The day of the ground blizzards

The wind howled and more. The snow was scoured from the fields, turned and twisted and blown across the roads. We spent most of the day out driving around in some of the strongest winds I’ve felt in years. By the time we arrived home, the empty trash can had been blown across the road and the drive was littered with dead branches.

the wind filled the sky with snow and leaves

Photo by J. Harrington

It was a frustrating day trying to get shopping errands completed. The local Chuck and Don’s has again stopped carrying Canidae, our preferred brand of dog food and appears to have dropped the Dale Edgar supplement we give one of the dogs for her hips. Pet Smart had the dog food, but not the supplement. Then we tried to order dinner at the new Chipolte in Forest Lake. No go! They didn’t have crispy tacos for a taco salad the Better Half had been looking forward to. This came after four local Holliday stations failled to have functioning air hoses so I could tend to a low pressure in the Jeep’s right front tire. Maybe we’ve created a world too complicated for ordinary folks to keep up with? Maybe Mercury is in retrograde again. Some of each might help explain more of the world these days.

For example, this morning, before we went wind surfing in the Jeep, I was making up some more Irish flour dough. But I wasn’t sure we had enough  all purpose flour left so, instead of my usual sequence, I started with the ap flour. It wasn’t until hours later, when we got back home from the failed Chipolte run that I realized I had neglected to mix in the sourdough starter. I promptly took care of that oversight and worked starter into the dough. We’ll know sometime tomorrow if the dough was salvaged or savaged. So, we’ll file today under the heading of “it’s been one of those days so it won’t be hard for tomorrow to be better.”

After All

John Koethe - 1945-

“After all,” that too might be possible . . .
—John Ashbery

It isn’t too late, but for what I’m not sure.
Though I live for possibility, I loathe unbridled
Speculation, let alone those vague attempts
At self-exploration that become days wasted
Trying out the various modes of being:
The ecstatic mode, which celebrates the world, a high
That fades into an old idea; the contemplative,
Which says, So what? and leaves it there;
The skeptical, a way of being in the world
Without accepting it (whatever that might mean).
They’re all poses, adequate to different ends
And certain ages, none of them conclusive
Or sufficient to the day. I find myself surprised
By my indifference to what happens next:
You’d think that after almost seventy years of waiting
For the figure in the carpet to emerge I’d feel a sense of
Urgency about the future, rather than dismissing it
As another pretext for more idle speculation.
I’m happy, but I have a pessimistic cast of mind.
I like to generalize, but realize it’s pointless,
Since everything is there to see. I love remembering
For its own sake and the feel of passing time
It generates, which lends it meaning and endows it
With a private sense of purpose—as though every life
Were a long effort to salvage something of its past,
An effort bound to fail in the long run, though it comes
With a self-defeating guarantee: the evaporating
Air of recognition that lingers around a name
Or rises from a page from time to time; or the nothing
Waiting at the end of age; whichever comes last.

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