Apologies for no recent entries. I would if I could, but I find myself unable to record my reflections for a multitude of reasons, including a lack of time. And this medium does not channel the quietness of my thoughts nor the freedom of expression I once found in anonymity.
If I return, I'll let you know.
Goodbye for now.

I walked the riverbottom with two dapple-legged dogs, one brindle, one red. They ranged and jogged, loped and laughed with wagging tails and smiling dog faces and we walked through the trees among the fallen leaves on the edge of the water.

The river swirled deep and looked smooth as glass, black as night, a mirror of the sunlit trees streaking orange and red and rust.

Sunlight blasted through the half-bare trees and lit the opposite bank, big leaf maples and massive cottonwoods and twisted oaks and drowsy willows shining like bronze and copper and gold and rust, the topaz and citrine shades of autumn. Firs and cedars stand swallowing the day in their dark spires, the tallest trees reaching a hundred feet towards the sun.

Trees sing a song best when there is more than one kind of tree in the forest. The high pines and junipers sing whispery and lonely, the oak grove groans and creaks and rumbles, cedars and firs have deep dark voices like the misty rain. Maples and cottonwoods and aspens rattle and laugh and catch the sunlight in their boughs, and the willow dances and weeps. Together they make a complimentary orchestra, of many temperaments and moods, and many voices.

The dirt on the river's shoulders is dark and slick, and covered with giant leaves from the maples, yellow and orange-speckled leaves more than a foot across, shaped like symmetrical hands. The wind gusted and the trees sang and the leaves cascaded around me and two laughing dogs.

I've been out of sorts and under the weather. My head is as thick and foggy as the chill November air, a physical ailment turned to mental sluggishness. Feeling inspired but lacking motivation.
And it seems like everything I write comes back to the sense of whatever nevermind let me climb back under the thick warm blankets and sleep comes in fits and starts like a bucking horse with wild eyes and sweaty flanks.

I lost Monday and I suppose if ever a day should be lost it is Monday. It turned into fever dreams and liquid prose and disrupted equilibrium, reduced to a lump on the couch sipping hot chamomile tea. Ruminating Rumi I managed to find peace from all the bothersome heated debates, all the cosmopolitical psuedo-beliefs, the posturing, the retrospect, the dread. I've lost my energy, it has gone spiralling down, some fallen leaf tracing an intraceable pattern of chance, who can say who can say says the refrain. Nothing has changed. Oh but it shall, and oh but it will. I can't hear the thunder in the distance because of the muffling fog, the strangling fog.

Soul receives from soul that knowledge, therefore not by book
nor from tongue.
If knowledge of mysteries comes after emptiness of mind, that is
illumination of heart.


If you will be observant and vigilant, you will see at every moment the response to your action. Be observant if you would have a pure heart, for something is born to you in consequence of every action.

The gulls ride inland on the river of fog, long grey tendrils curling up the river valleys, surging like water over the hills and into deep hollows. The white birds mewl and complain, and sweep in circles, long sharp wings cutting the thick grey that smells of woodsmoke and sea and damp earth. They jockey for position on the wires with the raucous crows.

The tenderest plants melted overnight, leaves turned to dark green slime from the thick frost. Intolerance begets intolerance; it is a wickedness and a jealousy, a narrowness through treacherous cliffs and the ice and fog are thick. The black shadows of birds both white and black flit across the chasm's maw, and the tendrils of blighted vines impede the passage. There is a stream of fresh water, deep down in the cut through the cliffs, percolating out from some glacial spring, that brings with it the healing of deep wounds, that offers the one spot of common ground. It is difficult to find, and harder to reach. But it is sweet, and deep.