Robin Days

(This was all written out for yesterday but due to some lovely changes to my blog, the blog wasn't ready for an entry till my programmer swung by again)

When you get up in the morning and go about your business, it’s never clear what’s going to happen. I starting cleaning out the trunk of my car at about 11 or so and that's when I saw him. He was part robin, part fuzzy baby and no tail to be seen. Half a robin. He jumped up to me, cheeping, contemplating and staring. Very clearly he was asking, "Are you my mommy? Just feed me!" but there was a sweetness there too. He came right up to my toes, cheeping at me.

I did what anyone would do: I rushed to the Internet and found the number for the local Forest Preserve's Nature Center. I called and a guy told me that fledglings get out of the nest and fly around on the ground. They still need their parents to feed them but since birds are very auditory and visual, the parents would find their baby. So I left the birdie. The parents would come.

They never did. The short hours passed and he stayed in one place, not moving. Fledglings need to be fed every twenty minutes. It was now two o'clock and he looked like a tiny statue. He was doing what all animals do when the time comes…he was preparing to die and wasn't going to make a fuss anymore.

That was it. Screw the Red Oak Nature Center guy. Screw them all. Someone, somewhere took care of ailing wild birds. So I hopped back to the Internet and found the Fox Valley Wildlife Center. Why the Red Oak Nature Center never gave me this number, I shall never know. Anyway, I called them and after what seemed forever (45 min.) they called me back. Bring him into Elburn, they would see what could be done. I found a box, Jeff and I bundled him in and I sped off. I plowed into rush hour, hitting every light on Randall Road and trying not to swear like a sailor. It took another 45 minutes to get out there to Elburn. Worse and worse. This little guy was going down and I prayed and I prayed even more that he wouldn't die in the car. Dear God, not in rush hour, do not let this baby robin die in this car. The implications for what that could mean seemed too terrible (they still do).

I got him there still barely alive and the lady whisked him off, telling me he had a 50/50 chance. I gave them some money and went home with a terrible headache and a number to call tomorrow to see if he had made it.

(That was the action of the day; this is what the evening writing brought)

I guess the truth is that I didn’t let that baby bird die. He might be dead but I gave it my best shot and instead on dwelling that I lessened his chances for life by trusting someone at the Nature Center, I’m seeing I persisted and saw that he got to the right place in the end which was the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. I did take care of him and simply didn’t let him pass away back into the earth. And if he passes, he does. I prayed for him and his little soul and I feel that was good. Animals aren’t like us. It was terrible to see him starve and grow fainter and fainter but it wouldn’t have lasted very long and then he would have been gone- a very short life and short death. As it was, I gave him a possible retaliation of life to become a jaunty robin who does jaunty robin worm things. We’ll see tomorrow if he was able to hang onto being here. And instead of grinding myself into the dust that I didn’t question the Nature Center sooner when he was cheeping and hopping around and being friendly, I have the calm belief that I did aid him. I had to see that his parents wouldn’t come and they never did. I know now, of course, how to deal with a fledgling and how many hours they have from not being fed till when they start dying and where to take them in-between those small short hours. He has a little number and tomorrow I’ll call that forest preserve house in Elburn and see the status of his little number. I hope, of course, for life. I’m really hoping for life and I know that I worked towards it and not to death.

And now today, I just got the call back an hour ago from the Wildlife Center. He's doing just fine. Since he's wild and a baby animal, he could still die but he's hanging in there and it looks like he'll make it. They're going to be hand feeding him for awhile!

I just want to say how amazing the Wildlife Center is. That anyone would care about wild animals and tend to them is an enormous gift. I would encourage everyone to find your Wildlife Center and make a donation, be it food, money or weeds! Ours is entirely dependent on donations and seem to need a bit of everything. I'm sure it's the same with other places. They are incredible, hard-working places.

aestus

Estival. I have a draw towards words that begin with the letter "e". Who knows why but I count those words among my favorites. ephemeral. evanescent. efflorescence. to name a few and now today, I got a new one: estival. it means pertaining to summer; latin root, aestus, which means summer. and then there's estivate which means being in a torpor during summer. The summer word for winter's hibernation turned hot. I like it. I sometimes wonder if I took Jeff's last name precisely because it started with an "e". I think that's closer to the truth then anything else. That's what happens when you marry someone who has a kinship to poetry. They'll take your last name for the oddest reasons.

So here's to a summer full of sounds, full of plosives, liquid consonants and e's. Here's to a day full of estival breezes. 

