A Day in the Life

It's late. I should probably be settling down to sleep - or at least finishing the dishes in the sink - just a few tea cups, but it will ruin the entire rhythm of my morning if I don't have the 'correct' cups available for the series of teas, coffee, and water as I move through morning. I know I'm becoming a bit too ritualized, but some days that's what gets me through all the uncertainties - the comfort of knowing that my blue lotus tea cup will be there waiting for me on the stove top to fill it with green tea when I wake and the cup that I've been sipping my morning coffee from for more than 20 years with wonderful vibrant tribal images will be dry in the red dish drain hovering over the chocolate brown double porcelain kitchen sink.

Summer is here, and the rhythms of my days are settling down - waking slowly into the day - reading a good book w/breakfast and then shifting into work mode for a few hours. I'm doing a lot of writing ... press releases, newsletters, and brainstorming for community outreach and education. I'm so grateful to be finished--for a short time--with the database work. It's boring beyond all measure. I'd rather fold and stuff envelopes than do database entry..and even worse ... database corrections!, but--for the time being its a necessary part of my job. I'll be glad in a year or so when I start a PhD program and don't have to do this business/management type of work. If a miracle occurred (and I'm still open to miracles) and I had financial support to finish this last semester of school w/out working - I would jump at the chance. I find myself not enjoying it when my time and attention is being pulled in two entirely different directions.

I like to walk in the early afternoon for a while (thunderstorms allowing), come home for a light lunch, and then nap. Napping has become essential in the day for the time being. I'm learning not to resent it - in fact, learning to enjoy the feeling of slipping in and out of consciousness the way I used to slip in and out of the warm water of the local streams when I lived in upstate New York. Back to work for a few more hours, cook a simple dinner, and enjoy a good meal. I take an hour or so to review some portion of my thesis and then take those thoughts out walking as the sun sets and twilight falls over Butte.

This is the third summer that I've been walking the same trail almost every evening. I am still not bored with it. In fact, its become more beautiful to me knowing that my time here may be over in the next year or less. The city ... well, I could do without the trash in the alleys, the stray dogs wandering the streets and howling at 2 a.m., the drunken teenagers racing up and down the streets, the empty buildings with broken windows, and the culture of mediocrity that spreads over the populace and scrapes them into the local bars. I often walk along the trail and imagine razing the entire city to the ground - the historic buildings, the shacks and trailers, the gallus frames and the shiny neighborhoods of the flats. All of it. And then rebuilding it from the ground up. With care and with pride. It's a nice fantasy.

Meantime, I wander down the trail watching the evening sky and the ever changing colors and textures of clouds and eternity. I soak in the Pintlers while I listen to the robins and watch the swallows and I hope for a glimpse of the fox. When I turn back, the East Ridge fills the east, and the Highlands still reflect the last light of the sun. It's almost full dark when I head back to my car and often I can only hear the jingling collar of the sweet springer spaniel in the nearby field running in a long arc of joy.