On the one hand, this postpones my getaway, and means I'm burning three vacation days I could've saved.

On the other hand, it means three days at home with my cats and my guitar, with no work to go to, no plans made, nothing to do and nowhere to be. I didn't speak to a single soul yesterday - didn't check my e-mail or do anything....just slept endlessly and joyfully, walked around my house in the buff, gave myself a naked pedicure and generally was a lazy rat bastard. It was awesome.

Of course, today, I had to speak to someone, and so I'm reminded that the solitude can't last forever. But it sure was nice for a little while.

Again and again, however we know the landscape of love
and the little churchyard there, with its sorrowing names,
and the frighteningly silent abyss into which the others
fall: again and again the two of us walk out together
under the ancient trees, lie down again and again
among the flowers, face to face with the sky.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

One of my favorite books is not one I would've guessed would be so. It's much darker and more Goth than I usually care for, but something in it speaks to me in a language recognized only by my heart, the way poetry does.

During my reclusive sojourn yesterday, as I was watering my plants, contemplating the simplicity of their existence, I suddenly put my own life in that perspective. I mean, if you take away all the conveniences and complications of our lives, human beings are animals. Highly intelligent, enterprising ones, but animals nonetheless. Squirrels never get caught in existential dillemmas - they just eat my spinach plants every time the leaves get an inch long. They don't consider the right of it or the wrong of it, whether it's organic spinach that had to be shipped from thousands of miles away, using pollution-heavy fossil fuels, then packaged in petroleum-based plastics.

Squirrels don't pine for someone they've never met, and they don't berate themselves for not being "perfect." They don't judge each other for not having sleek enough tails, or for having a big squirrel ass. Life isn't complicated for a squirrel...sometimes I wonder why it is for so many people. Yeah, okay, mostly me.

I just saw my first firefly of the year, sparking bright green and beautiful among the camellias in my backyard. I live in the middle of a city, surrounded by concrete and brick and buildings blocking out the sky. And there's still enough magic here for fireflies.

Recent entries...
27 December 2007: 2007: Finis.
17 December 2007: A ruse, a rant, and a poem. It's short.
11 December 2007: Music & falling....story of my life.
08 December 2007: Briefly...ish.
29 November 2007: A poem, a rant, a lesson.