And maybe this entry is more like Sesame Street and their commercials for letters. "The Letter E" is today's sponsor. 

for those who enjoy…

This surprised me. What a strange result! I think it's off the mark but oh well. Marianne has always been one of my favorite Austen heroines. Thank God the results weren't Emma! I would have to seriously rethink my frame of life.

Take the Quiz here!

the doll out of the house

Thanks to the discovery of a wonderful site by the name of DailyLit, I have come back to one of my earliest loves. Not novels but plays. My first play was one by Ibsen, the Dollhouse, I think. Sure, I was young but it didn't matter. The dialogue, the black comedy, the pacing set me on fire. I watched every moment of that play and lugged my Ibsen book around, reading Hedda Grabler as well. And then? And then? It was "Arsenic and Old Lace" by Joseph Kesselring. Later still, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." And then it was over because I was onto college for high school and then more college…well for…college. And no one read plays in Lit. classes except Shakespeare's, and Ibsen, plays, and Arsenic floated to the far back reaches of my mind. Till now.

Now! I've been getting small sections of "Pygmalion" by Shaw in my mailbox each morning. What a better way to start the day then wit and perfectly tuned dialogue? Nothing better.

Lists

So much got done last night and today that it’s hard to think how much got done. Sometimes I just blink at the sky and am amazed. I wonder how people do this every day and then I try to forget that and just enjoy what I can do.

Last night I 1. made dinner. It’s been weeks. The last dinner I made was a bean and tortilla casserole that did not live up to my expectations. I had eaten lentils for lunch and when I tried to eat bean tortilla casserole for dinner…it was hard to swallow. Too many beans in one day. The next day didn’t improve my feelings on it. Or the next. In the end, I gave most of it to the family on the farm. So this dinner was the one to overcome my despondency about cooking. I got Mark Bittman’s book “How to Cook Everything: Easy Weekend Cooking.” The book delivered. I made the “Best Scrambled Eggs” (I don’t like eggs but these were to die for), Blueberry Muffins and Home-Fried Potatoes. It was a scramble for everything to be done together at the same time and the potatoes were boiled too long but everything was still very edible and still very good. And today for lunch, I took those potatoes with a bit of olive oil and fried them up. Yummy with muffins.

Last night I 2. baked my first cake. This is a Tasha Tudor recipe called “Washington Pie.” It’s a really a layered cake with raspberry jam filling. Not just raspberry jam. Raspberry jam mixed with cherry brandy. That’s right. Oh, it turned out great and so pretty. I like baking rather then cooking. It’s restful with those breaks in between while the cake bakes and then cools. My next cake will be chocolate cake with white frosting- but I need a double boiler for that. I’ve been trying to think of a good excuse for making this chocolate cake. No one’s birthday around, no holidays (the double boiler is coming at the end of this month- pay day) so how about life? To life. L’chaim. The excuse for my raspberry cake was for life and for Jan coming by to visit today! Yay! We had a lovely time, talked about writing and I think she enjoyed the spiked cake!

Last night I 3. Finally worked on my fiction. Its been so long due to being sick and then being busy and getting caught up with cleaning. I didn’t write for too long since it was late but I sat down and did it. That’s the hardest part, getting started again after a break. Finally.

Today I…today was gardening. Today was hauling up sod, turning over clods, breaking them up and then mixing in mushroom compost. Ugh. This work means another day without going to the gym because who needs to? My back is a little sore from it all but nothing unbearable. I did that and then planted. I planted astillbe (Elisabeth Van Veen), I split up and planted the hostas Dad gave me. I planted the Japanese painted fern he gave me. I moved yet another delphinium over to the other delphiniums. I planted my herbs, my geranium, the nasturtium. I moved the lavenders over to the rose bed and the sage over where the herbs are. I dug big holes and put in Oriental lilies- Stargazer, Muscadet and a freebie that I got that I didn’t realize was a freebie …till I opened up the bag and realized…crap, which are Tom Pouce freebies and which are the Muscadet? No one knew then or now. They are buried in trenches in that square of the garden. I raked soil back into the beds, I raked the beds, I watered.

Then Jan came and we had a terrific chat, drank Stillwater Iced Tea and ate some cake. And now I am here, considering about taking pictures of cupolas but a little nervous that someone might run out and ask me why I’m taking pictures of their house. Maybe that’s for tomorrow in the morning when people are (mostly) at work.

Well, here’s the unlooked for bonus of Tom Pouce lilies. I hope you’re nice and work with the colors of the others. Cause if you ain't, its farm time for you!

