Not Quite as Sleek as I Pictured It?

hahahahahaha

When I started thinking about what I wanted to write in this newsletter, I was very excited at the idea of a linear timeline diary about what is happening in nature at my home here in Vermont, but it just hasn’t worked out that way yet, and that’s OK. (It’s also an uncanny coincidence how close the word “linear” and the name "Linnaeus” are, as Carl Linnaeus is, after all, known as the “father of taxonomy” and a deeeeeeeep liner-upper and psychotic organizer. Though, since he was a Swedish white man, his work is considered the apex of sanity and not at all obsessive!). The year 2021 is flying by and I am more fogged up than usual. My gorgeously illustrated calendar of the natural world blowing your mind in watercolor is not forthcoming.

The full Flower moon has just passed along with a minor heatwave for this northeastern part of the country. I’m happy in the near-freezing nights snuggled up to my dog, Jerome. The sudden shift of the weather and the breaking of the spotlight of the full moon has my body craving sleep, which gives me a low-grade dread: “Am I denying depression?" I binge sleep when I can, but with Covid near its end I can’t stand to sleep through a single hour of daylight. “The End of Covid" is total nonsense, I know... and I don’t manage to hoard any daylight. My body and soul are hungover, dehydrated and malnourished after this last decade of 2009 onward. I’m sure a lot of you feel like you are starved for something too. Dying for “normalcy” (also total nonsense) but equally scared of the “end” of the time of “being at home,” whatever that means, from person to person. Under different circumstances it would have been just what the doctor ordered, but now I’m a body looking for its head. I actually carry a bag around IN THE HOUSE so I don’t forget things I need moment to moment -- glasses, water, pens, paper. I’m a bit of a stranger to myself these days. 

I’ve been home for over a year but I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I have SIX jobs right now because A) I have consistently worked writing/playing music for 35 years now so I hope people know I will do what I say I will, so they offer me jobs (thank you) but also B) Fear. Strangling, silencing, drowning, oppressive-as-fuck fear. This, the first real project truly of my own in a while, has a slippery coating on its orbit I can’t seem to penetrate. I feel like I’m trying to put a contact lens on it for the first time, and then I hear it out the window, in the dark of The Lung, a frantic sound like someone imitating agitated chimpanzees starting a fight in some B sci-fi movie. With great relief I remember, “Oh yeah! The Barred Owls are setting up territories and mating again! It’s that time of year!” Those sounds are no crazier, and no less confused than I am! I am Nature too! Whew! 

And then I remember, in a great surge of disconnected dirty indulgence, someone telling me about a spate of recent injuries suffered by people in boats caused by eagles clumsily dropping huge fish on them from above. The eagles are having a rough time being majestic too, so we should take comfort. Nobody is the baseball card version of their species all the time and nature is happy to point that out. The Lung has a bizarre and sometimes heavy-handed sense of humor, which is what this newsletter is all about.