ok, ok, not *quite* this snowy this a.m., but i resorted to an old picture for the drama of it.

first, i welcome myself back~~! really, i'm happy about it. journaling, writing, thinking, letters, paper, cyberspace???????whichwhyhowtobest. mostly i love to write. additionally i visit with myself constantly. is there need to commit any of it really.....

i'm not sure but guess i'm re-appearing here. appear is such a bright good surprising feeling. even re *appear*ing feels significant.

so funny about the snow really. yesterday we also had cold and snow and about the same temps. yesterday i was resenting it and pretending it wasn't the point. kicked around with a sweater and hugged myself with a shiver at every turn outside. this morning however, dressed as i do for snow i was warmed and invigorated by both the temperature and the snow. funny about turning the page into a different beauty. me of all people who professes to dearly love our seasons; you would think that i would remember to embrace them. guess there is a small transition stage.

i pretended this morning that i was in CO. after that i pretended that i was in CA hiking as laura and martin did through the snow and without a trail. i didn't get lost though. the field road next to the field doesn't really get so very obscured you know. although........this morning as i had a cup of coffee in my bed, a train camoflauged itself. truly now, that is a bit of a trick. snowy branches in the window and white triple crown cars can do that. i even made ken laugh with the idea. we do regularly laugh at ourselves commenting in the morning that the kids would find it hard to understand that train watching in the morning rather entertains us. it is very close to having lawn chairs in an open garage and watching cars go by..... not something to pass around me thinks.

so, am a little blabby here this morn with my rearrival but i was inspired by the walk. in the beauty of the snowiness, anna sophie mutter joined me. i heard her way down in the woods past her tree and toward the airport. it's a tiny stretch in there, but a safe haven in many coats. we actually already had retreated in that direction because someone was hunting on neal ave. those voices mix uneasily for me: hawks and crows calling and gun shots. the only tracks i see ahead of me of course are deer tracks. i kept glancing about the field actually rather hoping not to see a deer fleeing but wishing that were happening. it's odd to walk as i do, pretty keyed in to all around me but to have shooting and death on the periphery. a day in life of course; almost too literal for me though.

this hunter has trespassed in several ways today of course. no one should have been on neal before me or even in addition as far as i'm concerned. his huge truck tires had already chewed up the soft snow and dug into the underlaying mud. another kind of painful analogy for me. *and* he will shoot the coyotes if he sees them and that makes me sad also. just what sort of balance to i think i'm about anyway... karen, karen, karen.

is every 5th person truly wired as ultraoverthetopgetreal sensitive? or is it just me.

i'm glad to write here again. i have more pictures to add too. and.....if i look back over my shoulder, i have much to write about it. i'm leaning toward opening this to just a few people who might wonder what's on my mind. we shall see.

rough places return

hard even for me to express today.

i'm uprooted and laying exposed on the ground. not once but twice.

the "keeper" of neal ave has indeed dealt with the downed tree. it's one way. no nuance, no intuition; brute force. some mammoth earthmover who leaves a deep and determined track, has bulldozed the felled trees. nothing tending or caring to be sure. simply in a giant stroke pushed to the side. two trees now, one fully clothed yet and one bare lay parallel to the road. they don't fit easily there; the foot and roots are exposed to all. to deal with them and force them to a new place the avenue itself is again changed. a new widened and hurt place; looks like a combat zone that has nothing to do with openings to the field, only a harsh dealing with obstacles.

my heart is so bulldozed. not only about megan and jeremy although they come today. there is such heartache in our family. fronts known and fronts unknown. young places and aged places.

depths impossible to share.

the smoothed, grassy straight path i wrote of a couple days ago? remember that one? it leads to devestation.

i'm so afraid that i can't help megan. i will see her today.
k

and he reminds me again

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

lee reminds me

"Even in our sleep, pain which can not forget,
falls drop by drop upon the heart
until in our own despair, against our own will,
comes wisdom through the awful grace of God"

Robert Kennedy – upon the loss of his brother

rough places made plain

completely the wrong picture but i'll change it, just as.......
neal changed this morning.

amazing really what a difference a day makes.
my encroaching sadness that the visual peace of neal avenue was more and more elusive, changed over night. the darkness lurks now only on the edges again and deep in the underbrush. a giant mower smoothed the way today. it's soft now, even cushioned by the long cut grass laying on the way. it's cleared only to the fallen tree for now, but i expect that the "keeper" of neal is aware than more attention is needed. he's not especially gentle with the fallen trees; *that* clearing is a little brusk and uncaring, but in the end more order is what i need to feel.
i hadn't realized quite so much that my open space, my verdent shelter, my most familiar of all paths is tended and managed. by an outsider of all things. and an invisible one at that.
the way to the bench is also smoothed and expanded now. next the corn will grow up to envelope the path. for now the vista is gorgeous and open. as a body of water, shimmering, wavy, vast. peopled of course. i often wonder how many corn stalks are there as my network. the new farmer, a renter and not the owner, has gotten greedy with the land i fear. corn is planted this year, as last. pete always rotated. the stalks are closer together than they used to be; can't tell about the rows until the corn is taller and i can walk there. no way through at the "hole in the wall". the planting is colored outside the lines of the field. pete sees the change. even more, the machinery is all mammoth and feels conquering not nurturing fm planting to harvest. nothing in between really either, no neal avenue tending, no visits to look over it.
but, the corn aside, today was a surprise. that is supposed to be MY part, being surprising. how lovely to be on the other end.
i had quit walking on neal ave you know.
was already needing more shade.
k

usually when i'm home i have a candle lighted.

k

usually when i'm home i have a candle lighted.

k