… 1 cocktail last night, the dishes got done, good sleep was had, no ill effects in the morning… i wanted a second but never got around to it and then was past the moment of want…

… blowfish for dinner… not the Japanese poisonous variety, but the local non poisonous kind… not often available… the fish that most tastes like chicken to me… dusted it in flour and fried in a cast iron pan… served with a salad of bitter greens which i don’t think was the best accompaniment…

… got lots done yesterday… reading and writing first thing… photo walk with some good images made… breakfast of Scottish oatmeal (we particularly like Scottish oatmeal, cooks up quickly and tastes better than most)… farmers market… family meeting on Zoom… then errands in the car, cat food, dog treats, Kombucha, pears… bed linen laundering… watched Corpse Bride (Tim Burton) and then Edward Scissor Hands (also Tim Burton)… made dinner as noted above… made the bed when the linens were done…

… the sounds of a steady moderate rain out my window… the weather app tells me there will be rain all day tomorrow… two inches of it… i remember seeing news of a giant storm moving in on the Pacific coast… center zeroing in on Seattle, or so it seemed from the radar pictures on the news… that storm has not had time to reach the west coast, let alone us… this is something else…

… ran into M at the market… told them we bought the candlesticks they designed at Hudson Beach Glass… they said they had heard and that they were discontinuing them because they are hard to make… i thought that was a shame and said so but then postulated that this would increase their value over time… why is it important what things are worth over time?… M was also on a mission to discuss their garlic growing issues with the venders at the farmer’s market…

… i continue to like the new direction i am heading with the photography… not sure where i will land with it, but generally like the pictures i am posting to Micro.blog and M.b as a platform for posting… it gets very little attention there, but they are not evil like FB, Twitter and Instagram, which is owned by and might as well be FB… i am intrigued by the idea of making and posting without caring whether anyone looks or not… it’s freeing… though, honestly, i still care a little… patience grasshopper, you will be free one day…

… cool and wet this morning… cloudless sky… car down the street ignites and hums towards warm, driver rolling windows down and up to clear the dew…

… cleaning woman unloading equipment and supplies to the front steps of the Telephone Building… i wish her good morning… “Good morning sir,” she replies… her music drifts out the rear end of her car…

… birds twittering…

… part of Main Street improvements are new two posted directional signs… the extra post feels unnecessary and unattractive…

… i have made my way down to the falls… the cold is reaching in through my extremities… hands tingling and slightly cumbersome…

… no word on chickens…

… waiting for the warmth of the sun… was i out extra early or is it arriving late?…

… just wrote to E and apologized for forgetting the chickens… offered to make up any loses… feel bad… i let E, B and the chickens down… what do we have in life that is meaningful beyond caring for one another and living things in general?… entropy working its wickedness… it claims us all eventually…

… there is mention of an article on Gerard (Manley) Hopkins… DW apparently admires him as a genius and is disappointed in the article for making him seem ordinary… i have no idea who this is so I look him up… an English poet and Jesuit Priest who became widely recognized, posthumously, for his poetry… he was an innovator who influenced the work of T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis… i read about sprung rhythm… it does not make complete sense to me…

… Hopkins was becoming a recognized poet at the time DW was writing his journals… one wonders if he knew of him before his popularization or as a result of that… it makes a difference to his assessment of Hopkins… did he recognize him as a genius on his own?… or was he being told he was a genius?…

… a link to the poetry of Hopkins…

… oh my, DW has such a huge opinion of himself…

This is a terribly muddled state to be in. It shows that I can never be true friends with anyone except distant women — far away. For I wish for communion with the inarticulate and can only fray and fritter with the quick. I would tinsel, tinsel all the day if I were so placed. Yet I love myself and my company so much that I would not even ask the soldier to come in for fear of his becoming a regular visitor. I even feel people pollute my house who come into it.¹

… not much progress this AM… a little distracted…

… this morning, minutes after waking up, i remember that i forgot the chickens last night… what is it about habitual practices that sail along successfully for months and then boom, you forget?… i almost never forget the chickens, but then, i hit a day that has me otherwise engaged in a concentrated way at the time for chicken care, and i forget… i am hoping that E noticed and put them to bed… if not, then they were exposed to predation all night… sigh… i let the chickens down… i let E and B down… they will forgive me, they have before… still, i am upset with myself… not as much as the first time it happened, but enough to color the day in an unhappy way… i just hope E saw it and if he didn’t, they all made it through the night…

