I feel at loose ends. No trips planned. No projects underway. The novel stalled in its tracks - if it was ever on the tracks to begin with. The journal is the only project I'm keeping up at all lately.
Wait a minute, I did do writing practice today for over an hour and finally got into it the way I was when I first went to Natalie's seminar. It actually felt good. Philosophy Larry interrupted me at one point, but I got right back into it after finding out there is still a philosophy department at least this semester. So it's not a total loss of a day.
A pile of new catalogs came in the mail today. Eximious is the oddest one - full of tiny Limoges boxes shaped like derby hats and wellingtons and other everyday objects of British life. The best thing in it was watch cufflinks. If I wore shirts that needed cufflinks, I could see a use for those. How do you keep both of them synchronized? Or do you set one to Greenwich Mean Time and one to Eastern Daylight Time? Or Tokyo time? Or Vladivostok time? I wonder how many of those watch cufflinks they sell. Another catalog had toys that I didn't know existed. Who knew you could buy a can of plastic nudibranchs with a field guide and a magnifying class to help you identify them? Nudibranchs are cool but I didn't know kids from 5-8 even knew what they were let alone had a desire to learn to identify them. I've sometimes seen them on the bottom or on rocks when I've been snorkeling and wanted to know their names, so maybe the idea is you study the plastic ones before you go snorkeling. The Levenger catalog has a bunch of new stuff this issue but it seems like they are catering more and more to pen fanciers and less to their claimed audience "tools for the serious reader". If I had as many fountain pens as they show in their pen holders I'd never write a word. It would take me too long to choose a pen! When do these pen people have time to read?
Yesterday after our walk, Priscilla asked Joan and me to go to the hardware store to buy 5 lb. bags of birdseed that were on sale one per customer. She handed each of us a coupon and a dollar bill and sent us on ahead. The birdseed was an incredible 64 cents for the 5 lb. bag. Joan ran into a neighbor who needed to ask 10,000 questions about birdseed and had trouble escaping. We rendezvoused in the parking lot and handed the booty over to Priscilla. It felt slightly illicit. A kind of feeling of getting away with something.
The other day I saw a kestrel land on the power line outside my window. I thought it had a mouse in its beak. It turned out to be a finch. The finch escaped. The kestrel went after it and grabbed it with its talons but the finch got away again. I don't know the final outcome of the chase because they went over the roof of the building where I couldn't see them anymore. While all this was going on huge flocks of starlings like something out of a Hitchcock movie were swooping in great circles around the parking lot - two separate flocks taking turns roosting in the tree and then swooping. A flock of migrating Canada geese flew by honking like crazy and a few crows joined in the cacophany. Then it all quieted down at once.
I wrote all about this in Claris Home Page and then deleted the file by mistake. So I feel like I'm writing the same journal entry over and over again.