him "Bjorn Yesterday Lomborg". He actually accuses Monbiot, at one point, of wanting to embrace climate change at the expense of human lives. His solution versus focusing on cutting down CO₂ emissions? Let's make the poor rich and that will help solve their problems, not focusing on climate change. Gee, why didn't we all think of that before, Lomborg? Let's eradicate poverty and just make the poor rich. Hear, hear, ol chap! Jolly good idea. Not entirely sure what kind of solution he proposes to make this happen since no one seems to have figured out how to resolve that conundrum before. Maybe it's laid out in one of his books. Too bad he came off as such a buffoon or I might have picked one up to see what he had to say. I'd make some more disparaging remarks, but he questions the meaning of the term "disparaging" at one point when he uses it during his own argument. Hmmm. Someone needs to buy a dictionary.

I will point out that I was equally disappointed at times with some of what May was saying. I have voted green the last few times I've marked an "X" so it was not that I disagreed with her, but she repeatedly seemed to verbally stick the finger to Lomborg's shoulder a few too many times, taking away, I thought, from the otherwise well-reasoned argument she was making. I just felt her repeated efforts to discredit Lomborg and single him out distracted from the real power of her statements and I would have liked her to do less fingerpointing and insulting and more focusing on the issue itself. She has style, sophistication and a great voice and she had an amazing platform to let it be heard tonight. Instead, unfortunately, the term "catty" was overheard afterwards in reference to the debate and I was disappointed she undermined herself and her message by getting a bit carried away with her focus on Lomborg as the green thorn in her side.

I found it difficult to make out many of Lawson's statements because he has this old British Establishment habit of mumbling a lot of his words followed by punching the point he wants to make. Maybe I'm biased but I find it very difficult to relate to a) an economist and b) one of his generation having much to say that is enlightened and relevant to the globe now revolving. His argument included that "oil is good and not bad" and climate change will cost too much. Blah blah boring blah. He actually claimed that there is no global warming at all and that the PRO debaters should be happy about this. At one point, he strayed completely off tangent and began to discuss China's focus on oil and where they are buying it all up and how "they're not stupid". I felt both CON speakers came off as people who didn't have their facts straight and were trying to dance a jig to distract from that fact.

Monbiot stole the show for me. He came across as the true voice of reason, never losing his cool and certainly not requiring jeans to enhance it. He made some truly effectual arguments, drawing much from his own experiences and work in Africa and how much climate change has directly affected people there. Kudos to him for a thoughtful, meaningful argument.

Of course, over the two hours the debate was screened, I was dealing with a teething baby, strolling him around the beautiful surroundings, rocking him in my arms and nursing him (not necessarily in that order) until he fell asleep and I could sit and knit (both the poncho I'm working on as a gift and my eyebrows over the points being made). All this made the debate even livelier for me! I could swear his teething outbursts were perfectly timed with what were, in my mind, absolutely ridiculous statements from both CON debaters.

What a smart, l'il Green Man I've got! As if I need another reason to support the fight against global warming and to want to slow climate change. All I have to do is gaze at him now, having safely transferred his slumbering self into his crib when we returned home at 10:00pm.

Let's hope the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen results in a move to make a real difference and an immediate one to reduce carbon emissions!

Music: It's Not Easy Bein' Green, Ray Charles on Sesame Street

Knitallurgy. It's a science.

Okay, it's more rocker science than rocket science. Actually, at base, it's pretty damn simple. There are only two stitches: a knit and a purl (which is really a backwards knit). Everything else is a variation on those two stitches. It's easy!


          I visited a great little store today called Greenwood Quiltery and am once again wrapped up in my current knitting project. The back of the store is devoted to us knitwits. Yarn spills over the shelves and it's like getting lost in a woolen forest. The quilting section of the store is also scrumptious. I wish I knew how to do that. I've never quilted (would LOVE to someday). My friend, Dan, just gifted my sonshine with his first handmade quilt, the theme of which is nursery rhymes and Dan did quite a beautiful job. Giving and receiving gifts that are handmade is one of my favourite things. Those gifts always seem to mean so much more. One of my older sisters, Colette, crocheted a beautiful blanket. Another friend, Zoe, made blankets for my baby shower. My friend, Kasia, sewed up two pairs of pants, and her husband, Graham, used his architectural prowess to handcarve a stack of blocks with holes in the middle and a holder for them, all made of wood. My twin sister handcrafted all the birds to hang around his room and she made him a mommy owl with her baby owl as stuffed toys. How very lucky my little boy is to have such creative aunts and uncles! Beautiful!