… apart from forgetting the chickens it was a good day yesterday… spent puttering around the house getting things done… cooking breakfast, harvesting herbs, plucking off all the leaves and putting them in the drying rack… we will have a lot of sage, thyme and oregano for the winter… more than we will use, maybe i can give some of it away…

… also did the laundry, all folded and put away… it was the folding and putting away of the laundry that occupied my thoughts when i should have been tending to the chickens…

… i made us a nice dinner, celery risotto with mutton-merguez¹ sausages… a nice wine to go with it…

… then i read more of The Haunting of Hill House out loud to H… we are making good progress… by the time i am done it was time for bed… how is it i don’t think about the chickens once?…

… Main Street was nuts yesterday… lots of weekend escapers… we’ve become a destination town for weekenders looking for something to do… i complained to M in the wine shop, noticing how empty their store was and wondering how it was escaping the hordes… they said large groups will come in intermittently… the reason i complain about the weekenders is COVID… i don’t like being in a sea of random humanity during the pandemic… may never view that sea the same again because of the pandemic… i suppose i should just get used to wearing a mask on the street as well as in the store…

… we humans love to put things together into an ordered whole… then it’s the maintenance of that whole that brings us to our knees from time to time… too much to do to keep it together unless we hire others to do the keeping of it together…

… i like the work of maintaining the house and our lives, but there is an endless list of things that need doing… longer than i will ever get to… we do the most important things on the list and let the universe do what it will with the things that don’t make it to the top… of course, when the universe does what it does, which is usually an entropic deterioration of what has been put together, things move to become priorities that were not before…

… today we have an apology to deliver to E and B, a morning walk, breakfast, the farmer’s market, family zoom meeting, vacuuming, moping the kitchen, washing bed linens, perhaps some clean up in the garden… i would like to get better at keeping the garden neat and tidy…

… cold, cloudy… i am walking along thinking about restricting myself to iPhone and apps for a while… not using Lightroom for a while as my perspective continues to change on what i am doing, where i am going…

… for the longest time now, Brain Pickings has been a weekly part of my life, one of my principle sources of new reading that uplifts and informs and presents a both spiritual and rational way forward in life… it is, in some ways, a model for my Notes On Attention Paid blog…

… this morning i discovered Maria Popova has renamed it to The Marginalian… hmmm… the implication that her offerings are and have always been about the interstices and in-betweens of important thinking and feeling… finding what isn’t popular culture, but lasting and informative culture…

… i am not sure about the new name, it seems slightly pretentious to me while being a little too uncertain about it’s usefulness… i am absolutely sure about Maria Popova’s beautiful and inspiring offerings… so, i will go forward with her and maybe the name will grow on me and feel right… it’s her journey, not mine… i am just along for the ride…

… H’s bday a success, including gift i was worried about but had gambled on because i thought she would love it… and she did…

… my wireless keyboard is suddenly having sticky keys… a while back i spilled coffee on it and keys got sticky so i couldn’t use it… then i tried it and it was a lot better… now sticky again… the cold weather?…

… we drove to a really nice farm stand yesterday… would love to see it in full season… came back with a bunch of goodies… including really fresh ginger, garlic, some pasta, some mutton merguez sausage…

… HCR meter pointing up… largely about the epic battle Liz Cheney is waging on the crazies that have taken over the Republican party… apparently she is doing quite well with fundraising and the January 6th committee, which she co-chairs, is increasingly implicating 45 as having been intimately involved in the insurrection… of course, there are a bunch of people who haven’t lost their souls to the batshit crazy and always thought he was responsible…

… started reading the Haunting of Hill House to H last night… the goal is to try to finish by Halloween… not sure we will make it… more than 20 pages a night… if i forgo the alcohol, we might…

… i check the weather, need to harvest whatever herbs i will harvest today… rain and cold coming…

… i have all this camera equipment laying around… good equipment… equipment that has served me well… at the moment, just laying around… since the iPhone camera has started to deliver RAW format images of very high quality, it is my go to camera for everyday work, and i “work” every day…

… i am searching for a new voice, a different voice, with it… something suited to my concept of notes on attention paid… that is, when i am out and about, what do i notice?… what do i want to make pictures of?… it’s a journaling process and as such, i strive to make it part of my journaling effort… this effort…

… one of my great interests, women and photography… women as subject(object?), women as photographers, women as critics of photography, women as curators of photography, and on and on…

