Stay of Execution

Welcome Home

My dog has been conveying her happiness about having me back by delivering extra smelly farts.  She may be getting old, but she's still got it.  Hoo boy.

Why I Wish I Believed In God

There was a fox, or maybe a coyote.  I saw it as we drove by, standing on the side of the road, down on the shoulder, near the woods.  I looked at it and as we flashed past I could see it was hobbling, holding up its right front leg, which had been crushed or maimed.  It hung limp and strange and soggy, as if all the bones in it had been crushed.  The fur was bloody, but not bleeding, just kind of raw, as though it had been chewed at for days.  Caught in a trap, perhaps?  I didn't know.  That animal needs help, I said.  I pulled over and we walked back to where it was.  It can be saved, I said.  Who do we call? 

Who do you call?  You're a tourist, on your way to a wedding, and you're somewhere in Nova Scotia, between small towns, you're not sure where, you've lost track.  Somewhere between where you stopped for breakfast and where you will stop for lunch.  You can see a culvert and some woods, scrubby birch and popple, a stream and a small pond.  You're not sure what kind of animal it is, exactly -- it's larger than a fox, and not quite so red, but it's not exactly grey or white like the coyotes you've seen, and it is fox-like, kind of, although wolf-like, too.  It is proceeding away from you, into the woods.  It moves calmly, unhurried, in a kind of stunned pain.  It is not using its maimed leg, which is useless and too floppy and broken.  But the animal can be saved.  You are thinking, of course, of your three-legged dog.  She does just fine. 

While I Was Away

Things I learned since getting back and catching up a bit:

    1) Seeing a dragonfly is supposed to mean you should examine your own illusions.  I didn't know that.  I saw lots of dragonflies in Nova Scotia.
    2) My friend Ms. Runner starts law school this week.  Join me in wishing her luck.
    3) Digital Rights management is beginning to sound very absurd.
    4) Portland's coolness has been discovered.  Uh-oh. 
    5) The artist formerly known as Sean "Puffy" Combs Puff Daddy P. Diddy is now going to be known only by "Diddy." 
    6) The Queen of England is a geothermal energy fan.   

And things I learned while I was away (or re-learned):

    a) Nova Scotia is still wonderful.  There's some raw, mysterious beauty there.
    b) I still like John Irving, and old Rex Stout mysteries that I can find in used bookstores for 30 cents Canadian.  But am not so crazy for Graham Greene.
    c) Still love to skinny dip.  And doing so by the light of some candles, with five wonderful, smart, funny, wise women, including an inspired and excited bride-to-be, in a pond in the woods, followed by a wood fired sauna, with the big moon rising, and no bugs at all, and a short walk dripping through the woods to my little cabin, it makes a great memory.
    d) Blackberries are still my favorite berry, and I'm still powerless to walk by them without stopping to reach greedily out, and get scratched, and gobble down the inky black sweet things.
    e) Buddhists are the most awake, serene, real, humble, and happy people I know. 
    f) It's still hard to be a single person at a wedding, no matter how wonderful and lovely and inclusive the wedding is.
    g) It's fun to feed a goat a small sour apple.
    h) Living without my favorite flip flops is something I'd prefer not to do. 

Toad

I'm just back from Nova Scotia, to too many emails and voicemails and bills.  So I'm about to dive into the backlog, but first I wanted to tell you about the little cabin where I stayed.  It was this sweet little hobbity place, one tiny room.  No electricity, no running water, no nothing -- just a rustic wooden structure.  You could stand up in it but you had to duck to walk in and out the door, for some reason.  It had a tiny woodstove and three small propane burners, with a little teakettle.  On a shelf there was a plate, a bowl, a mug, and a knife, fork and spoon.  The cot -- rough, but very sleepable, with warm woolen blankets and soft yellow sheets --  was built in against the wall, and there was a table/shelf at the foot of the bed, where I put my backpack and my clothes.  It was built out of unfinished wood, weathered a deep grey, and there were various treasures from the woods lining the shelves, alongside the tea light candles and the oil lamp I used to read by.  Feathers, fragments of a robin's egg, a seed pod, a pinecone, a nicely rounded stick. 

The cabin was built as a small retreat center for the daughter of the couple who own and run Windhorse Farm.  The daughter designed the cabin when she was 11 years old, and it was built to her specifications and she started camping out in it as a girl.  She's in college now, but apparently comes to visit and still stays in her little cabin.  I can understand why. 

The cabin is behind the rustic sauna near the swimming hole, out behind the wood shop on the farm.  A small rocky stream runs behind the cabin, and it is nestled among pine trees, with mossy ground all around.  The stream rustles along behind with a constant gentle shushing.  In the morning you can hear a rooster waking up at the farmhouse through the woods.  I kept some cheese and yogurt and fruit juice in a plastic bag in the stream, which was cold and fresh.  I washed my hair in the stream, and sat one morning with a set of watercolor paints trying to capture the various greens of the moss, the ferns, and the pines.