No Hamlet here

I want to tell you all a story. I’m surrounded by Kleenexes, movies, blankets, drinks. There’s a cup of tea and a glass of water. I have a few books scattered around, an orange cat resting on the love sofa across and an old black and white film paused on the tv screen. It’s the perfect night for storytelling.
Tonight I went for my walk tonight as all usual. I stuffed a few Kleenexes down my pants’ pocket and threw on my bright red hoodie. It might be cold, it might not, it didn’t really matter. It is I who has the cold, inside and out.
I pace out the interlocking grids of our Westside neighborhood. If you go down far enough to the south, there’s an old stone mansion of Italian Revival Style. I get there sometimes, mostly not, it’s really only a place I peek at for a special treat. I like to visit it most during Christmas time when they put wreathes in all the windows and I can imagine what it was like then, when women wore long dresses and horses did pull sleigh bells. Sentimental, possibly but then again not. I was born too long after all these things to have any memory of them, my mother and father were grown up in the after World War eras, their own parents around for the tail end of one war and participators of the second.
I came around the corner of the far south, devoid of long skirts and a horse, in my pants stuffed with Kleenex and a red hoodie and I took a long look at the stone Italian house. The cupola on top stood up taller then any of the cupolas in the old farm towns I’m used to. You could set up a studio in there, a cold studio in the winter, a sweltering one in the summer. Could anyone breathe up there? The windows looked sealed tight.
Tight enough to drowned a scream? A boyfriend of a country town told me once, with a serious tone and serious face, that an old house in his neighborhood with a small cupola on top was the cell of an unhappy girl who died up there in her glass prison. Her screams could be heard at night, he told me. He heard them himself.
Of course, later I found out he was a pathological liar or maybe it was just being eighteen that annoyed him and he told stories to make it all better, but anyway, the story perked my interest and I take a look at all glass rooms perched on the top of houses. What could be put up there anyway? Besides dying girls. Plants? A desk and paper? A mattress? A bed? A girl? A boy? It was a girl for him, of course. He went to the Army and after awhile, I never heard from him again. So it was girls for him, that screamed. I didn’t hear any screams and I like lighted Christmas trees in the town house cupolas I saw. There’s one off Batavia Avenue just right up the block from me, to the north this time, and they’ve always done a tree up there and on one of their balconies too.
There are other single rooms too, like the single roomed cupolas, and people live in those. A few weeks ago, Jeff and I, in our search for a little house to rent, visited an address listed as a “house for rent.” It was just the first floor of a 1940’s house with decently sized rooms and a cement screened in porch. The house had a second floor. I tried the handle to the second floor and found it unmovable. “Oh,” the landlord countered, “that’s the second floor. You can’t open that door. The renter’s lived there for five years. He works for Nicor. I’ve never heard a complaint about him making any noise.” We went outside. I looked up at the second floor windows. They were covered and still. There was no car out front to speak of the man upstairs. We looked in the empty basement. Nothing of his there either. We went into the two story garage, its roof raising like a bird’s wing. Nothing marked him there either. The landlord commented that we would share the porch with the upstairs man, though he doubted the upstairs man ever used it, except to get to his stairs.
As we drove away, I took another look at this 1940’s second floor, a sort of sagging cupola with four windows on one side and four windows on the other. The front windows didn’t tell a word. There was a screen thrown out on the roof from one window, that was all. The Nicor man must then, with his balding self, crawl out onto the roof with a cigarette and watch for stars and wait for the sea-girl’s call. He wouldn’t measure time by coffee spoons but by constellations turning and the burning stubs of his cigarette butts. He wouldn’t join us in the cement porch shut up by screens. He would remove his own screen and watch the time, listening for the call, thinking about natural gas and bills and meters.
He grew so lazy, he left the screen out and no one noticed. Except for me, driving away from the falsely advertised house apartment, just another apartment. We wouldn’t be taking it. We couldn’t get a dog there, we would be back in just the same sort of thing, having a neighbor we had to be quiet for, I would tend a garden I would have to leave, decorate a house that we wouldn’t stay in. And in the summer, the woods it was surrounded in would drown out light and I would go mad in the small windowed house with the smeary wallpaper and the creaky floors and the bare new chandelier the landlord proudly showed us, complete with hook to hang it up higher. I would go mad and there are no sea-girl’s call or rooftops for me. Not at all.
Pulling out the advertisements today, there were no houses or even apartments for rent. It must be a slow week then. So slow that I took my walk far enough to get all the way to the old stone, Italian house. The windows are still sealed up there. I passed on and turned, my fist full of Kleenex.

