Accepting Absence in Everyday Ramblings

This is my kitchen window this morning, this bleak and dreary morning.

If you look carefully you will see a tree stump, a fresh tree stump close to the ground on the left. I came home on Thursday from the office and the tree was gone. I don’t know why. I had noticed that there was a green plastic ribbon tied around the trunk about two weeks ago and wondered about that but had no idea that was the ribbon of death by chainsaw.

That tree provided both some coverage and camouflage for the side of my place and I think I need to be a little more careful about privacy and security in the future in the encroaching incivility.

Yesterday morning Mrs. Sherlock, Frida and me went for a modest walk in the river fog. She loved loved Japan. Both her and my other student who were there recently said it was so lovely to be somewhere where it appeared that people actually cared about each other and respected the challenges of the kinds of population density we are experiencing here.

Here, we apparently ignore this density except for complaining about the traffic.

How can living in a tent on the strip of public land where you have to break through a fence to access be okay? How can sleeping on the ground wrapped in a patchwork of blankets and surrounded by trash be okay? Sigh.

I think I am going to carefully start taking pictures of both the trash and these encampments. Do people who live outside of the center of the city even know they are there? It is wet it is cold it is…

Have I mentioned lately how incredibly grateful I am for the privileges I do have? Hot running water! My own bathroom fully stocked, a kitchen full of tempting food. (I just had to eat some tuna fish in the bedroom with the door closed so I didn’t have to fend off neurotic well fed cats).

A warm soft place to sleep. All sorts of things to read and watch and learn. The ability to write and post fragments instead of complete sentences. :)

I am going to go to church today. I have been live streaming the services the last few weeks but today I am going in person. They made a few subtle changes to the order of service this year and that includes singing a fourth hymn, a gathering hymn and then this greet your neighbor interlude that is basic torture for an introvert like me.

While I do sing around the house when I am happy and alone I am not a fan of my signing in public. Oh no.

But still as I was telling Mrs. Sherlock yesterday if I don’t go to church today I most likely won’t talk to anyone I know. All day.

And I am actually going to go to Powell’s for my 2018 Sierra Club Engagement calendar, which I buy for the photos even though having a paper desk calendar is a bit anachronistic.

Powell’s of course reminds me of Mr. Finch. I need to build new memories there of this time and place.

I generally just need to get out more period.

I am taking a three-day workshop on pain management and yoga in a few weeks. I bet by the time I get through that (sitting on a cold cement slab floor barely covered by linoleum for the duration) I will be thrilled to be nesting at home alone not talking looking out the window and being startled by the absence of a particular sheltering tree.

Last updated November 19, 2017