A Reprise

  There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet Act I, scene 5, 159-167

I have felt this great obsession lately with Katherine Sutcliffe's books, with my fragmented, faded high school memories of all of her books. Her books have an intensity I long to study. I feel like maybe before I wasn't ready to go deep with emotions the way she did. I couldn't identify with those intense feelings. A lot of them really went over my head, and only now, I feel rocked with them. I am thinking most of Once a Hero. It was one of the first of her novels I read, and I remember it probably imperfectly. The heroine was Bronte, the daughter of some kind of convict overseer in Australia. They get in a convict that happens to be a celebrity war hero in England, that happens to be Bronte's lifelong hero. She's devastated that he's a traitor, a common criminal. I think he's going to be executed. I have no idea how they have a romance, but they do. There are these scenes that remain etched in my mind where Bronte is clawing out of her skin with desire ...

Up until just about now, when Jacob becomes a werewolf, I have been so deeply into this book. Now the tension has broken off, and I can see Bella is returning to reality, Jacob will keep his distance and Edward will come back into the picture to resume their boring relationship. But until now I have been so into Bella's depression and madness. I really grieved and cried with her, and thrilled with hope as things looked up and up with Jacob. In a lot of ways, this book is actually a lot better than Twilight. I guess though, in either book, the headline romance is not really gripping.

The chicks are getting big, growing their wing feathers rapidly. Hopefully soon I can put them outside in the hen house. Each day is warmer than the last. I planted three rows of lemon balm last night, a row of mint, and a general cluster of chamomile. Nothing recognizeable has yet sprouted from my efforts a couple weeks ago, but hopefully soon.

Lilith stumbled back from the rocks and waded back to shore. As she looked back, she saw the white of Amalthea's garments and the tawny bronze hair waving in the wind like fearsome flags. She was suddenly constricted with fear for Jim, realized she should not have left him alone with Amalthea. But it was too late to return. She knew it in Amalthea's sudden keening cry. She saw her slender form collapse upon the jagged rocks as her melodious voice lifted in terrifying song. The sky melted suddenly into pools of ink, and the wind was blunt and cold across her wet clothes. Lilith turned and ran back to the house. The kitchen door slammed behind her as her eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness. "Lorena? Is anyone home?" She tracked sand across the clean linoleum. Her clothes dripped as she wandered from room to room, shaking with grief and sudden fear. She felt horrifyingly alone. "Mother? Mother.?" She opened the door to her parents' bedroom, a san...

            We drove around town to two feed stores asking for chickens. They were sold out, so I got baby chicks. They are in a box right now, but here is a picture of the shed/henhouse now that we've cleaned it out. We will need some more hay to cover the floor, but it will be a little while till they grow out of their cardboard box. I looked at henhouses online. They were really expensive. But the egloo was super-awesome, I love the trendy colors. Ultimately this shed is better and more secure than any henhouse. It's probably a little too good and new to be housing chickens but my husband was okay with keeping them there. I'm going to get some of those stackable mesh cubes like for dorm rooms for the nesting boxes-that way, I can get the cute colors. I swear the babies are bigger this afternoon than they were this morning. I wonder which are hens/roosters. I will have to wait till they grow up to give them names, and also to see that they al...

  Jane Morris. Jane Eyre. Jane Austen. Jane Morris was the wife of William Morris and model/muse of Dante Gabriel Rossetti; Jane Eyre is the character of writer Charlotte Bronte; Jane Austen was a writer whose popularity has not ceased since her publication in the early 1800's, as far as I know. I really don't know what more to say except that I have been thinking about these women a lot. They are all pretty different from each other and lived in different eras(and one of them is not a real person, unless you mingle her with Charlotte Bronte, which I do). One was a prodigious beauty, one a writer of genius, one a sufferer triumphant. But they blend together in this entity which is my ideal.

