Springtime Distpatches

The Peacock Pavilion at the House of Owls and Bats, where we shall be cocktail houring after walkabout...

A day of rest in the middle of what is shaping up to be a busy couple of weeks. The craziness started with Sabina's nephew getting married a week ago upstate. I find increasingly going down below for anything is a chore. Strange memories, good, bad, and indifferent, are stirred up like black mud in deep puddles, blurring my vision of the present. As I look back west toward my mountains, I feel as though I am in exile. It is only when I climb to the thinner atmosphere once again I find I can breathe.

My daughter was there for the ceremony and came up to the house afterward. We had mussels with a lovely South African wine for one meal and grilled beer brats for another. There was a walkabout involved at one point. The only one I've had in a week.

The time change always fucks with my already wonky sleep patterns. Forward or back does not matter. I spend days feeling torn and tired and murdered. Between a friend/comrade-in-limbs being on her annual Florida pilgrimage and covering a half day for Sempai it was another six-day stint of obligations. By yesterday I was slap-happy exhausted and all but begging for the opportunity to stab someone in the gallbladder. With a spork. Twice.

There was a birthday party for a neighbor at the local watering hole. A round and civilities. For not even catching a buzz, I remember little of it. As a new calendar week dawns, the mundanity of what I do for money not withstanding, I find myself again a busy man. There is the historical society meeting and the beginning of season orientation meet for the community garden. A historical talk and the annual Cabin Fever Dance, of which I always do the clean up at. Somewhere in there is Sabina's radio show and a daytime roadtrip to Leadville for something to do, and, I suppose I should try to sleep some.

It's funny, for all I consider myself misanthropic and solitary I certainly do have a lot going on, and pretty much all of it involves interaction with my fellow primates. Once upon a time, I had an online handle of Paradoxical Misanthrope as a nod to going monkey watching in crowded places like the Sixteenth Street Mall and juke joints. That was long ago. A time when I could deal with crowds much better than I do now.

After a somewhat decent snow Friday, it has once more warmed up. I've been wearing t-shirts without layers more often than not the last week. Snow recedes around the house. Stay dry is the neighborly greeting recited like a mantra when walking around town and the scent of muddy thaw is thick in the mountane air. There has been grilling.

It's been a week since I've been out into the bush. This, of course, will not do. I look out my parlor window at the far side of the valley, the south faces, knowing where I'll be wandering. I need to get out for I have been busy and need to breathe again.