          One of the best gifts my mother ever gave me was to teach me how to knit when I was but a wee lass of perhaps 8 years old. Nowadays, I find it is a form of manual yoga. Quite the meditative craft. You get into a rhythm and then your thoughts drift away. Maybe it's the click-clack of wooden needles. Maybe it's the deft digital dancing. Knitting is addictive and quite calming, mesmerizing. A craft of solace. And often, solitude.

This North American mentality in which the majority of Canadians and Americans reside has trouble allowing for moments of reflection. People are far too busy filling the hours of their day with technology, commerce, constant communication. Time alone. Time to oneself. It's a luxury I look forward to when I can grab such moments these days. For instance, lately I am REALLY missing yoga. I have yet to find a regular babysitter and there are no classes I've come across which encourage you to bring your 6-month old. So I exercise my hands, my fingers and enter into a trance-like state via knitting.

Not that you needs must knit alone. There are knitting circles gathering everywhere - look up your local bitch n' stitch or start one yourself! A space and place to tell a yarn, share some yarn. I'm thinking of doing just that once I move in the spring. Switch off having a book club one week and a bitch n' stitch another week. Meet some other crafty mums in my area.

So here's my current knitting project: I am creating a cardigan for my son. This is my first knitting project for him and I need to make sure I finish it in time for Winter Solstice (which is the gift-giving December holiday I celebrate - Yuletide). It will be my first handmade gift to him. I want it to be extra special.

Thus far, I'm only finished the back and almost finished the left front. I've a ways to go yet, but it's shaping up nicely. Are any of you out there knitting up something special? Or crafting any gifts for the upcoming holiday season? I'd love to know I'm not the only knitwit out here in blogland!

Music: She Blinded Me with Science, Thomas Dolby

Missing the City

I was 21 years old the first time I lived in Toronto for a two-year period from 1988 through 1990 in an area called Bloor West Village. It's a great community with a large Eastern European population, though perhaps not so much now as twenty years ago when I lived on Windermere. In 1995, I returned to the city again after graduating university with my Joint Honours English/Drama B.A., hoping to pursue an acting career in theatre and film.


This time, I lived East of the Don Valley Parkway at Broadview and Danforth, another great spot. This area, known as Greektown, is home to some amazing Greek restaurants, but it's where you can also find some classic Toronto landmarks like the Danforth Music Hall and Allen's, a truly authentic Irish restaurant-slash-home-away-from-home, whose owner, John Maxwell, sprouted another Irish gem, the Dora Keogh pub, right next door.

The Dora hosts Irish traditional music jam sessions on Thursday evenings and Sunday afternoons. Sonshine and I make a brief visit to Bloor West village (and Bread and Roses bakery) before heading out to my other old stomping grounds, the Danforth and the Dora Keogh pub. This beautiful, Irish haven was crawling distance (thankfully) from where I lived for 5 years on Ingham Avenue in a duplex my twin sister and I purchased together, when housing was still affordable in Toronto; a sort of secondary womb for us for a time. And the Dora is where he and I head yesterday to meet with some lovely friends from my past.

The first to show is Darren who directed me in a feature film he also wrote over a decade ago now. The film was an amazing experience and, no surprise, ended up winning Best Feature at the Planet Indie film festival that year. Our shared Celtic heritage served as a kind of "crazy glue" with my sailormouth causing much laughter and catharsis in between takes, apparently. Mutual Irish wit does make for fast friends!


The last time I saw Darren, he and his friend took an autumnal motorcycle ride out of Toronto to visit myself and my ex-husband at our rural abode when we first moved here, maybe 9 years ago now. We kept in touch for a bit after that, but only recently reconnected again after a long absence from communication. Darren is still a truly soulful and insightful guy. We talk as though no time has passed at all, though we've plenty more catching up to do! Sitting there, sipping a pint of Guinness with him over copper tables to the sound of some good Irish fiddle, I realize how much I've missed him over the years and how great it feels to have old friends who never change whenever you reconnect with them. I mean, of course, they change or are changed. Hell knows I've changed! Life happens and events, emotions: so much can make you grow, stretch and transform over Time. But, at the heart's core, old friends whom you value in your life do not change so much. Instead, they remain a continuous thread in the tapestry of your days. It can be woven into different colours or patterns over Time, but also serves as a kind of throughline: a consistency and strength which helps maintain the friendship as special and intact.

