Sighs of Spring

It is currently snowing. A lot. We have about two inches now at 7:40 p.m. and it shows no sign of letting up any time soon. It is starting to stick to the road and has already thoroughly covered all the ground that was bare two days ago. Two years ago (three Aprils) at this time, we had heavy rains for about a month and incredible flowers by the end of May. Last year the daffodils were already finishing, the ground was completely bare and the mule deer fawn (picture) was still very fuzzy as he competed with rosy-finches for birdseed in some friends' yard. Who knows what this weather will bring. Three years ago (four Aprils) there were snow flurries on Memorial Day. As I enter my third full year living here, I feel like I really don't know this place at all, even though I know it very well. I was thinking this morning about connectedness with nature. Human beings have a tendency to take familiar things with them when they travel, including outmoded attitudes toward living. Resources that seemed inexhaustible in one place are treated as such in the next until they are, indeed, exhausted. Animals that have been feared and hated continue to be so, even in the very last place on Earth they still exist. I came here seeking wilderness, beauty and contentment in nature. Naively, probably, I thought this place could be a place where I could be perfectly happy. And I did find all those things I was looking for, and a little less than I'd hoped for. But I've also seen deeper prejudices and ignorance and pure idiocy than I expected. I don't want to get into this now, but I will just say that dogs and cats and humans may exist happily anywhere, while wolves and bison and grizzly bears literally have no place else to be and no room left to roam.

Only 1200 and some words today, but I did come up with some names for my characters that needed names and I think I've finally established what my story is about, that is to say its theme, its moral even. And I like it. And I cleaned out my desk finally, because an organized workspace is helpful to an organized mind. And just as fresh snow leaves room for fresh tracks (marten this morning), it also gives room to fresh thoughts. So, despite my nagging self-doubt and my sadness over the continuing loss of wild things and wild places, I am content this evening, in my work and in myself. Darn it! Snow makes me philosophical, too. And the snow is slowing down now and the sky is looking a little bluer...Hmm...maybe it's Spring after all...

The Birds of Spring

So, I'm finally going to talk about wildlife. Huzzah! But first, my word count so far today is 2,099. It was "housekeeping" kind of writing I'm afraid, though--I finally figured out where the novel is going and made an outline with detailed summaries of what each chapter will contain. I'm trying to convince myself that it counts as work, as it's an important part of the writing process. I may go back and fill in the rest of a chapter or two later. This should help the writing go faster, however, which must be a good thing, right?

Technically it is spring here. Last night it snowed and it's cold and wintry today, but the birds are coming back in ever larger numbers. During the winter, we have mostly black, white, and black and white birds on the hill here: ravens, magpies, Clark's nutcrackers, trumpeter swans, and both mountain and black-capped chickadees, as well as the occasional bald eagle or hairy--or, less often, downy--woodpecker. But yesterday a new color was added! Yes. We have brown birds now, too! : )

Two days ago, some guys were doing something on the house next door (still three tenths of a mile away). When I went for my walk I head them hammering something. I also heard the calls of a distressed woodpecker, answering their hammering with his territorial call. Yesterday I saw two male red-naped sapsuckers (one of which was likely the same aforementioned bird) fighting hotly over a prime nesting area. These are mostly black and white birds too, but compared to all the bare trees and snow I've seen for the last five months, they were a positive rainbow of beautiful tones--the bright red of their heads and throats and the soft creamy-yellow of their bellies. Their mates should be close behind them somewhere, arriving soon to tap into the bushes and trees around the yard and get ready to nest. The dark-eyed juncos are also starting to sing--a nondescript kind of trill.

When I finally had some time to myself yesterday, but was, as yet, unable to get on the computer and work on my Current Project, I sat in a chair and looked out the window, where I was immediately distracted by a flock of juncos pecking at the old dry grass seeds that the melting of the snow has revealed. I would describe myself as an avid birder, but, although I keep a "life list," I am not one of those birders who is obsessed with seeing only the newest species. I enjoy observing even the common and drab birds that I know best, so I can get to know them better. House sparrows, for example, have a highly complex social structure that even a casual observer can see something of, if she just takes a few minutes to watch.

Juncos spend a lot of their time on the ground, where they hop around foraging and scratching the dirt (like most buntings AKA emberizids AKA "sparrows" here in North America) with both feet at once. Being small and brownish-grey and long-tailed and having their white bellies hidden when they're on the ground, they look a lot like mice moving around. The dark-eyed junco has an almost endless array of plumage variation, so much so that it was once divided into four or five separate species. The variety that breeds here is called the pink-sided junco, though it is pretty close to the Oregon junco, which also passes through here in the spring and fall (and some of them winter here as well) to and from its breeding grounds in British Columbia, Idaho, Washington, and, of course, Oregon.

