1935 Horch

Five-oh-one, ground fog lying low on the Bay, moisture on 7H porch rail, stars are bright and sky is clear. No fog on the Beck side except in lights to the north. Don’t know whether dare look at the news or not, maybe not, better not, best leave it alone and let the day ripen a bit. 

Ground Hog Day too, big news those years in Pennsylvania, February 2 when the poor animal either ducks back into his burrow or stays out. Is he in control of spring or just prophesying spring? Who or what is in control as our Milky Way is pushed and pulled speeding into the distance? The ground hog to me will ever and only be the dog-size creature I watched in agony that late morning alone at a table in the roadside picnic area a few miles north of downtown Harrisburg on the banks of the Susquehanna River the day after leaving my happy girl at her college in Virginia. Watching him watch me watch him watching me. Dreading going anyplace in life from that point on, specially back home to the empty nest syndrome at the rectory in Apalachicola without her there. Moments fade, but not August 1990. 

I got a sermon out of it 

for the next Sunday, telling my congregation I no longer knew my dream. 

Life goes by and finishes up before we’re ready, and how the hell did I get to be 81 years old when I’m 17. 18, 22, 25, 30, 36. Commander Weller, how old are you? I’m forty. You’ll be forty-one? I just turned forty, don’t rush it. 57. You’ll be 82? Dammit, I said don’t rush it. What did I do with my plant with the glossy green leaves and bright red berries, and what was I dreaming when I dug it up? Comics this morning, For Better Or For Worse. “Lookit that, Elizabeth! A few hours ago we were in the middle of a blizzard, an now the stars are out! — It’s as if the storm never happened!” For Better Or For Worse is a magical comic strip: all those characters, we’ve already once watched them grow all the way through life and done, then Lynn Johnson started them all over again. I wish. Or do I - -

Mary Maudlin here.

So today then. Tippy tap a blogpost. Write a letter someone asked for. Read. Maybe see if I can make heads or tails of the Russian alphabet? I know little English, little German, little Japanese, little Greek, know the tetragrammaton but unable to even hold the Hebrew alefbet in mind, so why not a little Russian to make me feel really thick. Any oysters in my day? Time to walk.

DThos+