radiant fracture

These nights smell amazing. Clean, oceanic, a little smoky.

The only thing to do with November is go stargazing. Reading, thinking, working -- actions too fine, too involved for this unco-ordinated winter brain. I'm stupid unless I'm just looking.

Tonight you can see the constellations even from under the yellow canopy of Cook Street. Smudge of the Pleiades. Cassiopeia glittering with lesser brilliants. And finally we're under the auspex of Orion. All your long late nights are protected.

(The seniors' activity centre looks like a jukebox.)

Night before last I walked down to the sports field to stargaze and listen to emotive music. Very satisfactory.

Last night I spent almost entirely in bed. I was nauseous all day, and so I didn't eat, and so by night I was very sick indeed what with the blood sugar and not having any, and chilled from sitting in a draft all day. I went home, had a scalding soak, and went to bed. Every couple of hours I staggered up to check the laundry or imbibe fluids.

inlandsea, on the other hand, was busy late into the night, reordering her room and thus symbolically the universe. It was comforting to know that someone was busy combatting entropy while I succumbed to it.

There's an emotion I'd forgotten. Something about dozing and then opening your eyes in a still-bright room, the folds of the duvet like a comfortable shrug, smell of cotton, sounds of a house. Nothing needing to get done.

Why was I born at the beginning of the worst month in the year? cried Lament.
Answered Orion: Idiot. To count stars.

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Nearly dark at 4:20 today. Even before that, the light was dull, mute as a headache. Everything flattened like a bad print, the contrast too low.

Listened to Philip Pullman being interviewed on the CBC Writers & Company podcast today. It made me wonder why I hadn't read the books yet. My listening is perforce fragmentary, because I keep getting called away, and rather than always pause it, I let the conversation continue. I like joining and leaving it, like something overheard.

I'm glad I was listening when he mentioned Heinrich Von Kleist's essay "On the Marionette Theatre".

The temperature has dropped noticeably in the last few hours. I invite it to snow, but the roads must be dry by the weekend so that the winding country road to Bee's mum's pottery show is clear.

November in the soft grey cottonmouth of the snake. Sharp-scaled tail flickering, scratches your cheek, the underside of your wrist, your neck below the ear, with cold. Soon now the year swallowing its tail & we'll go with it.

I'm about ready to have this month extracted.

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