The painful clamor of the garbage truck startles me at predawn--
I roll over and sink into the warmth
And will myself back to sleep.
Instead,
My mind is ready.
Planning, checking, anticipating…
I give up the fight.
The darkness is deafening
As I tiptoe, wandering
But wishing to accomplish some task,
Anything that will lessen my load
Without waking the little fairies
That live in my midst.
Too soon, they are around me,
Tumbling, bubbling, giving me purpose.
I am caught up in their reverie
And ride the wave.
Suddenly,
As if to remind me this cannot last,
The light fades and my body slows.
The little trolls collapse,
And I, not much stronger,
Take to my bed as if summoned.
Again, I wake.
A poor fellow up too early
Delivers my paper in a car
That should have been put to rest long ago.
I do not rise.
I do not think,
But I cannot return to where I was.
Now my day extends before me
Like a vast, barren wasteland.
I have no fairies, no trolls.
I move through a thickness that slows me
And steals my will.
The day is long.
I hear a folktale
About a man who lives his life backwards,
Beginning with old age and ending as a baby.
That would be the way
I think.
I would appreciate it then.
--Jill Rossiter
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thursday, January 8, 2009
If the answer is blowin' in the wind, what the hell is the question?
In this quaint little town of Pomeroy, the people are friendly, the schools are good and the weather is temperate. It's the perfect small town. Except....
The wind. I think all real estate listings in the county should be required to list "buyer understands that this area has very windy conditions" on the sales agreement.
In the spring, when the sky is blue and the flowers are considering flashing their colors, when one longs to fling one's jacket to the ground and roll in the green grass...forget it. The temperature might be sixty, but the wind chill is 60 below, and you probably can't stay out in the weather, let alone work outside in a t-shirt. I have learned to layer just like I do for snowmobiling. Even then, my hands quickly numb and I have to come inside just to thaw them out so that I can start again.
In our 8 year stretch in Pomeroy, we have lost so much to the wind. Some of the things everyone loses, like garbage cans, buckets, watering cans, boxes...but others might be more surprising. We've lost gates (yes, two of them), very large tree branches (there's nothing like a nice big branch crashing into the roof in the middle of the night to let you know you're alive), and even a greenhouse. During one particularly enthusiastic wind storm, a gust tore my greenhouse from it's frame and flung it all the way around our house. I couldn't lift the carcass (ironic, I know) and had to tear the damned thing up just to get it to the junk pile.
I whine, I whine. But I am getting to my point (really). The wind has been blowing constantly for the past three days. And when I say blowing, I mean that in the kindest, most dynamic sense of the word. It BLOWS and BLOWS. It has been blowing that "tie anything down that you really want to keep" kind of wind. I just thank goodness the trees don't have leaves because they would be in our living room by now.
Yesterday, someone said to me "it breaks you down" in reference to the wind, and I thought she had caught the essence of it. It makes me want to go to bed and wait it out. This must be what depression feels like, waiting and wondering if it will ever end and feeling powerless to make it go away.
The wind. I think all real estate listings in the county should be required to list "buyer understands that this area has very windy conditions" on the sales agreement.
In the spring, when the sky is blue and the flowers are considering flashing their colors, when one longs to fling one's jacket to the ground and roll in the green grass...forget it. The temperature might be sixty, but the wind chill is 60 below, and you probably can't stay out in the weather, let alone work outside in a t-shirt. I have learned to layer just like I do for snowmobiling. Even then, my hands quickly numb and I have to come inside just to thaw them out so that I can start again.
In our 8 year stretch in Pomeroy, we have lost so much to the wind. Some of the things everyone loses, like garbage cans, buckets, watering cans, boxes...but others might be more surprising. We've lost gates (yes, two of them), very large tree branches (there's nothing like a nice big branch crashing into the roof in the middle of the night to let you know you're alive), and even a greenhouse. During one particularly enthusiastic wind storm, a gust tore my greenhouse from it's frame and flung it all the way around our house. I couldn't lift the carcass (ironic, I know) and had to tear the damned thing up just to get it to the junk pile.
I whine, I whine. But I am getting to my point (really). The wind has been blowing constantly for the past three days. And when I say blowing, I mean that in the kindest, most dynamic sense of the word. It BLOWS and BLOWS. It has been blowing that "tie anything down that you really want to keep" kind of wind. I just thank goodness the trees don't have leaves because they would be in our living room by now.
Yesterday, someone said to me "it breaks you down" in reference to the wind, and I thought she had caught the essence of it. It makes me want to go to bed and wait it out. This must be what depression feels like, waiting and wondering if it will ever end and feeling powerless to make it go away.
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