Another recent reconnection is with my friend Kate, from university days. Kate shows up at the Dora pub with her husband, Cam, and all three fuss over my wee little laddie and put on a good show: entertaining him with tales, swinging him around and inventing funny faces and sounds. He is in heaven with so much attention showered on him not just from his mum for once! He falls asleep just before Darren splits to catch Where the Wild Things Are and for Kate and Cam and myself to pop next door for a fine dinner at Allen's over some really yummy, Ontario-grown, organic cab-merlot from Frogpond Farm, a Niagara-based vineyard. Lochie sleeps through the entire meal and bubbly conversation, not stirring a peep even amidst quite raucous cackling at moments. What an easy baby he is! And the wonderful company we have meeting up again with these old friends of mine makes the day just about perfect.

Before leaving the city, I speak with a Dora bartender as well as a waitress at Allen's, both new to the city only months ago and they each wax in their sweet, Irish lilt about their love of Toronto, how safe, how varied it is, how welcoming to many cultures, how exciting. As much as I love living rurally and value what the countryside offers me on a daily basis, I make a vow not to make my jaunts to my former urban haunts, or the rest of this amazing city, so few and far between anymore. Toronto is one vast and wondrous melting pot of a creative and artistic place and offers so much for diversion and exploration.

After all these years, I find The Big Smoke still holds its allure. Not the least of which is being home to some of the best people I've met in my life whom I am thrilled to still call my good friends. Midnight has come and gone as we leave the brightness of city lights. The indigo of night turns to stars by the time the wheels hit my gravel driveway again. I step out under a blanket of them as I lift my sleeping son from his carseat into my arms and gaze skyward. Life is good.

Music: Bobcaygeon, Tragically Hip

Writer Friends

And speaking of knowing other people who blog! I want to mention my friend, Carrie Anne Snyder. She writes a fabulous blog: Obscure CanLit Mama, and she's also a published writer offline, among several writer friends I'm proud to know.

I've been enjoying her work, The Juliet Stories, set in Nicaragua, in the latest issue of The New Quarterly, a magazine which features Canadian writers and writing. They're wonderful! Definitely pick up a copy. Carrie lived in Nicaragua herself when she was younger and she also waxes poetically in the issue about the question so many writers must face (and often fend off somehow): how "autobiographical" one's work is or is not. She also took some amazing photography while down there and one of her photos graces the cover of this latest issue. Yum!

A couple of Thursdays ago, Carrie read some of her published work aloud locally at the Art Bar in Kitchener. I, unfortunately, could not attend as I was taking my sonshine and a friend to a concert of the Skydiggers the same night at a local cinema. I hear I missed an amazing read and look forward to the next opportunity that will feature Carrie, as I'm sure, one cannot be long in coming.

Do check her out. She writes candidly, poignantly and humourously about raising four beautiful, redheaded kids, as well as food, politics, feminism and so much more. I find her blog truly enlightening and always a breath of fresh air.

And I feel especially blessed and lucky to call her a local pal o' mine. She's as inspiring a person in person as she is onscreen/on the page. Kudos, Carrie!

I last saw Carrie when my son and I attended Bookstravaganza: an evening of authors and poets reading from their published works at a local club. It was a great night and I want to give a shout out to another lovely person and talented writer, David Derry, with whom I shared a wonderful conversation afterwards and who has just had his first book, Sentimental Exorcisms, published by Coach House Books. Check him out, too, while you're at it. Some truly inventive and funny stuff.

I wish I could go on in more depth, but I've a wee one calling me and we're heading out of town today together for another adventure. Stay tuned...

Music: Every Day I Write the Book, Elvis Costello

Half a Year

My son turned 6 months old this week. How did that even HAPPEN? As I was nursing him in a local coffee shop I frequent, a pregnant woman walked by the window and I could recall so vividly the feeling of carrying that round belly, the weight of him inside me, suspended in water, the rolling, the hiccuping. The sheer Joy of it. Wasn't it only yesterday that I dreamt about what I get to do now on a daily basis: lift his sweet, smiling self out of a crib each morning? Wasn't it only a month or so ago, I pushed him, wriggling and kicking, out between my limbs? Surely not HALF A YEAR ago?