… this article in AnOther is a long list of women who have made important photobooks… well worth a gander if at all interested in photography and women photographers who have blazed trails…

… H’s birthday today… spent first hour of the morning wrapping presents and writing a card…

… my Amex card was rejected at a store yesterday… no reason for that as it is up to date and there is no spending limit… looked at the account this AM and there was nothing suggesting the reason for the rejection…

… alcohol last night… the end of the day got a bit tense and frustrating, the Amex rejection… cash flow tightness at a moment when i want to be generous… H in one of their self flagellating moods… how easily i run to the bottle at the end of the day if it’s been at all a tense one…

… today is a new day and we will have fun one way or another…

… slept through the night… woke up about 3:45, almost 7 hours sleep…

… i seem to be distracted this morning… time to move on…

… beautiful, near cloudless day… waning gibbous moon… light human activity… drumming circle starting to form… birds twittering… excitement over the sighting of an eagle… a man asks those closer if there is an eagle in the tree… yes!, the reply… he calls out to “Roger” across the way to tell him about the eagle… the man shuffles by on his way to get a closer look… i comment on “the eagle tree”… he tells me he used to bring his mom every day… i conclude his mother has passed or moved away or is otherwise not able to be brought to the waterfront anymore… i am touched by the humanity of the moment… the sound of drumming… the feeling of a sacred ritual… as i walk away, the sound of an eagle calling…

… what an interesting article in the Bulwark this is… Shirley Jackson… i feel i know this name, but not as an author of fiction, but for another area of accomplishment… a search on the www turns up Shirley Ann Jackson, an African American, a woman, a renowned Physicist… hmmm, not what i was thinking, but an interesting find…

… back to the Shirley Jackson of the Bulwark article… it is a curious article for the Bulwark, which is usually centered on current news and politics, but makes sense if you think of Halloween as news… after reading the article, i also think it might be a sidewise reference to current political times… James Harris, one of Jackson’s curious characters, is described as a sinister presence that can turn a person to their dark side with the most minimal of interactions, say, talking to them over the phone… shades of 45?…

… i will find out if H has read any of her books… i might undertake to read Jackson’s writings out loud to them as a b’day preset?…

… when i search for The Haunting of Hill House, the book, i also turn up the Netflix series which i feel certain we have watched… i look it up and become convinced we have not, or at least, i have not…

… i also discover that there is a movie made in 1963 that is considered by some to be a brilliant interpretation of the novel…

… H’s birthday week is coming together!…

… read the the jacket flaps… read a wikipedia article discussing the varying editions… i have the 1984 edition which is expanded but noted as having several misprints and misreadings…

… as i turn to the introduction by Michael De-la-noy, i take note of the small type and the length of the book, 371 pages… this will take some time…

… astoundingly, i learn he could not read until the age of 9, but traveled far and wide with his mother… his family was well off…

He was, as Edith Sitwell never tired of telling him, a born writer, and everything he wrote was written after he was condemned to death.¹

… just finished De-la-noy’s introduction… i am certain i will enjoy the journals…

… lots swimming around in my brain this morning… watched Derek Jarman’s The Garden last night… Senate Republicans blocked discussion on a pared down voting rights bill authored by Manchin who had claimed he could get ten Republicans to back it… that, since learning how to season and care for my cast iron pans, they have become my most used and loved pans in the kitchen… how well my Jelly Comb vertical mouse works and how all neck and shoulder pain in my mousing arm side has disappeared… that i will start the journals of Denton Welch this morning… that i had no alcohol last night and feel better this morning, though not as wonderful as the day on Block Island when i had no alcohol and drank sumac-aide, i was euphoric on that day, so i wonder, is sumac a tonic?…

… so, back to the top, The Garden, a strange and wonderful film… about repression of gays, especially by the church… about relentlessly invasive modern society… about capitalism’s relentless presence… the imagery, oh the imagery, so inspiring… so damn good… i had only an inkling of what the movie would be like from Modern Nature… knew that Tilda Swinton was in it… didn’t realize that Jarman himself appears in numerous places… the film concocted as a set of dreams… the landscapes of Dungeness spectacularly bleak and desert like, and in the shadow of a nuclear power plant… did he buy the cottage because it would make a fantastic filming location?…

… as for voting rights… ahhh the filibuster, whither the filibuster?… we are up against a wall, the moment when the country decides whether it is white, male patriarchal, or a multiarchy?… the numbers are on the side of the multiarchy, the power balance presently skewed in favor of patriarchy… what will be the outcome?… disaster, from my point of view, if the filibuster is not amended for arguably the most important historical moment of my longish life…