My favorite part of my little cabin was the toad that lived in the rocky foundation.  I found him on the front step yesterday morning and of course crept up to look at him more closely.  I can't resist toads.  He jumped away, retreating into the rocks.  I left to go pick blackberries but when I came back he was there again, sitting on the front steps.  I walked gently around him and tried to open the door silently, but it scrapes and he again jumped away.  When I came out of the cabin later he was there on the front step, looking somewhat suspiciously at the cabin door.  I crept out, treading carefully, with my backpack and bag and books, vacating the tiny cabin.  This time he didn't jump away, but watched me go, the skin below his eyes puffing in and out ever so slightly. 

Road Trip

Heading up to Nova Scotia shortly, for a wedding.  Will be variously staying with a friend, tenting and staying alone in what's been described to me as a "sweet, rustic, hobbit-y sort of cabin."

Bringing books for reading and writing, a bathing suit for swimming, but no computers, no way.  See you next week.

[UPDATE: In the meantime, if you want to leave questions, I'll do an All-Request Day next week.]

Trip Hazard

I was walking across the Bowdoin campus yesterday for something.  There was a sort of broadening of the path, an intersection of two paths and a platform, with a stone circle in the middle with plants in it.  The sidewalk was big concrete blocks, wide and squarer than those on the sidewalks around here.  Between and surrounding the squares were small strips of cobblestones -- a swath about two feet wide consisting of four inch rough cut granite cubes surrounded by sand and dirt, a few small weeds growing between them here and there. 

A workman was on his knees straddling one of the cobblestone strips, a pile of those small granite blocks stacked beside him.  "Are you taking them out or putting them in?" I asked him.  "Both," he said.  "I'm pulling them up and raising them so they're all even, and even with the sidewalk.  So they don't present a trip hazard."  Indeed, I noticed that one of the strips was freshly levelled, new brown sand packed around the cubes, which were tidy and straight.  The strips that hadn't been replaced weren't wildly uneven, just a little unruly, the way cobblestones get. 

I wished the workman a good day and walked along, looking at the ground.  I thought about the students, who will be back in a few weeks, and wondered if any of them will notice how exactly the cobblestones are laid, or even that they don't ever trip on that plaza.  I thought about stewardship, and the special places that we want to take care of.  The slanting summer afternoon light was on a backhoe and some construction fence on the other side of campus, and as I looked at it and wondered what was being built or renovated I hardly noticed a second workman, pulling up cobblestones. 

A Matter of Some Urgency

Last night at our Eat Your Friend Out of House and Home dinner I was mocked a bit, because of the way I got agitated.  D was standing at the counter, about to halve a couple of whole wheat Thomases english muffins, and he was holding a big breadknife, talking about something unrelated.  I looked over to respond to something he was saying and saw the knife reached out my arms to him, saying, "oh no oh no what are you doing, don't use that knife they're fork split they're FORK SPLIT!!" my voice getting higher with alarm the way you might start speaking to a toddler starting to wander into the street.  I managed to save the english muffins but by now everyone was looking at me, laughing.  I explained about the nooks and crannies but they didn't seem to understand the importance. 

Important Meeting

I was sitting here contemplating the morning, around 6:30, when I became aware of the roar and hiss and whine of a big garbage truck.  It usually doesn't come around until much later on Tuesday mornings, but there it was, big and blue and rumbly, making its noisy way along down the street. 

So I went into the kitchen and emptied the trash, and brought out the recycling and put them on the curb.  I noticed at the other end of the street a second garbage truck, coming from the other way.  By this time the one I had seen at first had come around the corner and I said hello to the trashman.  "We're early today," he said.  I agreed, and pointed out the other truck.  "And there's two of you."  He nodded, as he picked up my blue bag.  "Yeah," he said.  "We got a meeting today, so we're pushing to get everything done early."   I wished him a good morning and went back into the house, and as I did so I saw a third garbage truck, rumbling along down the street after the other two.   

Eating A Friend Out of House And Home

A friend of mine is about to fly to Vanuatu to get on a boat and sail it to Australia.  He'll be gone for almost a month, and isn't entirely sure if he's going to come back at all.  I gathered a couple of friends and we decided to help him on his way by eating him out of house and home. 

We arrived at his place, bearing some vegetables from our garden, and began ransacking his refrigerator and cupboards for perishables, preparing meals from whatever he had.  It was fun.  We made french toast with some almost-stale bread.  Also, some bread-and-rice pudding, which came out surprisingly well given that it originated as hamburger buns and old brown rice, tossed together with soy milk and some jam and a few tired blueberries.  Also, some sweet potato french fries with lots of ketchup, and some grilled-provolone sandwiches with hot pepper relish.  And some hummous, which we ate with chips and salsa.  We drank the last of his homemade lemoncella and a bottle of sauvignon blanc, and a little orange juice, and ate some of the vanilla ice cream from the freezer.  We considered eating some of his canned mackerel, but decided that since it was not perishable we could leave it.  Instead we ate some chicken sausage and one lone soy-based hot dog. 

Exact Change

I had to break a twenty to buy something small.  It came to $1.98, I think.  I gave the cashier the twenty and apologized.  He went to digging into the penny jar besides the cash register and took out a couple of pennies -- "so you won't have to carry around a lot of change," he said.  I wasn't really paying attention, so I nodded and continued spacing out.  He then counted out my change back to me: $18.04.  Two of the four pennies were the ones from his penny jar.  He didn't make eye contact, and I pretended not to notice.