Those That Need Care and Those Who Delight in Everyday Ramblings

So here is one of the espaliered trees in natural light from last week. Other than straightening the shot slightly I didn’t adjust it in any way. I’d much rather go back and shoot again than manipulate the images. For me it is about sharing how I am interpreting what I am seeing as transparently as possible.

This is something I am thinking about with poems too. I finished the one I was working on about the Autumn Equinox, at least a first draft, and last week I read it to my Open Practice group without telling them I wrote it. Their response was that they thought it perfect for the day.

What is funny to me is that many images in the poem are taken directly from recent walks with Mrs. Sherlock, including picking figs off a tree we were walking by and biting into them. She didn’t have a clue I had written the poem, she just thought hearing it was a good way to start her day.

This made me think about the differences in the way she and I experience the world. She wants more experience, always more, ongoing. It feeds her, nourishes her, the out and about being-ness. I am not that way at all. Experiences can be overwhelming to me, and I am watching and looking and thinking and absorbing what I experience. The way we process is not the same at all.

And yet we often enjoy the same things. At the same time. She would have loved the goats.

Yes, the goats. I was walking alone to the grocery on the parkway Friday, a lovely fall morning, with a mask on, which meant I was holding my glasses in my hand. I saw ahead a woman with two or three of the most unusual dogs.

They kept stopping and starting and she seemed to be having just a little bit of a problem wrangling them. When I got closer, I could see they were all these beautiful shades of brown, black, and white and seemed large for dogs. I almost burst out laughing as I realized that they were not dogs, she was walking what I think are three Nigerian Pygmy Goats on harnesses and leashes and they were clearly a bit much for her.

They were more likely to school like fish if there was a dessert like morsel off the path than trot along like well trained dogs. It seemed intruding to take a picture, but now I kind of wish I had. They were, are, adorable.

Around here goats are being brought in as a fire protection modality.

Since the pandemic started and people lost their jobs, or downsized or moved back in with parents, the management company that has been running the complex I live in made some changes. They started letting in dogs. Every building (7 units each) now has dogs. We have three units in my building with dogs. We were cats (and birds) only before that.

Then when they still couldn’t fill the empty units, they made them available to one of our local non-profits to house previously homeless or mentally ill people who had been screened and deemed capable of living on their own. On Friday afternoon Charity went out to go somewhere and smelled smoke. She saw that it was coming from the apartment below hers on the ground floor.

The woman that lived there had a few windows open and Charity could see her and the smoke coming from the kitchen. The woman was sitting on her couch looking at her phone and would not come to the door. She yelled at Charity that she was fine; she couldn’t smell smoke. Charity called the fire department.

They are close and got here right away, and the tenant opened the door to them. She had started some eggs on her stove and forgotten about them. There was a fire. Charity was major traumatized by the apartment wrecking fire started in the apartment next to her accidentally by Christmas tree lights late last December.

It seems this woman has been repeatedly doing things that indicate that she is in critical need of care. It is so sad. I haven’t seen much of it because my place is basically around the corner though I did notice when I went to get the mail that she was odd.

We have another of these rentals on the other side where the woman screams at intervals, and it affects everyone in her building that can hear her. That woman leaves trash and stuff out front attracting wildlife.

Charity and I still aren’t talking but she did include me in a group email about all this and I saw her outside talking seriously with another neighbor.

We need to take care of people who are a danger to themselves and others. I know the screaming woman was over the moon to have a clean nice place for her cat and her. How do we do this in a safe sane way for all concerned?

As I ponder this I will continue to delight in the four house sparrows taking a bath together in the birdbath out in the patio well and the fact that today I can rest and contemplate making carrot cake cookies for the very first time.

Last updated October 03, 2021