SEPTEMBER SOMETHING OR OTHER




Well, so how is it? I've taken to doing a lot of listening.
It starts when I get home, usually. And part of this is seeing
everything that slowly passes INTO view, like the rose-breasted
grosbeak at today's feeder. I'm constantly with herons and
ospreys and egrets. The plants blow around a lot, of
course, like something from a Terrence Malick
film, but then the thread of all that rustling becomes
a constant, literal shadows and sound through the windows.
It reminds me of the heightened states of awareness I
experienced while bow hunting (years ago). The result of sitting
in the woods for hours and days, listening, and watching. Who
has time anymore? Few. But you simply make time, for
whatever. You MAKE the time. Unpack your schedule. Sit like
a stone in the creek of the wind until you are invisible, like an owl
in the daytime (he can't see me, they think as you come within a
foot of them). Or like the stone in the creek you've become,
everything flowing over you, only the stone is covered with
nerve endings. Ahhhh . . .

It's better than going to the chiropractor.

I've obsessively revised URGE for the five billionth time.
We'll see what happens now. Orphan, Indiana will be out in
a month and a half. The Coldest Winter On Earth in 7 months.
I'm working on The Bliss Tree Photographs. I have copies of
Sky Booths in the Breath Somewhere for 8 dollars (half price).
The Nervous Filaments is going for under 7 bucks on Amazon.
Listen--it's not the money. I want you to enjoy these books . . .

I enjoyed writing them.

It's supposed to be 90 degrees today. In September.
I've still got hummingbirds, single birds on migration, at the
feeders, and they ignore me like the stone I am, water coursing
around me. One great blue heron has been egret-chasing,
turned bully. She makes a peculiar racket, like a gizzard spitting
out metal shavings. Then it gets extremely quiet all over again,
a hundred times a day . . .