Juncos are friendly and fearless and quite common. Most varieties winter in the U.S. and they can be seen in every state and most of Canada for at least part of the year. This particular flock consisted of about thirty pink-sided. Theoretically, one can tell male and female juncos apart by plumage. Theoretically. Among pink-sideds, the males have slightly darker and greyer heads with a cleaner break between the grey nape and the brown back. And at close range (some hopped right under the window), I could indeed see that some were browner. Ahem. Yes, I couldn't swear that those were all female, though. Anyway, they fed for a very long time, occasionally and seeminly for no reason at all, viciously fighting with each other--lifting their wings as they faced off over a seed, or screeching and spatting with claws and beaks for a few seconds. Then they would go back to pecking as though nothing had happened. I think it would be wrong to see such behavior and conclude that birds have short memories or (heaven forbid!) that they are stupid. I think, in fact, having watched them before at less lean times of the year, that they are just really hungry. And it's not hard to see why with it the end of April and six to eight inches still on the ground in most places.

I wouldn't have stayed with the juncos as long as I did, I suppose, except there were two other birds with them. One was readily identifyable as a white-crowned sparrow, which is significantly larger than a junco and one of the most visible and distinctive sparrows we have. I was still surprised to see it, not only with a flock of juncos, but on our hill, as I usually associate white-crowned sparrows with water--I see them along ponds and streams in willows or cottonwoods. And there was another, very small brown bird there too. It was fifteen minutes before I was brave enough to run for my binoculars, convinced the whole flock would be gone by the time I returned. They were very hungry, however, and outside my window was some of the only snow-free ground in quite a distance, so they were all still there. The LBB turned out to be a Brewer's sparrow, which surprised me much more than the white-crowned, as I've only ever seen Brewer's sparrows in the sage brush and other open country (though I'm notoriously bad at identifying sparrows, preferring large charismatic birds like ostriches, etc.).

Oddly, the adult Brewer's sparrow is a distinctive and easily identifyable sparrow, not because of the markings it has, but because of the markings it doesn't have. It is a plain grey-brown bird, mostly unmarked except for faint stripes on their heads and back, which are universal to all buntings ("sparrows"--the naming thing is fascinating and deserves a post of its own later). This one had a clear white semi-circle under its eye and a very clean grey collar around the sides of its neck. According to The Sibley Guide to Birds, this means it's of the population that breeds in the Yukon and part of Alaska. I haven't really studied sparrows, (indeed, I'll admit right here I often dismiss them all as "little brown birds" and therefore unidentifiable), so it would be interesting to know more about this regional variation and what kind breed around here. As for relative size of this bird to the juncos--it was clearly smaller, but it was also all fluffed out (which brings up the wonder of feathers--they are not fixed you see, and a bird's appearance can change enormously just by how it's holding its feathers), perhaps to make it look bigger to all the louder and larger birds around it.

This post is already longer than I intended, so I'll just conclude by saying I watched with great interest the birds' reaction to various raptors that flew over head including (twice) a pair of red tailed hawks I'll definitely mention again, a Cooper's hawk and a small falcon (probably a kestrel, though I wasn't positive). Apparently, the white-crowned sparrow, at least, proved its worth to the flock, as its greater height seems to have allowed it to spot the Cooper's hawk first, and the flock's attentiveness seems to have discouraged the predator. They also ignored the red taileds very quickly after spotting them, as they posed no threat. And I ended the day by seeing an osprey, which, although it is black and white, is most definitely a bird of the Summer.

And this morning I woke up to fresh snow and the first Swainson's thrush of the year hopping along my walk looking for worms, as well as a little frozen corpse of a junco who probably flew into the window and died. So, it's bittersweet living so close to nature. I can enjoy watching the birds and being close to them and the warmth escaping from the house helps melt the snow around the walkway, but my human presence can be destructive too.

