Almost December. A brief return to warmer temperatures as a rain storm approaches. Right now it’s “that rich windy weather” (Kate Bush) I so adore. I walked to the downtown Y this morning, walked home with damp hair, mid-way through climbing Prospect Hill I ditched the hat, figuratively speaking. Perhaps this is one “benefit” of global warming – this mild weather so late in fall. But we’ll pay for it in the summer.
Yesterday, as the workaday Monday slog resumed, I thought a lot about mortality. It’s not that I wanted to think about it, but the thoughts kept intruding: how we’re getting older, how we’re not “retired” (but also getting tired), what if the money ran out, then a rapid slide into darker thoughts about being poor, living on cat food, etc. Well, I didn’t quite go that length, to those last bits, nor explode in a crescendo of fear that says, “I’ll be a bag lady.” It won’t come to that, but the precariousness of it all sometimes seems …well, nuts. How it bothers me.
As I was laboring up the steepest slope of Prospect Hill yesterday, I suddenly heard a whooshing noise to my right. It was a strong noise, made, I quickly realized, by the fluttering of a large and powerful pair of wings. But when I looked, I looked to where the sound had been, not to where the bird had flown. This, I presume, is an error hardwired into the brains of inexperienced hunters. It’s an error one learns to unlearn, to overcome, to compensate for once one learns to observe, see, and hunt. And so it seems it will be with the Trump presidency. We will look at the spot where we thought the noise came from, and will miss where the action is going. It’s time to become more versed in the ways of the hunter.
And then there’s laughter. This morning I remembered laughing. I can’t recall whether I laughed or just had a dream in which I laughed. I think it may have been a dream, because, if I recall correctly, I was laughing at something quite serious – like mortality, say – and my laughter was somehow daemonic (but not evil; just really really deep and powerful), and the serious thing got rather small in the face of my power.