disconsolate, inconsolable, unconsoled and unsolaced aren't all the same, are they? i said in therapy that i was feeling disconsolate but by way of availing myself of consolation by way of grace, but i didn't look up any of the words. gretel erlich's book is unsolaced, and kazuo ishiguro's book is the unconsoled. gretel erlich comes with money from money but that's not to say she doesn't feel unsolaced—she does, at least in book form. she first wrote the solace of open spaces. now latterly she's unsolaced, she's seen destructive change, though she still has her spaces in hawaii like obama, and montana. i'm not looking anything up today i'd like to think i'll get along on instinct. it just occurred to me to ask gretel erlich what she may think about obama land-grabbing the park. i try to equitable, at least in my mind, but that makes me angry, as i think it should make us all, and yet i know some destruction to progress is always due and to everything there is a season nonetheless i feel the injustice and if not inconsolable a little disconsolate and wanting more than a promise of consolation after the looming tower of fact. 

nb, i didn't read the unconsoled. it wasn't like never let me go and i know it's not right to compare books yet i do and i'm hoping on clara and the sun and i wonder if perchance it's a bookend with the unconsoled like unsolaced is for solace. oh dog, i'm getting too tired for sense. maybe more pictures, maybe to rest.

      backup your train, mister d. keep it moving.

the midway sledding hill before and after obama. just after i tagged this photo, which is today, i got an email from extinction rebellion chicago, and it mentions the effort to stop the pipeline and social justice and the climate crisis and lightfoot hiring a director of sustainability and listening initiative toward developing a climate plan for the city. i wrote back asking if extinction rebellion chicago had a directive on the obama fundation's land grab in jackson park. i'll let you know and you know i'm not holding my breath for sustainability, but i know the fundation is not the ally of public parks nor sustaining a precious little spot for nature to migrate nor allowing neighboring people to live and remain in place.

 

how would i know if i was midlife on the journey? how would one know, unless it's always midlife and one is always and unless i am a portal? how would i know?
 

i'm enjoying rooting around in the past and not feeling buried alive in my own rabbit hole. thanks to r. for providing drive and storage apparatus for memory up until the moment and prospective beyond, speaking provisionally naturally. i love seeing mister now and then and not crying, a little wistful, yeah, but smiling. and thanks to harry o. no joke for saying to me why don't you get yourself a weblog, so i can get my work done? whereupon i laughed what's a weblog?

i lose some pictures in time and some in memory. there are things lost in there still. some things transfer to others. some pictures i have function as portals to other lost ones. i can see more than what's before me—in front of me—but it's important to see what is before me. there is a there there that is also now here.

 i don't remember everything in chronology. one of my web diaries is gone. i do remember some images that were lost. funny thing, it's ok. it's ok that my old apartment looks like a homeless camp within walls. i can go there and leave and go back there and simplify the place. it could be a relief to lose it like the old diary but i'm able to sort it out and lighten the load in the process of moving on. one day i may say look it's empty, the windows are fixed and i can move on leaving it better than when i came.

wintering i'm going back. i can't get back farther than 2013. i wanted to see the 21 inch snowfall of 2011 with me and mister walking down the middle of the street with a parade of people and dogs, mister rearing and snarling. or mister floating on an iceberg, or me and mister walking half a mile onto the ice with great sheets canted up above our heads, when the emergency divers came with flashing lights. but the old blog was deleted and i have no backup but my own provisional memory.

whatever happens happens if it happens what will happen to us i wonder is what happens inevitable by virtue of it's happening and if it is not of our doing and not within the realm of our control are we done to are we inevitable has it already happened while we still happen to be here in the wintering waiting for something we could not predict to happen?

little bear is ill still. eating little and throwing up. i hope nothing's  stuck inside. the neighbor gave her cat food which she gobbled but will not help, oy. we left a can of pumpkin for her at the front desk. i say a little prayer for little bear.

 r. and j. in yoga class.

three pans from afternoon to dusk to night. i love to watch the sledders from up here and the light fade and the city lights come up. the snow makes it look lovely, and so it is. i'll try to rise early and go out there to see from the ground. the city seems quieter and peaceful in the snow. even the sirens sound more mellow.

 

the country left the people to themselves.

 i'm invisible to them, they are only visible to me.

snow angel.

 

comet by mary.

 oh my sweet honey boy comet.

 

 

we may rift through years in which we feel like a negative presence 

in the world, but we are capable of coming back again. 

we can return not only restored but capable 

of bringing more than we brought before: greater wisdom, 

more compassion, an increased capacity to reach deep into our roots 

and know that we will find water.
 

