. Spinning .

A decade of ideas.  Shedding convention and inhibition.  Expanding the mind.  Flowers and peace and forget the problems and responsibilities, they’ve all been planned for and taken as they come.  Some things are simply out of our control, focus then on what we can enjoy and help along its path. 

"Let the sun shine, let the sun shine, let the sun shine in…"

Green earth, green fields, trade with beads and seashells and your word. You just can’t own the earth or pretty portions of it, and if you did, for what?  To turn it in, so turn it now, and letting go is better than to lock it in a drawer.

Time is taken in and used and left behind.  Mark the minutes with a song to be remembered. Take the pleasure in and develop it to multiply and leave it too behind for sharing.  A story or a bit of poetry or just a thought that’s worth its thinking. Mark the pleasure with a smile that lives forever.

My plan for living in the decade of my sixties.

Hot damn; if I don’t quit playing the Willie video below I ain’t gonna be doin’ no writin’ neither.

You know how they say that men age better than women?  Well I likely wouldn’t have looked twice at Willie in his younger days–he was sort of dorky looking.  And now?  In the video below especially (not too recent, but I’m sure you understand) with the gentleman cowboy getup and that song, and his voice and his eyes and his long hair…well, I’ma twitchin’.

This started off my morning: "Pancho and Lefty" by Willie and Dylan.  Enjoy.

While I often feel one with nature, and lose not a seed or spark of life and even now, separate the seeds from dead headed zinnias, salvias and such; crumble cilantro, dill and basil into labeled jars, the natural world doesn’t always think this frugal way.

Forgotten and unsecured leftover Halloween candy in the shop was gleefully found by mice.  So little did he (they?) nibble, and yet each individual wrapped piece was tainted, like the little brother sticking his finger in the cupcakes.

Not just here; it’s been a thing that bothers me and why I fight them off.  A rabbit chews off all the lower branches of a baby quince bush, but eats a leaf or two.  A dozen tomatoes damaged with a single bite.  Tons of peaches nibbled here and there where squirrels munched, all start to rot within a single day.  Sit there, eat one, two, a dozen, I don’t mind; but not just a single bite of each.

One with nature?  Maybe not.

Went for a renewal of my driver’s license yesterday.  Depressed because you know how these things come out, and I’d finally gotten a photo that I wasn’t ashamed to produce when necessary.  Like today at the voting booth. 

It came out what I would consider horrible, though I tried to remember to smile only slightly, to look up at the camera, and not blink or hold my eyes too wide open. 

The lady said that she would check it first, then said yes, it was a good likeness.  That depressed me even more.

Complaining to Him at home about how this has to be with me for six years, I get:  Do you think you’re going to look better next year or the next? 

Complete honesty in one’s spouse is reprehensible and possibly a case for justifiable homicide.

Woman walks into my shop, we talk about the weather as we work together on her piece.  I agree with her, it’s cool but nice enough it being November after all.

She opens up the door to leave and for five minutes tries to urge a fly to fly outside.  "I’m supposed to be green," she tells me.  "As much as I want to save your life you must cooperate," she tells the fly.  He flies out eventually, tired of being chased from here to there by her insistent hand.  He’s narrowly avoided being killed by me instead.  Smug, she finally leaves and shuts the door.

Moron.  It takes about a half an hour of cranked up heat to replace the cold air she’s let in.

Well I got my Halloween wish: there were less kids at my door than candy.

It’s about 1:30 p.m. here on a cool sunny Halloween and the little monsters have about four hours to get to my door before the candy’s all gone.

Happy Halloween.  May your bones rattle for many more years.

Driving around, randomly thinking of this or of that.  Autumn smells of sweet green gone golden.  Color filters on sunlight, mauve morning, apricot dawn.  Filling out property tax forms at town hall, forgetting Ted’s frames to present him before someone takes over his office and won’t hang them up. Listening to talk on the radio, realizing that I agree with most liberal policies but conflict where they want to make policy into law. Shaking from cold in the shop–how many more years must I do this?