Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
High temperatures were very mild this week, ranging from 31.6°F on Monday to 54.7°F on Saturday, with an average high temp of 42.2°F. Lows ranged from 29.7°F to 12.7°F, with an average of 21.7°F. No precipitation this week. Our yard and most of the ground around here is pretty well snow-covered, with a few exceptions due to sun exposure or tree cover. Trails are icy. It feels and looks more like late March than early Feb. here. Hoping for some snow next week.
- Beginnings
New Birds: Didn’t ID any new birds but we did see a light-coloured owl flying across the marsh on Thursday while we were walking.
The coyotes that kill things in the marsh behind us were hootin’ and hollerin’ on Sunday night off and on for 20-30 mins. It’s been a while since I’ve heard them.
The red fox returned one morning (6:30 a.m.) this week!
Friends welcomed a new granddaughter into the world on Friday night!
- Flora, Fauna, Fungi
Not seeing as many birds around right now … I’m spending a lot less time looking out windows this month as I try to write a (dream)poem most days, but others nearby have reported a similar drop-off.
These are some birds Merlin heard this week (from 5-8 Feb) in the yard and close by, all of which we see pretty regularly except the house sparrow.
- Wandering
Walked in town on Tuesday and Wed for an hour each time, and took a longer town walk (with errands) on Thursday. Also walked twice around a pond in Hanover (which has a lot less snow than we do) on Saturday, when it seemed like everyone was out jogging in shorts and T-shirt:
- Curiosity & Discoveries
This week in Virtual Birding (through Maine Audubon, via Zoom) we went to Cornell’s feeders in upstate New York (woodpeckers), Cornell’s feeders in Ontario CN (pine and evening grosbeaks), feeders at an animal rescue in Czechia (maybe a coal tit, a Eurasian tree sparrow, and a great spotted woodpecker), and, new this week, we looked at a compilation of birds seen lately at fruit feeders outside Panama City, Panama (rufous motmots, collared aracaris, and black-chested jays) — quite a change from New Hampshire!
- Creating
I’m still writing a dreampoem most days (all but one day so far) for Write 28 Days. It takes several hours most days/evenings. I’m also creating from photos some digital artwork for the images that accompany the poems, which can take almost as long as the poem-writing.
- Repairing and Maintaining (everything but the house)
Body/Mind: I took a Covid rapid test on Saturday morning (negative). I worked out five times (5 hours) this week and treadmilled on Monday and Sunday for a total of 4.5 miles over an hour. I meditated for 15 mins every day this week. In the Zoom webinar Botany in a Winter on Wed. we went over more monocots, including Asparagales (85 species in New England), Commelinales (only 10 species in New England), and dipped our toes into Poales (690 species in New England).
Repair: Husband found and fixed a bad soldering joint in his amplifier on Wed.
Financial: Checked our credit score on the bank’s website on Monday.
- Nesting
Supplies: Bought a medium-sized cooler — a size we don’t have and have often wanted — at a consignment shop on Thursday for $3. Ordered four books (on plants and birds) at 75% off from Princeton Nature on Thursday. Bought a top for $8 at consignment store Thurs. Lucked into Girl Scouts selling cookies at the regional co-op on Saturday and bought a few boxes.
Food: We went out to dinner at 4:30 p.m. with a friend on Tuesday (sat in plexiglass-divided booth, only two other couples dining, not near us, while we were there). Made cacio e pepe for me on Wednesday, along with my leftover restaurant roasted Brussels sprouts, while husband had his leftover restaurant salmon. Made tuna salad (with celery, kalamatas, chopped sweet gherkins, hard-boiled egg, mayo) for dinner on Thursday, served on lots of arugula; bolstered it and had it again on Friday with carrots. All else was leftovers with or without additions and husband had smoked salmon on bagel a couple of nights. My husband made two loaves of rye bread on Sunday.
Cleaning: I vacuumed the kitchen and family room, on Tuesday I think. Cleaned both downstairs toilets at least once each. Husband did the dump run on Sunday.