  

 

katherine may 

wintering

we're wintering with cats, wintering with books, winter-withdrawing from the world, not-waiting, lambent with liminal thoughts of spring, with knitting, in snow, leaning with trees, the sparkling pause in the back of your mind, sad in peace, resting beside small fires in the periphery, learning the living dream of contact, surviving in the wild sleep of wintering.

i was just going along day to day in my studio with no hot water and windows falling out and the ceiling crumbling in the entryway. day to day in an untenable studio apartment through winter and summer just getting the dogs and crashing on the couch bed while the wind and time continued prying the windowpanes out. i admit i'm not there anymore, i'm done with that, and when i step in i step back. now the plastic patch i put weathered out and there's a hole where the wind comes in. at least it didn't smell like sewer gas. something must be done though and soon. the time is now, mister. the owner wants nothing to do with it, but has to do the windows—falling panes could cut someone's head off. and i have to clear the space and figure out what to save—my art! if i can save that stuff, and i'm not sure where or why, i could be shut of the place tomorrow. it was provisional, now it's dispossessed, people, including me, gotta move.

penny was off yesterday evening, fur scruffy, no appetite. been playing like crazy with her new mylar ball, pieces falling off, hope she didn't eat any. 

bear was off the kibble too, though ate half a can of wet food. i urged pumpkin for intestinal fortitude.

i looked back at that nytimes corona report  claiming cases dropped 35%. i thought i may have misread. nope, and the update said 33%. yet the death rate is at a daily zenith. we really truly honestly don't know what is true at all anymore but what is in our hearts if that. 

burnout is a symptom of a system—

burnout is not a problem we can individually solve. it is a symptom of a world set up to exhaust us to the point where we cannot resist.

sara jaffe, winter 2021, dissent

they think they're smart, the corporate players, playing world populations into chaos—but it's an empire of stupidity. 

stupidity is in love with itself and its self-love is boundless. 

mirolslav krleža

stupidity is weaponized. stupidity is normalized. stupidity is a constant capital capitol decapitating coup. 

good morning kids, we gotta get my extra bike out of mister's basement storage and take it to my studio storage. it smells in there and i have to escape quickly. in the spring i can air it out. i can't believe i lived in there and got used to the sewer gas. either it got worse or i had been steeped in it so long i no longer noticed. i can get stupid. death can creep up on us suddenly. 

good morning mister, dog of my heart, i can't help imagining going to your house—and you being there.

 

the last two nights the wolf full moon woke me up and called me out to take pictures, just like the dogs do by day. but the moon tired me out. but doggone it i'm usually tired by afternoon and i want to blog with a blank mind, blank and feeling the wish to review the day, but the days have a way of slipping away, and then it's dusk and i look out at the horizon glowing peach and fuzzy and waiting for moonrise and madre the movie. 

i might get to walk al sometime. i love that boy like bear.

it's a joy to see al and bear play so harmonious and loving. it's like watching a story from inside the story where you feel at home and breathe from the belly and know the characters soul vividly involved as a witness can be.

and charlie's back from hoosierville! she did the pogo when she saw me in the international house dog yard. still too little to come inside.
 

i'm soul glad and relieved my little honey bear's back beta.
 

           if not now—when?
 

 little bear seems to be better this morning. we'll see in a half hour.

last night the wolf moon woke me.

i can't believe i called fran liebowitz a light of earth. well i can, it's disappointing of course, and embarrassing, but not surprising—after all you're just human. you can say it was only for pretend.

crazy humans—why would they want to clone dogs? unless the clones were made fully programmable, maybe as experimental pretext to cloning readily programmable humans, a lot easier than propaganda and the steady normalizing maintenance of existential fear.

i was going to mention in the clerk—i'm not sure exactly when it takes place, but the humans are in even greater chaos than today, and all the dogs are clones. i guess the humans are still human, but they could easily be clones, and the society is all disintegration and drones. 

then i get a link to an article about dogs and humans coming together to turtle island 23,000 years ago from siberia—the first wave of immigrants via land bridge. so before turtle island was turtle island? it's no wonder we feel such a profound affinity with immigrants, the indigenous, and dogs.

i know the wackos say it but i hafta wonder too when will there be human clones on the market and will we know will we be told will they be running the corporations and the government, will they be piloting the drones before we know what hit us. will we be us by then? are we now? it sounds wacko i know. but when you look at the likes of these people killing for control they don't seem human at all. it's not just the wackos anyway, i read never let me go—as blood curdling and tragic as the headlines in the real news.

whatever this is it isn't democracy. maybe i'll call it demonocracy. government of the demons for the demons by the demons. confound you for fruitlessly seeking reason. there's a certain inevitability to the market economy. you can say it til you're blue in the face and you can't breathe no more—you can't take it to the grave! i just wonder what if jonas salk made the corona vaccine in this day and age, would he even be able to say are you gonna patent the sun? would his corporate masters say, jonas, jonas, don't be so naive—of course you can—you can patent anything we say you can.