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Starling of Bluster
Mar. 14th, 2025 08:29 pmI got through two more things I didn't really want to do today. This morning I had another visit with my doctor in which we discussed my blood pressure medications, and she aggravated me, as anticipated. I got home in time for a nice walk with the Sparrowhawk. That was somewhat reviving, although it did make my knees stiff. This afternoon, the Nonesuch and I had a long-delayed video interview with our editor. He interviewed us together because our novels were a collaboration of sorts--each book had a novella included, the one in his novel by me, and the one in my novel by him. I was not enthusiastic about the interview. It could have been better organized, and I could have provided myself with better lines. My consolation is that it probably wouldn't have sold any books, no matter how witty and on-point I had been. I could enlarge on this point, but perhaps the less said the better. Anyway, it's done, and I don't have to anticipate it further.
In the woods, we saw a vigorous and vivid clump of snowdrops. I swear they just came up in the last couple of days. The last time we were there, we didn't see a hint of them. But under the leaves, they were working away. We looked in our own back yard, and saw that our snowdrops were also blooming. My hellebores are getting ready to bloom, too. Last year, they were very healthy and beautiful, but this year they look rather dispirited. Trodden down, one might say, and accurately. All the workers who were in the yard stepped all over them. I guess I'm lucky they survived at all.
The real excitement of the last 24 hours is that we both spontaneously woke up around 2:30, just in time to throw on a few garments and steal downstairs. We went out in the driveway to lean against the car and cast our gaze skyward, where the earth's shadow was creeping across the moon. We stayed up until 3:15 or so and definitely saw totality. It wasn't all that thrilling, honestly--a rusty shadow thrown over the pale, distant lunar face. But it's pretty cool to have seen a total eclipse of the sun and of the moon within a 12-month period. And I enjoyed standing barefoot out in the cool night, with the Big Dipper standing on its tail over our house for company. The street was sadly empty of neighbors. In my fantasy world, the entire block would have turned out to celebrate the event, and all the children would have had the day off from school to recover. Red wine from a silver cup would have been an appropriate drink, I think. And then we could have all rung our bells and banged our pots to chase away the wolf-shadow from the Queen of the Night. But this is not the world we live in. I heard a couple of distant geese honking, and the undying thrum of the distant highway, which comes to the fore after nightfall when nearer sounds are stilled. It's the price we pay for our devices, that having created them, we must have them always with us.
In the woods, we saw a vigorous and vivid clump of snowdrops. I swear they just came up in the last couple of days. The last time we were there, we didn't see a hint of them. But under the leaves, they were working away. We looked in our own back yard, and saw that our snowdrops were also blooming. My hellebores are getting ready to bloom, too. Last year, they were very healthy and beautiful, but this year they look rather dispirited. Trodden down, one might say, and accurately. All the workers who were in the yard stepped all over them. I guess I'm lucky they survived at all.
The real excitement of the last 24 hours is that we both spontaneously woke up around 2:30, just in time to throw on a few garments and steal downstairs. We went out in the driveway to lean against the car and cast our gaze skyward, where the earth's shadow was creeping across the moon. We stayed up until 3:15 or so and definitely saw totality. It wasn't all that thrilling, honestly--a rusty shadow thrown over the pale, distant lunar face. But it's pretty cool to have seen a total eclipse of the sun and of the moon within a 12-month period. And I enjoyed standing barefoot out in the cool night, with the Big Dipper standing on its tail over our house for company. The street was sadly empty of neighbors. In my fantasy world, the entire block would have turned out to celebrate the event, and all the children would have had the day off from school to recover. Red wine from a silver cup would have been an appropriate drink, I think. And then we could have all rung our bells and banged our pots to chase away the wolf-shadow from the Queen of the Night. But this is not the world we live in. I heard a couple of distant geese honking, and the undying thrum of the distant highway, which comes to the fore after nightfall when nearer sounds are stilled. It's the price we pay for our devices, that having created them, we must have them always with us.
