Life Knocks on the Door...

...and we answer.

We have no excuse for not blogging. Well, except that we've been outside in the warm-ish temps, cleaning up the yard, weeding and prettifying the place. It's a lot of work. There are some clumps of grasses by the pond that take quite a bit of time to remove. Their roots are so weirdly thick, tangled, and deep. Eight hours of weed pulling in two days. I thought of Wayne and his microstegium. I also got sidetracked by a fantastic, brilliant novel by Lydia Millet called How the Dead Dream. I highly and unreservedly recommend it, if you like dense beautiful literature with a drop-dead perspective and a hauntingly perceptive look at the decline of our poor twirling blue planet. All seen through the eyes of a real estate developer, money mogul in southern California.

The duck dramas continue. Wednesday morning there were three mallards (two females and one male) plus one Great Blue Heron together in the pond. I thought it sounded like the beginning of a joke. The heron took off as soon as I got close to the window. The three others took turns in the pond, on the edge, under the feeder, etc. On Thursday, first the lone female showed up and spent several hours. Then she left and the lone male showed up. He stood around quacking, looking for the girl of his dreams. After a while, he took off too. Even the life of ducks is complicated. It all goes on just beyond our radar. Their secret language. I felt like crying when I saw him looking for her. Maybe it's just me, but is life sad, or what?

Lately I've been thinking how we are mostly so incidental to history. Our lives take place in a context, but that context is out of our hands. If I designed things, I swear it wouldn't look like this. Much, much kinder, the world would be. We would understand the secret language of everything.

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No lab test results yet.

I'm writing a response to an inquiry from someone who is writing a book on the 40th anniversary of Woodstock 1969. It's delightful remembering the times.

Roger has been working on a book review for James (Clusterfuck Nation) Kunstler's new book World Made by Hand. It should appear here sometime soon, if he can finally get all the weeds pulled, the moss scraped from the roof, the garden planted, and every loose end completely tied up.

We wish you a great weekend, friends.