… cast iron pans, what a difference proper seasoning and maintenance makes!… i had always tried to take good care of them, but i finally learned how… past the basic seasoning routine (a thin application of grape seed oil, one hour in a 500 degree oven, repeat several times), learning to rinse with hot water, even soak briefly, has been transformative… then drying, heating up and application of a thin coat of oil before storing… that’s it… my pans are mostly non-stick and when they do stick, cleanup is easy… long live cast iron pans!… and they do, properly cared for…

… another piece of equipment that is working well is my Jelly Comb vertical mouse… i have been through so many input devices… this is the one that works and i love it!…

… the journals of Denton Welch… read the short bio on the cover flaps… somewhat sad but amazing figure… a bad accident when he was 20 partially paralyzed him and left him in continuous until his death 13 years later… reputedly a prolific and brilliant writer… he trended homosexual…

… about no alcohol… always feel better the next day… when will i be able to profit from that knowledge?…

… must see if i can buy sumac commercially… and i can… powdered for use in cooking, as tea, loose or in bags… the latter is expensive… i am going to check the health food stores for the tea, will order the ground version from Spice House…

… the horn of a freight train in the distance… Fiona exhales a deep breath while sleeping on the bed near by…

… train horn blasting in the distance… very insistent… beautiful colors in the sky…

… i pass by Lucky Thirty One clothing and marvel at the really bad purse choices of their mannequins…

… thinking about my cast iron pans this morning… i’ve gone from using them occasionally to using them all the time… they are fully seasoned, mostly non stick, have not required abrasive scrubbing in a long time, clean up easily… i have one more non stick pan to try to replace…

… a couple of crow/ravens arguing in mid air…

… insistent emergency sirens in the distance…

… i finished reading Modern Nature this morning and turned to my news feeds… after scanning a few articles:

• about the removal of a Thomas Jefferson statue in NYC
• about the pending Supreme Court stay request on the Texas abortion ban legislation
• about the need to upgrade our defense system sighting a new Hypersonic missile China tested recently

… i turn to my arts feed and first up is an article on Tilda Swinton who talks about “the Life-Altering Potential of Great Cinema… with the possible exception of “HB,” TS makes more appearances in Modern Nature than anyone else… a loyal friend and collaborator of Derek Jarman… TS has three new films out… i think i may need to go on a TS binge…

… i am on the last number of pages… DJ’s health is deteriorating…

… he is starting to cancel work… a short film with Annie Lenox… his physical condition getting in the way of concentration… i find myself wishing i had successful creative friends of the Lenox caliber…

… Beth Chatto comes to see DJ’s garden… she’s a celebrity i never heard of… looked her up on Wikipedia… well known plantswoman, garden designer, author… Christopher Lloyd is with BC, is it that Christopher Lloyd?… he makes more of a deal about Beth Chatto…

… migraines and blindness… back to the hospital… Berlioz’s death march from Symphony Fantastique starts playing in my head… he’s frustrated, but not that sad…

Full dusty orange moon glimmers over the sea, climbs over the house.

A midnight hedgehog rustles through the flower bed. I switch the light on in the kitchen and the spiders scatter. Over beyond the Long Pits bush fires flare. A house burns down in Lydd.¹

… the book finishes with one entry in September of 1990… i find his Wikipedia entry which tells me he died 19 February 1994… three more years of the descent… i hope he was able to be happy some of the time… i hope he was able to enjoy his garden…

… cold this AM… not sure i dressed warmly enough…

… K walking their dog… they say good morning… we discuss how cold it is…

… no clouds… sun isn’t up yet… air is clear and still…

… sitting by the falls…

… a possible way to curate my photos… color in the Apple ecosystem, b&w in Lightroom… color when shared the same day… b&w thereafter… rules… there always need to be defining rules…

… returning home… bird tweeting loudly… other birds twittering in hushed tones…

… photos from the walk…

Mario Giacomelli (Italian, 1925-2000)

Figure (My Mother), No. 130

1956; printed 1981

Gelatin silver print

40.1 × 30.1cm (15 13/16 × 11 7/8 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser

… another exhibit that has recently closed, but Dr. Bunyan’s reviews are so thorough with tons of images, that they are a bit like going to the exhibit…

… Dr. Bunyan’s reviews are from a love of photography and art perspective as well as an academic one… they are long, but worth a close look…