i woke this morning to snow fall. thick. fast moving falling. and it continued most of the day. off and on. probably 6 inches at least. overcast with a cloud cover. sometimes wind. High in the low 20's, tonight a Lo of 7. cold. the dogs are getting kind of old and didn't want to go out...dog door.... so i put on my boots and got the snow shovel from the Albatros (garage/shed/building) and shoveled them some paths around so they could pee, etc. shoveled the porch and steps. 3 of them are small and the snow went up to their stomachs. i had put plastic on the big front window but this ment that i couldn't see the snow. so though it will be colder in here, i pulled it all off. just after that, like moments, a very LARGE hawk swooped low. it's been quite a while since a hawk hunted around here. cat. where's the cat...sleeping on my bed. ok. only one truck has gone down our road all day. it had that very singular stillness that snow in the desert brings. was like there was something insulating everything from sound.
i felt all day, and on into now, like i never woke up. like it's all still dreaming. it wouldn't get warm in the Room so i rearranged. Rocking chair in there, door table into the livingroom so i could keep an eye on that hawk through the window. and later in the day i brought over the lamp that has the bulb that simulates natural light. i stitched. maybe part of the dream like quality was that the stitching was s l o w. but i have gotten almost all of the right panel of the Diaries cloth stitched down. but by the time that happened, it was too dark to take a pic.
and the phone didn't ring. once. usually at least a telemarketer calls and talks to the answering machine, or something political. nada. just silence.
and i started reading this book. i had had it once before, a long time ago, and read part of it. people i work for had it on their shelf so...borrowed. in the beginning, it says:
"It was better, I decided, for the emissaries returning from the wilderness, even if they were merely descending from a stepladder, to record their marvel not to define its meaning. In that way it would go echoing on through the minds of men, each grasping at that beyond out of which the miracles emerge, and which once defined, ceases to satisfy the human need for symbols." from the Judgement of the Birds, The Immense Journey, 1946 Loren Eiseley