Turning 6 months old was a milestone for his diet, as well. This is the first week he got to eat actual FOOD (other than boob-milk or formula supplement). I was concerned about how he'd react. For one thing, the day of delivery, when my water broke, the midwife had detected meconium in it. That was the reason I didn't end up having a homebirth. It's a baby's first bowel movement and it can be pretty serious if the baby has swallowed or inhaled it in utero. I was rushed to the hospital as a result. The presence of meconium also meant that, within his first few seconds of life, instead of the doctor thrusting his squirmy, newborn body on top of mine with the cord still intact until it stopped beating so that we could bond immediately, he was severed from me right away and rushed to a sidetable to have his trachea suctioned. Imagine this is your first experience of life outside the womb: you've just begun breathing for the first time, a new experience in itself, and something is forced into your mouth to vacuum out your throat. It can be pretty traumatic on a little person. And having something new/strange thrust into his mouth may not be his favourite thing in the world after such trauma.

So I wondered how he'd react to a) the spoon and b) the rice cereal, itself. He was very brave. Obviously the texture was different for him. But he opened his mouth and continued to test it and digest it. As well, he messed it. All over his mouth, his hands, his bib, even his hair. It was a thrill to watch him figure it all out, this eating stuff. This isn't sucking. This is hmmmm...chewing. Moving around in the mouth. The texture is...creamy, yet somehow slightly lumpy. Substance. Not liquid. Hmmmmm...mmmmmm. Yummmmmm?

In June of 2007, I traveled to Guatemala with Habitat for Humanity (something I've yet to properly devote a blog or two towards and will hope to rectify soon). Our group bookmarked the construction of two homes in San Marcos in the West with a stay in Antigua at the beginning and end of the trip. We found a beautiful (and affordable) breakfast place there (photos of which I took below) and I remember ordering what is known as "mosh" in a cup or bowl. Mosh is, essentially, oatmeal with milk and a little cinnamon. It reminded me of a cereal my mother used to make me when I was a little girl: Cream of Wheat. The rice cereal I fed my son this week had the same consistency.


          And he seems to like it! A victory on the food front and considering his rough start seconds after being born. But he is a baby very open to trying new things and widening his horizons.

My parents and his aunt oooo'd and ahhhhh'd over his talent for gobbling up this Brave New World of real live food. We held a little "half-birthday" party to celebrate him turning half a year. Wow. I can feel the tiremarks burned into the road, here. Where has the Time gone?


          
The other equally lovely part of today was meeting a woman whose blog I've only recently discovered and, even more recently, learned that she's in my locale. She is the talented and hilarious "blogHer", Mimi on the Breach, and, after introducing herself via a comment on my blog (post me initially leaving a comment on her blog), we ran into each other today and got to shake hands offline! What a thrill to put a face to the blog (and such a lovely face, too)! I never believe in happenstance or just plain old coincidence. I think connections are made like this for reasons unknown. All the connections in my life are important to me and I know they contribute to enhancing my life in some way: either through a lesson learned, a desire or need fulfilled, an opportunity for growth or revelation or just plain old fun, a new friend made. Could the day get any better, but then I discover she wrote about me on her much traveled blog, pointing people in my direction? How very generous and lovely! Thanks, Mimi. I very mosh appreciate it! You're bloggy wonderful!


My son is sleeping in his crib as I "pen" this, dreaming no doubt of food, glorious food. Whether in one's mouth or on one's cardigan ;), all in all, a very yummy day!



Music: Food, Glorious Food, Oliver!

Cumulonimbus

As I write this with evening coming on, the fields surrounding my 1.3 acres are blanketed for the first time this Autumn. Snow. Not just any snow. His very first snowfall. I am recounting the day. Sometime after 6:30 a.m., I reach for my camera. I had been lying in bed in the dark watching the picnic table collect soft, large flakes on the back deck as I listen to him talk to himself, his favourite thing in the mornings as he awakens. I guess he figures he will let me sleep while he amuses himself. Perhaps, since he wakes up in semi-darkness, he assumes he is alone somehow. But I like to think he can hear my breathing, a kind of security blanket that warms him enough to coo in perfect contentment and concoct gurgling noises deep in his throat. I turn on the light and approach the crib. He beams up at me. Where did I find this child? How did he find me? An owl, deer and robin look on as I lift him out of his forested bedding and pull back the hanging on the deck door to reveal The White Stuff. He is so young still, one week away from turning 6 months old, I'm not sure what exactly he makes of it all. I imagine his little mind like the inside windings, wheels and tick-tocks of an old grandfather clock, turning and formulating each New and Wondrous Thing he absorbs and locking it away somewhere to pull out again later. Referencing. Storing. The squirrel on his crib bumper eyes my son's hungry mind warily and grasps onto the nut she holds a little more tightly.

