wilderness

in autumn i am a wandering thing
in broken-in boots
on horseback
rambling

through country i do not own
(and why should we
own what is wild?)

if i disrupt the forest
with hoofprints
between aspen
it will make a change
(in some way)

this country is a gift
and i am not to misuse it

but it keeps calling me out

or rather, in

how do you roast a beet?

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can't squeeze blood out of a turnip...

The beet is the murderer returned to the scene of the crime. The beet is what happens when the cherry finishes with the carrot. The beet is the ancient ancestor of the autumn moon, bearded, buried, all but fossilized; the dark green sails of the grounded moon-boat stitched with veins of primordial plasma; the kite string that once connected the moon to the Earth now a muddy whisker drilling desperately for rubies.

The beet was Rasputin's favorite vegetable. You could see it in his eyes.


- Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

on being productive:

have coffee out with Eric
buy a birthday present
buy thread for sewing
clean kitchen
clean office
hang new curtains
laundry (two loads)
get rid of all of the dead plants (there are eight)
stir the compost
put away gardening things
try to hang new shelves
bake sweet potato muffins
make dinner (even if it's breakfast food)
start sprouting a pineapple
watch a classic movie

These things happened today. Eric mowed the lawn and raked half of it. And he vacuumed the floors and displayed his strength and manliness by holding two six foot wall shelves up on the wall at once so I could see what they'd look like.

This is a start.

fall

today the air was crisp
and i was out in it
i learn more every day
how to appreciate it
the beauty of it
the gift of it

a truth

This is the truth of it: I feel sad.

I had a lovely weekend with my best friends on our annual pilgrimage to Spruce Meadows to sit in the sun together and watch beautiful horses jump incredible courses. It has always been a carefree time where we can be ourselves and be involved in something we've always loved, and the thing that brought us together as friends in the first place. I am grateful for their company. I am buoyed by all of the laughter this weekend, and the fact that this trip still delivered on its promise of being wonderful.

But going there always makes me re-evaluate my life with horses (which used to just be my life). What am I doing with my horse? Will I ever show again? Who will coach me? Will my friends come too? Will anything ever be the same? Am I truly alone in this, after so many years of doing it together?

I often worry that I am truly incapable of letting go of the past and moving forward on my own.

Mostly I just miss her, and that is a truth that will remain forever. A sadness that seems to stretch onwards out of sight.

on the grasshopper and cricket

The poetry of earth is never dead
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead.
-- John Keats

duldrums

some days
you must trade
data entry
for riding
on a sun-dappled lane
with a friend
you've had for a while

today is not
one of those days