~ From my Sketchbook Writings, October 8th 2012 ~
It began like any other weekday morning.
7:15. Cold black nose on my chin. Sunlight in harsh vertical lines across the mirror.
And somewhere between slipping on dirty jeans and grinding coffee beans, that light turned sour.
Perhaps sour is too easy of a word. Perhaps crushing existential crisis is more apt.
Shaking fingertips. The taste of bile.
So naturally I did the dishes left over from last night. Recklessly clanged vintage plates. Angrily chopped a pear. Beat the hell out of a pomegranate.
It's a lovely misguided logic, this belief that if the body spins in busyness, the mind will have no time to wander dark hallways.
So I poured almonds into a dry pan on medium heat. Picked up dog food bowls. Tidied the floor.
From outside BC called in a hash whisper.
Out front, in the tallest cedar, the one with ruddy bark that leaves bits of itself all over the cars, there was a dash.
A squawk. A clammer of claws on limbs and feathers in evergreens.
Not more than twelve feet up, a young peregrine craned her neck back and forth looking for the squirrel she had cornered. What ensued was a desperate dance for life, the squirrel spinning around the trunk, freezing under thick branches. The peregrine plunging perilously through foliage, swinging tight to the cedar with a pivot off a single clawed foot. They spun, danced, screeched, froze, crept, leapt up and down that tree for who knows how long. Twice she sailed out close enough for me to brush a wingtip or feel that banded tail.
I whispered to BC,
"There are almonds burning on the stove,"
but I didn't move.
I was holding my breath for her, in her awkward juvenile attempts. I wanted her strong, I wanted her well fed, but more than anything I wanted her to come back and visit me in this odd urban oasis of mine.
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