This morning we drive into town early. My car needs a 110-point inspection at Crappy Tire. Across the way is Starbucks so I stroll him over under a blue, but cold sky, the morning's snowflakes melted away. We lay siege on one of the smaller, couchy-type chairs. What astounds me as I sit and sip and nurse simultaneously is the myriad of languages I hear. Two women speak Italian three tables over. At least, it's a Latin language that is not French. I assume Italian because of the beautiful hand gestures the women sign to accompany each point they are making as they converse with each other. They don sweats and lycra as though they have just both come from a workout, but still look sophisticated in that oh-so-European way. The gym, perhaps, wasn't enough since they pump their arms up and down and all around as they talk. They evoke a silent film and I feel like a voyeur as I can nearly guess their entire conversation through the movements of their eyes, mouths and hands. Listening to their lilt, I smile and dream about sipping this decaf latte with my babe at my boob in Florence instead; close my eyes to imagine it. Just behind me another couple chats away and I am suddenly thrown Northeast to Prague. As if on cue, cumulonimbus sweep in, blotting out the sun. No, it's not a Harry Potter broom. Cumulonimbus are the types of clouds which carry rain or snow within them. And for the second time this morning, it's snow falling. Not softly, though. It slants and hurtles toward the ground. A gaggle of teenagers from the nearby highschool rush in wearing winter coats over gym shorts and knee-high socks, giggling and squealing as they shake the weather from their goose-bumped limbs.

The woman has turned to fuss over my sonshine. He produces My Favourite Thing (his shy smile). Her name is Jindra, I learn. Pronounced Yin-drah. She spells it out for me. Her husband tries to out-shy my son. I smile. This is what I miss about Toronto when I lived there. All the varied cultures everywhere you'd go. I'm surprised to find a bit of a melting pot here in my old hometown, but happy to discover this area has been growing and stretching, morphing into a somewhat more global creature while I've been living rurally the last decade. I will be leaving the countryside in the spring. The thought makes me happy and sad simultaneously, but that's par for the course where I'm concerned. My body has difficulty differentiating between Joy and Sorrow sometimes. What is the phrase I came across last night? Oh, yes: Excess of Sorrow laughs. Excess of Joy weeps. William Blake. Boy, did he get that right. How many times have I felt the strong urge to quell a giggle at a funeral or weep buckets over something so beautiful, it hurt? I look at my son and ponder his own songs of innocence and experience. Sonshine, The Musical. For now, I have a front row seat and am thoroughly enjoying the show.


          
His Aunt swings by and, over another latte, we discuss what she's working on these days and my own future goals. As I nurse him, he falls asleep in a sunlit halo. Today I have decided to write more often. As often as I can. And add some photos, some colour, to the stories I'm sharing. I figure practice will make perfect. Someday. And I need all the practice I can get. With this wee bundle of mine filling the bulk of my arms and my days, I aim to write at least once a week, if not every day. It's a start. A tiny goal. A first step. I wonder when he will take his. Each day, I place him on his tummy and he strains to crawl. He has learned to turn himself over or move himself around in a circle. Forward motion he has yet to master (something I am only beginning to master myself since leaving my common-law marriage and the rut, the stasis of it). We learn to move forward together, my son and I.



The sun shines again as we leave my parents' place, a brief visit once the car is fixed. Clouds in the distance promise that we head home into yet another snowfall. The expanse of rural sky gives the added benefit of watching weather approach, sometimes tentatively. At other times, menacingly. Each time fascinates. Something I will miss. I throw another log in my woodstove to build the fire up and take a photograph of the front yard turning white at dusk. The tiny squares of the screen door produce the effect of a photo taken a century ago. In a farmhouse as old as this, it suits the mood perfectly. Pathetic fallacy. His little mouth turns toward my heart as we settle for the night with the ghosts in, what is now, a ghostlike landscape.


Music: Both Sides Now, Joni Mitchell