-Susie

We Are Not Amused

I wanted to write about birds today, but other things got in the way. First things first: the weather is cloudy and the evening sky has that lovely lavender-bluish tint it gets around here. There was some wind earlier and I hate to say, I stayed inside the whole time, which is not (happily) to say that I didn't see any wildlife. Gosh I love living here! Anyway, I was very busy all day, as I often am on Wednesdays and didn't have a chance to sit down and write until six! As I often do in such a situation, I said to myself, "Oh it's so late, I can't possibly work now! I don't want to!" but then I thought of what I'd say here, and the shame if I missed a day blogging/journaling because I didn't have a respectable wordcount. And I think a lot of what I wrote today was rather crappy, but I resisted the urge to edit and just forced myself to pound out the story. And the result? 1,708 words! I guess discipline can be taught!

Now, a few rants have gotten in my way this evening, I'm afraid. Firstly, the New York Times Sunday Crossword. Humpf. (Perhaps now would be a good time to explain that we get the NYT Sunday puzzle on Wednesday. After driving 10 miles to the post office. Yeah. Rural Wyoming. What can I say?) The puzzle was pretty easy, though some clues left me wondering about the mental health of the author, and I thought it was nice that they had all the planets in order. Well, almost all...All eight planets... To me, though, Pluto will always be a planet. So there! : )
Onto other rants. So, normally, I wouldn't admit to reading Newsweek, but two things stood out that I had to share (I'm sorry!). The first was a little "articlet" in the back about the Rowling/WB/RDR suit. Besides getting some facts wrong (My understanding is that the author of the Lexicon, Steve Vander Ark is not a defendant, but was a witness, also JK Rowling is co-plaintif with Warner Brothers.), and being unnecessarily inflamatory--and I'm taking the bait, the irony is not lost on me--("Harry Potter Author Makes Fan Cry"), it also brings up one of The Things I Hate Most In The Entire World which is "the Evil Rich Argument." Grr! Without incriminating myself (Why yes, I am a millionaire. How else do you think I can afford to write poetry?), I'd just like to say, rich people are not inherently bad. You may quote me on this. ; D
The fact is that fame has not made Jo greedy. In fact, people who try to paint this suit as about money are willfully ignorant, destructive and/or just total morons. Believe me, the idea that the Lexicon could unfairly or harmfully compete with "The Scottish Book" or hurt the movie franchise is absolutely and utterly ridiculous. And having been an avid fan of PotterCast since near the beginning, I'd like to give Steve the benefit of the doubt and bet that he wasn't just interested in grabbing a buck (or thousands) off the fandom, either. After all, the website is still up. (However, that doesn't excuse the fact that a librarian who's written about copyright law before should have known better, and it also says nothing about RDR Books who seem to have been misguided throughout the whole process, and who of course would make more money off the book than the author anyway.) The fact is that copyright infringment is WRONG, damn it! It is always wrong. That Jo is rich does NOT make her less entitled to sue over it. The fact that she's now rich only means that she can afford to sue over it! And I, for one, am grateful!
The other thing in Newsweek was the following quote from (ahem) our dear Vice President: "I have no doubt that we are in the midst of a global warming. Or, as I like to call it, Spring." Antipodeans are not amused. Neither am I really, but I understand physics...and astronomy, and natural science, and geography, and things like that. But maybe I'm just too educated to be a real American. And please, nobody write in and tell me he's from Wyoming and people in Wyoming don't know any better. My Mom already told me. : P

Sigh. Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. Plus I have fresh, warm, homemade chocolate-chip cookies...Oh well. I'll write about the birds tomorrow.
-Susie

The Power of Positive...Blogging?

If I have one really serious fault as a writer, it's that I lack discipline. This Journal is supposed to help with that. See, even if no one reads it, by writing it down, I some how have made it real. This is called intention and is one of the easiest and most surprisingly effective forms of magic. So, last night, I decided that if I could write down my word count every day in here, then I couldn't cheat or procrastinate as much, because anyone could see that I had been irresponsible. Behold the power of public shame!! So, each entry from now on will start with a brief note about the weather (because it's interesting around here, really) and my day's word count. This will also discourage me from blogging or playing around on my favorite websites before I've gotten my work done for the day. My goal is to write at least 1500 words a day, with an absolute minimum of 1,000. This is a fairly modest goal for me, as I generally write that much in an hour or two. But it's already working! This morning I sat down at the computer and opened my Current Project and said to myself, "Oh! I so do not feel like writing today!!" But, after only ten minutes of procrastinating, I forced myself to open the file and just start writing. And lo and behold I wrote 1,754 words. Huzzah! So:
Tuesday, April 22, 2008. The weather is warm and Springy, with uncertain clouds and lots of thin golden sunshine. The foxes have been very active in the East yard and I expect the female to make a den around there soon. I hope to see her with her kits again this year, though the coyotes have been back on the hill since March. No daffodils yet, though there's some short little green grass where the snow has melted and almost all of the aspens have visible red leaf buds. I plan to go for my walk right after I post this. Word Count: 1,754.
Yeah. That works. Anyway, it looks like I'm going to be getting a lot busier soon (Eeek!). I'm not entirely sure how that will be possible, but no matter what, I'm going to keep up my current progress on the book and keep posting here too. I can do that. I don't need sleep. More fun stuff to come, but now I need to get outside before I run out of time. Sigh. Adulthood is just not all it's cracked up to be.
-Susie Haberfeld (trying to boost search results...)