(A few notes. First off, my head is stuffed and I might as well be underwater, sleeping. Take care of my verb tenses, I know not what I do with them. Second off, I beat Jeff because since we heard of the upstairs man behind the locked door, we’ve joked about locked up children and the such and we each thought how we could write about it. I won! Thirdly, not everyone who reads this blog has had the leisure time to get a bachelor of arts in literature. I cast some allusion to a poem by T.S. Eliot called “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". It’s worth reading and so beautifully fits my upstairs man. Anyways. Good night.)

The Book 100

It has come. The Book 100.

The Book 100 is Heather Sellers' brilliant idea of reading 100 books that are similiar to the book you would like to write. And you dissect them and put down your findings on a notecard, one for each book. You pick apart the greats and see what makes them tick. And the not so greats as well because those are fine teachers on what works and what sure as hell doesn't.

You start by writing down 100 books to read. I think I'm around the forty count- it isn't so easy. But that's no matter because you'll take things off and put things on. I don't think Sellers believes in reading tons of classics, mostly moderns. That's just too bad. Maybe I'm (once again) setting my bar way too high but there are so many older books I want to read, why not pick them apart and see what I can use for emulation?

I decided to kick off Book 100 with Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant. Lady Susan by Austen has joined in too. What do I have to say from my current dissection of Miss M.? That adjectives when piled three deep on any one noun leave little to the imagination. And also people interrupting other people's visits is as good a device as any to hurry the plot along. I wish I could say more. I'm sure there must be more, I just can't perceive it. The book was initially a magazine serial so that might have something to do with the lacking of "finds."

As for Lady Susan…there's no details about life only thrilling gossip and plot. I really enjoy reading great authors' early works because you see what they had to work hard on and how they managed to work around things they had little talent in. Lady Susan is a perfect illustration of this. It's a story written in correspondance form, a form that Austen doesn't shine in (as in later works) and while it was a popular narrative form in her day, she dropped it. Those are things that I, as a embryo writer, am currently wrestling with. Which narration form best suits me? How much detail is good detail? But that as Stephen King notes is something you figure out by writing tons.

The Book 100, I Salute You.

Eliza Calvert Hall

I found her. Sitting complacenty on a shabby shelf between two other old books, "Aunt Jane of Kentucky" I don't know why I picked up the book. Both Jeff and I were loaded down with books just checked out at the library circulation desk. We had to take one peek at the "used books for sale" bookcase. At least one look. And I grabbed "Aunt Jane" and flipped through the illustrated frontspiece and the date of the book. Hmmm..printed initially in 1898 with subsequant printings up till this one in 1907. The dates were right: it's one of my favorite eras and the old granny sitting in her rocking chair with a basket at her feet looked promising. So between granny being domestic, the book printed during the right time and the promise of Kentucky (where lots of my father's crazed and fueding relatives lived, a few generations out of Scotland), I was sold. Oh and it was a dollar.

I started reading it and laughed myself silly. It was awesome! The narration follows an old Aunt Jane telling a younger woman about her memories and the vibrant personalities she's known. The first account is about Sally Ann who, during a sermon where people go up and gives "testamonies", stands up and speaks out against the deacons and pastor being abusive, mean and tightfisted to their wives. It was a breathless, hilarious scene and I was in love.

I researched into the author and found out (drum roll) that she was a local colour writer. !!! If there's one thing I adore, it's local color authors. Hands down, every single one of them, I eat up. Sarah Orne Jewett is the best known one but they're all jewels and I always wish I knew more of them. They faded out as their era passed though they were generally very popular during their time. Eliza Calvert Hall was a suffragette and pushed for women's rights. Teddy Roosevelt endorsed her book saying, "…and I cordially recommend the first chapter of "Aunt Jane of Kentucky" for use as a tract in all families where the men folks tend to selfish or thoughtless or overbearing disregard of the rights of their womankind." Sadly, Eliza's children took most of her energy and "Aunt Jane" never turned into more books like she thought they might. Those children. But I am glad she wrote anything at all and I am so very glad to have this book. It's one worth reading.

