Thursday, March 16, 2006, 7;37 PM Hiking the Unveiling Darkness
It is dark and cold outside. I would have preferred to walk while it was sunny and bright, but I dorked around packing for so long that the day is over.
The sky, however, is amazing. The background sky is nearly black, a proverbial "inky blue." With a smattering of stars. The clouds are layered on this darkness in long streaks and puffy lumps, pinkish and purple and powder blue.
But my hands are too cold to write. Brrr!
It was sunny all morning and I desperately wanted to be out, but felt I should ~accomplish something, then it got cloudy and dark. Just before sunset, the sun dropped into a space below the clouds and lit the world with orangey-gold light. Fantastic. I wanted to be out in it, to open my mouth and catch the light on my tongue and see if it was as sweet as it looked.
I am chafing at the onerous task of sorting and packing. I want to escape, to run out and play. Now I am out, and a large hole has opened in the clouds to reveal the black sky, blacker even than before, and the stars. I crane my neck until I almost fall over backwards, but the constellations are fragmented. Finally, I make out the big dipper, directly behind me. I have to lean backwards to see it. I am headed south. But turning so the big sipper is ahead of me on the left. Headed north east.
All the snow we had yesterday has melted in the morning sunshine, except under trees and to the north or hedgerows and rocks. It's cold now though, very cold. Raw.
I turn again. This is no straight trail like the old railroad be. The big dipper is ahead of me to the right, then behind to the right, then behind me. Sounds like I'm circling, but I'll be turning back the other way shortly.
Now I see Orion, clear as the clichéd bell, clearer than through spring water, ringing his sword on the stone of night. There's Canis major and Canis minor, following behind, and above him, Gemini the twins.
Bare tree branches, patches of snow, ice skimming the puddles and crystallizing in the mud. A distant dog barking and dark penetrating cold.
The sound of my breath, and an airplane overhead. A distant car accelerating.
Yesterday and the day before, I wanted to talk about hopes and dreams, how I've worked all my life, moving constantly in the direction of my dreams. But my ADHD and my fibromyalgia and the need to work sometimes more than one job and so on have kept me from my goals, along with various problems misfortunes and character defects, LOL. Bu I keep trying, keep working at it, taking baby steps, making small progresses. Now that I am nearly 60, my fear is that I will die before I accomplish any of my dreams. Like getting one of my novels publsihed, or more than one.
Right now, I am tied down by the house business, and my utter ineptness at this sort of thing. Oh, there the Pleiades! They were under a cloud before. I wish I wasn't so inept or I wish someone would HELP me. Dang! I want to be an artist and a novelist, not a drudge!
Sound of my footsteps, sound of running water, a horn beeping somewhere far away, another dog.
Airplanes fly overhead, flashing red and green lights, one flies through Orion's belt with a tiny roaring sound.
I've got that cold rhinitis, I keep wanting to look it up and remind myself what it's called, but keep forgetting.
Some orangish leaf lying on the ground in the darkness looks like a fat tadpole or a hugely enormous sperm. When I step past it and look back, it looks like a snake. Faint light and imagination almost hallucinatory or dreamlike.
A rabbit moves dark into the dark bushes, running rather than hopping so lean as to appear to be some other kind animal altogether. Just when I think it's either a monster or something unusual, it stops and hops a few hops to reassure me.
Now, a whole area of sky had cleared and I can see Taurus the Bull and Auriga the charioteer, earlier lost in cloud. I see Cassieiopiea and Andromeda.
The dogs are to my left and andromeda to my right and the North Star behind me to my right. So, I'm going northwest. NO no, north east. I have dyslexia and have trouble with right left orientation. I rally have think about it.
I was going to say there is not a single cloud left in the sky, but I rotated 369 degrees and lo and behold, there are a few wisps on one of the far horizons.
The sky is vast and cold tonight.
Tree branches are black and the sky appears bluer relative to them.
But without the branches, the sky looks black. Now that the clouds are gone, with their paleness to contrast against the sky, it looks less dark, and that is enhanced by the comparison with the black black tree branches.
8:18 PM I am nearly home now. The dark night has charmed me, but I am eager to quick have some dinner. I'm hungry and I'm going to make BBQed chicken, yum. Beautiful as the night is, I will be happy to go back inside and eat.
8:21 PM I am back in the yellow light and relative warmth of my house. Heidi once said, if you're SO BUSY, how do you have time to write al those long journals. Yes, I really did write WHILE I was walking. On the Psion, my little teeny tiny computer. Whose screen is now fogged. I use a headlamp so see. OK, food now.
Somehow I lost my coat, how could that be? A frying pan disappeared, too, but my COAT, I just had it on, and it's GONE!! HUH?
Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee dee! I look all over--is there a spirit in here, playing tricks? No, here it is, I hung it up and it just fell off the hanger! DUH!! What a dunce!
I curl my spine and sit all hunched over, sinking my chin into my chest. It reminds me of my mother in her wheelchair, my father before he died. Always hunched in his chair, never lying down. I'm hunching to stretch my neck and back because of my fibro, before I stand at the stove to cook supper. That always hurts me.
9:08 I've had my BBQed chicken and am on the IM waiting for my sweetie..
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