We have a view!

"To be great is to be misunderstood." I don't feel misunderstood at the moment, actually, nor do I feel great, but I do feel pretty good. Firstly, I've been reading Emerson. I hadn't really before and I don't really know why, because I really like his view of the world. It is similar to mine, in that I believe that everything is connected, "beauty is its own excuse for being," the search for truth is the greatest search of all, and the individual is important, not only for its own sake, but because it is a part of a perfect whole. And yes, over all I think the Universe is as it should be. Certainly, we can do a lot in our own lives to make them and the world around us better, but I really do believe the system works, if that makes sense. For example, I like gravity. I think gravity's a good idea. And I like life. I think living is a good idea, too. I think squirrels are just as important as mountains and God encompases all things, positive and negative, great and small, good and bad, such as they exist. I'll probably talk about all this again, because I spend a lot of time, well, thinking. What can I say? I'm a writer. It's not as if I have a life.
Because of whatever strange involuntary process by which my brain functions, whenever I hear the name Emerson, I think first of the word "transcendental," which immediately causes me to start humming "All My Exes Live in Texas." Verily, the mind is a strange place...Since I've been reading some of Emerson's writings, however, I have been struck by a thought which must be extremely obvious to everyone else in the world--that Emerson is undoubtedly the direct inspiration for the wonderful characters of Mr. Emerson and Mr. George Emerson in E.M. Forster's magnificent A Room With a View. I love Forster too, though I've only read three of his novels (though I expect they're his three best. The other two are Howards End and A Passage to India. The former totally changed my way of thinking about the world and the latter I just loved, but they and their author deserve a post of their own). And all this makes me think of George in the fabulous 1985 movie version climbing in a shrubby tree "yelling his creed." And that always makes me smile.
Anyway, I'm especially at peace with myself this evening because of my own writing. First, I've been working for two days on my latest project (which has very rudely superseded the other two novels I've been working on--ideas do that to me sometimes, but this one I'm determined to finish rapidly) and already have more than 5,000 words. So, I should have 50,000 words in only eighteen more days, right? Ha! I wrote two chapters yesterday and only one today, and I'm not going to be able to get any work done for a few days next week, plus I'm fairly certain this project will be much more than 50,000 words--after all, The Splitting of the World is 90-some thousand and this project is looking like a trilogy...Sigh. Oh well. But, as I often do when I've just started a project, I think this one has real potential. : )
The other thing was a poem. I've been working on it for a contest since the first week of April and have two very different versions of it now. I think I've decided on the version I like better and have perfected it now, though I think I'll wait to send it in until tomorrow. I will definitely post the version I didn't choose and discuss it in more detail when the contest is finished. So, that's something to look forward to...
Meanwhile, going by the dictionary definition alone, Transcendental Idealism sounds related to Monism...Here are some more quotes from Emerson for you: "character is higher than intellect," "the office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances" (I think Cala would like this Emerson guy...), "We know better than we do. We do not yet possess ourselves, and we know at the same time that we are much more," and my favorite "the soul is the perceiver and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose."
And also the wonderful new verb: "to Shakspearize" (he spelled it that way). I do that sometimes...
-Susie

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers...