skate skate

It never occurred to me when I got out on the ice that I would be taken completely off course. I would turn into a tiny ship, propelled by the wind. It happened quick and delighted me. Later on, it frightened me and I yelled at Steve, waving his camera in the air, heading rapidly for the snowy shore.
The wind does that people. As soon as I got out on the ice, it scurried me along. I didn’t skate, I just stood there and it surged me forward, pushing my legs and back and arms. I smoothly went forward and only turned when I wanted to. This kept up and could be difficult when you were turning or going against it. Only when I turned to the left, facing north that the south wind urged me forward. As if I was a horse and it was betting on me to do things right. Steve and I skated round and round, yelling at each other in speech, taking breaks for water and catching our breath. I hated turning left because sometimes I was shot forward and sometimes it was only a gentle breath and it didn‘t tell me before hand.
We skated over deep fissures of the ice and one, which met in a three way spider, took me out, grabbing at my toe pick. I lunged forward and fell on my right knee. It’s swollen now, resting under a pack of ice, ironically enough. I slid along, the ice turning into water as it touched my pants’ legs. I stood up and surveyed the country. I was okay. A mother pointed me out to her four year old son, “See, she fell and she’s okay. She didn’t cry.” Surely I was victor. I didn’t feel like crying but maybe it would have been nice to squeeze out a few drops and have a helpful hand pull me up. Whichever. I got up and skated slower, steering clear of the three pronged fissure and the playful south wind.
Turning left is always inevitable as Derek Zoolander taught us and I turned left gleefully as I took pictures of Steve goofing off on the slick ice. His camera was odd and I had a hard time knowing if the pictures were taking or not. He zoomed past me and I followed him like a sports photographer, busily clicking away, wondering if the camera was doing anything. I turned fatally to the north in my gleeful clicking and the wind surged forward. It grabbed me quick and I was soon out of control. To fall would have been grace but I couldn’t because I held his camera in my hand. I yelled to Steve, shrieking with laughter but alarmed. How fast could it take me? Playful forces of nature tend to go overboard as a general rule. I was going faster and faster. I shrieked. “Aim for the snow!” he shouted. Smart kid. I plowed right into it and fell down easily, holding the camera aloft.
I can’t deny that my interest in skating waned as the wind grew fiercer. The ice shimmered into wetness and it was growing only a little too tiring to skate. I was up for the call and crunched off along the bank as Steve did a few more loops, challenging the wind. I sat on the dock and untied my skates. I was done for the day and the red flag, that warned the skaters off the ice, was being raised up on the flagpole. Definitely time to go home.

Winter and Spring

This winter, I’ve been thinking about curling up in the snow. It’s been a terrific season for snow and I think now as I look out of doors, I can see a good heaping five to seven inches of it. The garden is in a lull under it. Snow is soporific for the plants. They stay quiet and idle and dream about the time when they open their flowers, continue on with their lives.
    I’ve been wondering what it must be like to crawl under the snow and be a woman under the snow. Would my eyelashes turn to black ice? And then the irises of my eyes turn to blue ice? What would someone think if I rose out of the snow, the cracking of frozen ice accompanying as I stood up? Would they think I was dead and now alive? Or would they think I was the Mistress to Jack Frost and they knew he had a woman all along.
    I think I would be a bit spooky if I laid under the snow and then came up, breathing foggy air. I think I would like to catch the glimmer of the sun now and again, see a warm human face. I would take a walk, fold my arms together, click my tongue. I would go down Lincoln Ave and then cross McKee and then Wilson. I would walk to my favorite street and head down under the crabapple trees, barren and still. There’s no destination on my favorite street. I just like the situation of a few of the houses and the three crabapple trees so close that their branches intertwine. In the summer, they’re all different colors, rose, mauve and white. I have truly fallen in love with those trees and dream about them all the time. Someday too, I might have three crabapples, so close, their fingers intersect. I would put them in a tight row and they would be three odd ducks together, all different colors in the springtime.
    Springtime…that word would wake me out of the cold and dust. I would rise up, and a woman would gasp and a car would drive off the road but I would rise up and head down the sidewalk, to the house that has a thousand bluebells in their yard in the springtime. I would head down to those crab trees and stand for awhile, first on one leg and then the other, looking up. The trees would look down at me and then I would be forced to climb the middle one, high as I could. I would sniff the wind and even in all the frost and cold, I would catch the merest thread of spring. Then I would kiss a budding branch and head back down. I’d cruise back down that sidewalk, taking care to keep my arms close to my chest. I’d breath easy and then fall back into the yard, rolling, burying into the snow. Like a mole. My breathing would grow slower and slower till it barely was.
The trees pop like magic in the spring. They could really, raise anyone out of the slumber of cold and death.