- Sleeping & Dreaming
My average sleep time per night was 7 hours and 45 minutes this week, with a high of 8 hours 27 minutes and a low of 7 hours 3 minutes. My sleep scores ranged from 88 to 82, with an average of 86.4. Lots of vivid dreams, some of which I recorded, but it’s hard to record dreams every whipstitch and maintain good sleep (and not wake others).
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
I’m reading a couple of books right now: Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere (2023) by Maria Bamford. I’m about halfway through and enjoying it, if that’s the right word (I mean, she is a comedian). Also reading Mother-Daughter Murder Night : A Novel (2023) by Nina Simon.
On Friday night we watched Living, a 2022 film with Bill Nighy, based on the 1952 Japanese film Ikiru (kira Kurosawa), which I saw years ago. Living is slow, uncomplicated, and sweet.
I read this online, in the The New Yorker (requires a subscription, sadly): The Man Who Saw Through Himself: How Michel Leiris changed autobiography by Sasha Frere-Jones, 9 Dec 2020. Just loved it. Some excerpts from her appreciation below.
“Leiris was a shy and flinty nonbeliever, who valued exactitude above all and who wrote nested, page-long sentences to create “a series of screens” between himself and his ideas. He escaped calcification by holding fast to his curiosity and built ethical strength by observing the slow boil of his consciousness.”
Leiris’s first book, Phantom Africa – an account of his trip as secretary-archivist for a two-year expedition, across sub-Saharan Africa – consisting of “more than six hundred pages of journal entries, which recount dreams, the behavior of soldiers, a variety of conflicts with [the trip’s organiser, the anthropologist Marcel] Griaule, erotic projections, aches, other aches, and a running measure of his distance from both the people he was studying and the people who had sent him to do the studying,” was, in his words, “the aggregate of ‘what would result when I forced myself to record virtually everything that happened around me and everything that went through my head.’” Relatable.
In this first volume of memoirs, Scratches (1948),
“Leiris wrote that he felt an ‘irrational repugnance at the idea of going straight to the point.’ Several decades later, in 1987, … he said that ‘a person in our day and age who has self-respect owes it to himself to be as lucid as he can possibly be.’ These ideas, seemingly at odds, are, in fact, two sides of the same belief — that language, properly engaged, can reveal the holy glint of experience.”
About another of his memoirs, The Ribbon at Olympia’s Throat (1981), Frere-Jones writes:
“Because the crucial detail could lie anywhere, waiting to be uncovered, Leiris tends not to weight his experiences differently. Each event is presented as equally animated or blank, and the smallest experiences are some of the richest. ‘While smoking a cigarette and drinking tea in my bedroom in Paris, the desire often strikes me—irrational but acutely felt—to smoke a cigarette,’ Leiris writes. ‘But I am already smoking, and thus it is absurd to wish to do something that, quite simply, I’m in the middle of doing.’ At one point, Leiris argues with himself for seven pages about how to describe and interpret sunlight in the Black Forest: ‘Limpid patches somehow transforming the terrestrial landscape into a kind of negative of the celestial landscape, which itself was stained by fat, dark clouds.’”
These are a few other things I came across this week online:
- Connections & Community
Shopped locally at the regional co-op on Saturday and at a consignment store on Thursday. Ate at a local restaurant on Tuesday:
We seem to be out of the habit of visiting the local coffee shops and the farmstand these days (the latter of which is open only one morning and one afternoon per week right now, and I forget to go then).
Sent birthday card on Wed. to friend turning 95 next week. Texted friends who had biopsy on Wed. (they’ll learn results next week). Texted my sister about her husband’s health issues a couple of times. With others in Salon tried to support friend (and friend’s mother) whose husband is in hospital after heart attack over two weeks ago. On Tues., texted a friend recovering from Dec. car accident, for about 45 minutes off and on.
My husband and I went out to dinner (at 4:30) with a friend on Tuesday. I attended permaculture meeting via Zoom on Thursday morning (7 of us) for an hour. I hosted Salon group here on Friday afternoon for two hours (4 of us). Chatted with a neighbour briefly at the grocery store checkout on Friday morning.
- Endings
Sunset out of home office window at 5:27 Sunday evening.
- All This Useless Beauty
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