Today is a momentous day in my life as a blogger. I have a fangirl. Yes, yes. zibbycomix is my fangirl and she is a great fangirl to have. : )
In other news...I know this is only my second day, but already I'm inspired to write about Harry Potter. OK, this isn't exactly about Harry Potter. As you might be able to guess from the subject line, it's about J.K. Rowling's lawsuit, currently in between the closing arguments and the decision. I thought I'd just mention this today for two reasons, one, everybody else is blogging about it and if everyone else jumped off a bridge I would sure as heck join them because I don't know how to grow wheat or mill flour and I wouldn't survive very long without bread...or cake...or brioche even. Two, both MuggleCast and PotterCast discussed the trial in their podcasts this week. I would urge anyone who doesn't know what's going on to go over to The Leaky Cauldron and read their excellent and very professional and responsible coverage of the whole case and listen to their commentary on it this week. I found it both informative and edifying.
Now, I am not a lawyer, and like Shakespeare, whose birthday is coming up on Wednesday (which I know because it's the same day as the birth of my littlest nepot), I never much cared for the profession. However, I have two (Wow! Count 'em! Two!) personal connections to the issue which I think might be of interest to readers. The first, of course, is that I am an artist, and a starving one at that, and copyright/fair use, etc. are important issues to me. I think it's pretty obvious that, in general, I side with original authors. Now, as I said, I have not been trained in the law and have not seen all the evidence in this case, but it seems pretty clear to me that Jo and Warner Bros. should win here, even though the fair use law is disturbingly vague.
Why is it disturbingly vague? Well, this relates to another of my favorite subjects and one I think about especially on my birthday, and that is America. For those of you who don't know, April 19 is Patriots' Day, because on that day in 1775 the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought. To quote Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn", "By the rude bridge that arched the flood,/their flag to April's breeze unfurled;/here once the embattled farmers stood;/and fired the shot heard round the world." This date has been celebrated in many forms here in America (see Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Paul Revere's Ride," which is my birthday poem, and which I have read (and lately recited) on my birthday for about sixteen years), along with December 16, 1773 (National Checking Account Marketing Day, but that's for another post). Some of you may have already noticed that the Battles of Lexington and Concord took place more than a year before the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. But no one ever mentions that in school (at least I never heard it there). Is this a classic case of the victor rewriting history? Perhaps, by my point (I usually do have one...) is that The Law has always been a sticky subject for Americans.
The reason for this, I think, is that America's ideology owes a huge amount to John Locke who wrote that human beings have the natural right to live in a free society and that if they find themselves burdened by unjust laws they have not only the right, but the duty to overturn said laws and (as the American experiment proved) even to depose their king (but perhaps not dispose of their king a la les francais). (See New Hampshire's motto: "Live Free or Die.") The idea of self-reliance and self-governence has therefore always been a strongly held tenet of the American people. The classic American heroes (think cowboys and even outlaws in the Old West...or currently, here in Wyoming...) are those men and women who did what they felt was right, or even did whatever they pleased, with conviction. As Mark Twain said, "America has no native criminal class...except congress." In other words, in America, unlike in most countries worldwide, any idiot can be a criminal. This is what makes America great. Really.
We also love the idea of the underdog, having convinced ourselves that we were once underdogs too. But the underdog is not just the weaker of two parties. The true underdog is the person who stands on his own against injustice, who fights on principle alone. And that's the crux of my argument. The person who seems to be standing on principle alone in this case is J.K. Rowling. She is protecting her intellectual property in the name of all current and future authors and all of the diverse and wonderful people who make up this thing called fandom. Now, I'm not saying an encyclopedia of an existing work of literature is a bad idea, but this particular one, as it quotes numerous passages of the original work without citations or scholarly merit must be stopped for the benefit of future works by other authors, but more on that in a second.
First, I want to go to my anecdote. I am sorry this case went to court and that a lawsuit occurred at all. This is a very sad situation for reasons I'll list at the end. My father invented something called "Totally Free Checking." You've probably seen banks across the country advertizing "totally free checking." Most of those are not "in" with my father's program (wherein the checking is actually, you know, totally free, unlike in most banks which say they have "free checking" but really don't). Why is this? My father copyrighted the phrase and the concept. It is his intellectual property. The reason is, when the first infringement occurred, he had to make a decision: "Do I keep on selling my product as best I can and help my clients, or do I spend the rest of my life in a series of lawsuits fighting every single instance of infringement?" Now, before you cry "exaggeration," know that many people have done exactly that. My father chose the former with the consequence that he didn't throw away all our money on lawyers' fees and bank customers have to hear a lot of false advertizing when looking for a friendly neighborhood bank within five miles of their home or business. ; )
So, my point is that the fair use law is vague, therefore precedence becomes immensely important as precedence is a legally binding factor in the courts of America. So, although Jo would not lose any money over "The Harry Potter Lexicon," other authors could lose everything over similar products (related to their work) in the future. Personally, I have never bought any "guide" books to Harry Potter and have no intention of doing so for two reasons: one, I can think for myself, thank you, and two, I doubt they'd say anything meaningful I didn't already know or learned for free elsewhere. But, I am concerned that well-meaning but ignorant relatives buy anything with a particular brand name on it for kids they know without thinking about the money trails or who might be getting hurt. Not that there's anything wrong with that, well-meaning relatives! But, it's something that I think about and therefore matters enormously to me.
Unfortunately, I think that no matter who wins this case, the consequences for my favorite fandom will be profound. If Jo delays her own companion book to the series because of this, or worse, abandons the project entirely, in the words of The Princess Bride, "I shall be very put out." Either way, I think we can say goodbye to Jo's fansite awards, and say hello to a less open and more bitter and disillusioned fan base. Over all it's just a sad business that probably could have been resolved in another way. On a final note: just remember that before the Fall of Rome, philosophers were complaining about frivilous lawsuits and a surfeit of lawyers.
-Susie

