pirate boy/ high trestle trail/ beautiful tree/ soon the blizzard of stars. . .

we got a book on making pirate stuff from the library and so we made some of those type things::::::

 and went walking on the high trestle trail, between cornfields, bare and flat and windy and cold
and also beautiful in a barren way::::::

we never made it to the trestle bridge over the des moines river:: but we will this summer:::: on bikes!

 and on the trail we met this beautiful white tree::: perhaps it is being killed by the bushy parasitic-viney-looking things at its base?  anyway these photos don't do justice to this tree's very stark stunning beauty::::

 self-portrait in green sweatshirt, near to age 36::::

it's february; things'll get better; dig the heels in and feel the cold; remember from gluck's poem "the wild iris" that "At the end of my suffering there was a door"::: that's the iris talking, the bulb about to activate, spring to life, shoot out a green stem and eventually flower.  not to sound too dramatic!  after all, it is not simply just suffering, but also the mundane, the mundanity, of february:::::::

sounds that have got me through the winter:
nelly furtado--recently--and she makes me think of neneh cherry, at least this album, Spirit Indestructible, at least the song "parking lot"--remember neneh cherry--buffalo stance???--
oumou sangare, mali musician, amazing:: the album Seya--
talk demonic and then finding random viola-centric music on youtube because of how much i love the viola, due to talk demonic---
fleet foxes--of course--

and reading several biographies, something i haven't ever done much before::
but especially, a biography on jane addams
and a biography written by barbara guest on h.d.--Herself Defined

other things that are good and i'm grateful for right now::

glittery construction paper
baths/ good bathtubs
yoga
thinking
union park near our house & duskish walks with q-dog for thinking's sake
thinking without anxiety, fear, worry
thinking without desperate repetitive loops of anti-tenderness, anti-love bullets
instead of thought-bullets actually thought-waterdrops
chocolate and walnuts
lentils
finn's curious, loving, and strong spirit
the idea of love-strength, as if love could be a muscle that you could keep building
the ability to accept and love what is right now: the now-now
marina tsvetaeva, the poet--her example of writing every day at a beloved desk no matter what; at the desk where she wrote her bills, love letters, poems; her struggle; her amazing example:::::
poem from her (trans. by Ilya Kaminsky, in book Dark Elderberry Branch. . .):

I know the truth

I know the truth! Give up all the other truths.
No time on earth for people to kill each other.
Look--it's evening; look, it's nearly night.  No more
of your talk, poets, lovers, generals.

Now no wind, and the earth is sprinkled with drizzle,
and soon the blizzard of stars will go quiet.
And soon, soon, to sleep, under the earth, all of us,
us who alive on earth don't let us sleep.