I think who you want to be is already a part of who you are. I think when I emerge from a trial that the person I've been inventing secretly for months is ready to emerge. This happens every few years. Anyway, this new person is Plain Jane. Sort of like Jane Eyre, but Gen-Y. Because I really am right on the border of X and Y, and right now I am definitely more Y. So nice to meet you. Basically I'm more laid back, less critical, selfish and demanding of life, less inhibited in my personal expression, less afraid to try new things. Don't believe me? Wait and see. I can feel it happened in the last 24 hours. I am this Plain Jane now.

"Any idiot can face a crisis-it's the day-to-day living that wears you out." Anton Chekhov Every day, I try hard. I wake up at that center of being, morning, which is what time it is now. But I clamor for the something more. I read a poem or short story. I reach for some vintage object that is redolent with the past.

I have noticed that I tend to carry things with me for their symbolic value rather than because I intend to use them. In the morning I may tend to take my cross stitch, my Artful Blogger, a lovely trendy fiction novel, and always a coffee. The coffee gives me comfort just by sitting in my cupholder on my drive to work, a little sense of normalcy from a more luxurious existence. The magazines or needlework or my laptop are visual talismans to remind me of the something more to life. It snowed Saturday night, and yesterday the winds were so high it sounded like we might lose some roof. I was disappointed. I wanted so many things from this weekend time that the weather made unpleasant or impossible. Yesterday I read through my journal files from 2007, which was when I started this job. I hoped to receive some insight from my past reflections to aid my present. It is hard to be in the dark with other people or things. If I lose my sense of direction there is no one to tell me up from down....

Last night I weeded the front garden beds that we had previously tilled. I planted two rows of marshmallow and one row of angelica. I was so excited I could not really sleep after that. I read up on both herbs and started thinking about how to make candy from them. It sounds like I planted them in the perfect place, since both like shade and moisture. They will be tall, at least 4 feet, if they grow in full. Last night was the new moon, Saturday is the spring equinox, and I will be planting more: potatoes, bell peppers, onions. I need to get my gardenia and mints into the ground also. I have many more herb seeds, not sure where they will go. I have another shady, wet bed for the rest of the angelica, lemon balm and peppermint. I have a sunny bed for chamomile, St John's Wort, and mullein. The other gardenia will probably go next to the boxwood. The rear garden will contain the vegetables. This morning I made biscuits. That's not something I thought I would ever get to do on a w...

  Today was harsh. Today was the kind of day when I could have used a nice word or bit of conversation. I know I harp on this a lot, but when is it going to start for me? Like, really, when?

Every day can be a holiday, I find. It's a holiday if I can not be working, listening to other people work, or watching them in their yards as I drive by. It's a holiday when I get a treat from a drive thru. As soon as I hear the wind blow through an open window or door, or get sun-drunk, it's a holiday. As soon as I stop wondering what time it is. As soon as I get up and look around and realize it's only in the middle of the afternoon. Well, today I am the infirm. I got a blister from walking around the Irish Festival Saturday. I had no idea a blister could do so much. I ignored it for two days and noticed last night it looked like a gash and bled all in my sock. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with my leg so stiff and throbbing I could barely hobble to the bathroom to look at the wound. So I called in sick today, much to my surprise, because I could barely walk. I might have thought of medical attention, but I noticed an awful wound on Henry and gathered hi...

  Sometimes the tides will turn. I try to learn what to do when they turn, how to occupy myself best. Just as the moon is waning a lens in my soul is closing. I felt such inner darkness today. It was hard to be brave.

I took these photos with my first digital camera in 2003, around the same time I started this blog. This was where my mother worked when I was a child, and I spent my afternoons here after school. A man who worked here found me crying on this porch when I was about eight. He told me I couldn't let other kids get to me, that I had to be tougher than that. I disagreed with him, unable to conceive of a wall to protect me from pain.  I didn't know him very well at the time. I had little idea that he would be my stepfather in a year's time. And that we would have this kind of argument many times as I grew up.   It was all so overgrown. I thought it pretty unlikely that these buildings, once swarming with people on the well-worn paths, could still serve the same function. I ran up and down the covered walkways so many times, played games with other children in unused rooms filled with boxes and debris, making homes and worlds for hours. When the porch would ice, we would go s...