The Tangled Interwebs We Weave...

Today is my birthday. I am 24. It seems to me this year should be going better for me than it has been so far, after all, it is my year, i.e. the Year of the Rat. I am (proudly) a rat. Perhaps your year is not the year when everything goes right for you. Perhaps it's just when all the hidden parts of your personality become most apparent. In that case, then, it seems logical that this year I would be filled with self-doubt, which is I think Rat's greatest fault. And I am. So I decided, as a motivation I suppose, to start a blog on my birthday and continue to keep it for a year. The hope is that here I will record my thoughts and progress and by the time my next birthday comes around, when I will be a quarter of a century old, I will have achieved the goals I lay out here today, namely to get my next book in the secure grasp of a publisher--a real publisher--and feel I have finally earned the right to call myself an author, even though I've been a writer for many years. Because, you see, I think the difference between an author and a writer is more than just verb tense. A writer writes. An author wrote. But, like the proverbial tree that falls in the forest unwatched by human eyes, if a writer's work goes unread, has she been utterly wasting her time?
I hope to post some of my writing here in the future, although that is a sticky thing to do, as technically, any writing posted online is essentially published, even if nobody reads it. I will try to put up some previously published poems and I actually have a little short story in mind that would be inappropriate to post anywhere else, but more on that some other day.
So. Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I live? Firstly, I am a writer. That is my vocation. It is the only thing in the world I have really enjoyed doing and that has given meaning to my life. I do not write anything lightly, and hope that my view of the world is sufficiently different and interesting as to be important to others. In the meantime, I hope that my thoughts here will amuse you and give you something to think about that you might not have thought about before. My interests are wide and varied, and I hope to explore them all here as time goes by. I will keep all my entries public for the simple reason that the internet is never as private as some believe and if something is so personal I only want to share it with my real-life friends, I will tell them by other means. I will not be afraid to bare my soul here, though, as that's what writers really do.
Why is my name here Lepus domesticus? Because it's obscure. That's all. I am a sucker for bad puns, word games, and esoterica. It is scientific Latin meaning a domestic, or tame, hare. I got that from W.B. Yeats' poem "Two Songs of a Fool" whose first line is "A speckled cat and a tame hare." It is not my favorite poem of his, though he is my favorite poet, but I chose it because I have often felt like The Fool, but I relate more to the hare than to the cat. The speckled cat will wander out of the house away from the hearth and have his adventures and then return and sit smugly by the fire as cats are wont to do. The hare on the other hand, desperate to stretch her long, long legs will dash out into the woods, leaping and pirouetting as hares are wont to do, and may find herself at last on the table of the hunter, which neither cat nor fool will ever do. The hare's position is the most perilous, and she therefore represents life. We may be as secure as we like before the fire on the worn rug that has adorned our home for centuries, but eventually, we have to go out into the woods, we have to leap, and then we are in danger. So I'm leaping.
Where am I? My home is my center and very much defines me. It is a lovely cloudy day today and I will talk about the weather and my wild neighbors often on this blog. Today, however, I will only say this: Last year for my birthday I had daffodils. This year, there is too much snow. I saw some swallows floating by around noon, however, and a butterfly beat its sharp dark wings against my window. The nutcrackers are hoarsely chattering in the douglas-firs on the hill, protecting their new nest from the deep brown dark phase redtail and her mate, who like to perch up there and catch the wind. And the ravens are always soaring overhead and calling. As you can probably tell by my picture, ravens are very important to me, and to see them floating effortlessly and to hear their throaty rasps and caws and to watch them tumbling over and over in the high wind like so many black feathered clouds, always brings joy to my heart.
Happy birthday to me! Here's to a good year and all it brings!! And here's to all the things I bring to you who read here!