Raccoons.

In the midst of boiling up some pasta this morning I looked out the front window to watch a large form on four legs amble past. This neighborhood, full of currently blooming pink and white trees has made me grow accustomed to the constant sneaking of the feline variety but the size variance of these sneaking kittens has never struck me as so large. And so I watched the brown shape move forward, towards my tree, noticed its multi-ringed tail and thought: Oh.

It stopped at the trunk and looked up as if deciding on future prospects and then lumbered up the bark. Half way up it stopped, considered I suppose, and then turned itself around and made slow progress back to earth. I suppose there are worse things than dirt. Inside the homestead I watched its progress through a number of windows, tracking it as it moved from the tree and into my backyard where it met yet another large member of its family. They walked side by side and disappeared into the brush that constitutes the boundary of my backyard. On to other trash cans and other backyards. Nowhere to be but anywhere.

On Monday, bored into depression and staring aimlessly out my window, I watched a squirrel perch itself on the flower box that sits on the other side of my warped glass. It stared at me and I sat on my bed and watched as it picked out helicopter leaves and ate the small morsel of seed contained within. I guess after a while Epsilon figured out something was up and sat up from his always-nap and stared long and hard at the squirrel. It would eat and then finish and then stand up on its hind legs and stare us down and I felt a certain amount of embarassment or maybe-shame that I was invading the privacy of the creature. I thought about families of rodents watching in through my window as I ate my meagerblandpasta and couldn't decide if that would make me more nervous or entertained. Probably the former. This squirrel picked out seeds for twenty minutes, my dog and I rapt with attention and whiled away a gloomy monday.

There are many things here. The trees, as I've mentioned, are in bloom and small petals of pink and white are carried off in invisible oceans that careen through tree limbs, depositing its flotsam into the street in thick multi-colored carpets. In the sometimes still bright afternoons after work I sit on the stoop of my home and watch everything fly by.

People wave here and say hello and pet Epsilon and aren't angry or worried or if they are I suppose it finds release in the fresh air. It is always cold here it seems and though there have been days when I have been able to escape the trappings of my coat I largely find myself still wearing one almost daily. But this is something I have grown more and more used to and on the sudden warm days I find myself invigorated and ready to do anything.

I can't say I'm ready for a lot yet, and part of me wonders if I ever will be. These are manic self imposed worries and I acknowledge that but knowing the problem rarely seems to remedy it.

You know you know you know.

something not my own.

Forgive this slight departure. Perhaps my two most favorite paragraphs in literature at the moment.

John Grady Cole (the he in this scene) has just proposed to Alejandra (the she)

"When they got to the room the maid was cleaning and she left and they closed the curtains and made love and slept in each other's arms. When they woke it was evening. She came from the shower wrapped in a towel and she sat on the bed and took his hand and looked down at him. I cannot do what you ask, she said. I love you. But I cannot.
He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave. When she came out of the bathroom again she was dressed and he made her sit on the bed and he held her hands both of them and talked to her but she only shook her head and she turned away her tearstained face and told him that it was time to go and that she could not miss the train."

-Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses, pg 254.