Today was rather consumed by chorus Zoom and by the completely unreasonable news that my brother's house suffered a microburst in last night's thunderstorm and has something like six trees down like two-hundred-foot matchsticks across the yard (all people, animals, and vehicles are improbably but welcomely unharmed), but I did get continuing documentation of the lilac—
—and in the evening![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I walked down to the Mystic where we watched swans feeding with the serene dignity of upturned white triangles with frantically sculling orange feet. We did not make it around the loop of the river to the field of Hasenpfs because the temperature plummeted and a wall of clouds like slate flagstones rolled in and we weren't sure if we were about to be rained on; so of course we weren't, but we were still out of the house for about an hour and had to dodge only one jogger sans mask and one vaguely threatening, also unmasked dude, which these days is probably a good ratio.
( The fatal stare is somewhere up there. )
Walking back, we found a bird on the ground with something wrong with its foot and its wing; it kept trying to fly in short spattering bursts and not getting far, although it clung tenaciously to the chain-link between the loop trail and I-93. I became very upset because I couldn't think how to help it or take it safely anywhere. Finally it fluttered up into a tree and stayed there, where Rob thought it had a much better chance of healing. I wish it well. I wish it so much better than I wish the administration of this country. Its feathers were a beautiful oil-sheen of purple and blue and black; I am trying to decide if it was a starling or a kind of blackbird I know less well than the red-winged. It was sweet of the young man on the skateboard to steer out of its way when we thought it couldn't move. Also on our way back we spotted a couple of PETA-esque posters on the side of a utility box (a) plastered over some perfectly nice, Muppet-ish street art (b) blaming the general consumption of meat for COVID-19. I do not want fake science in my neighborhood. There is too much of it in this country already. I tried to peel the paper off with my keys, but they had been soaked flat to the metal in some kind of glue, so I settled for scratching them across repeatedly to indicate disapproval and hopefully improving their chances of being rained off in the next storm. I don't think I'm doing especially well right now, but I try at least to point it in the right directions.
Last night's dreams concerned themselves with a TV production of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy rebooted into WWII, which feels like my brain forgetting how metaphor works because I know that Alexander's own wartime experiences informed those books, especially the second and third. On the other hand, the production values were quite good and all the cast had interesting faces. I especially liked the eyebrows on the gloomy police inspector. They had seen enough shit to become permanently quizzical.
—and in the evening
spatch and I walked down to the Mystic where we watched swans feeding with the serene dignity of upturned white triangles with frantically sculling orange feet. We did not make it around the loop of the river to the field of Hasenpfs because the temperature plummeted and a wall of clouds like slate flagstones rolled in and we weren't sure if we were about to be rained on; so of course we weren't, but we were still out of the house for about an hour and had to dodge only one jogger sans mask and one vaguely threatening, also unmasked dude, which these days is probably a good ratio.( The fatal stare is somewhere up there. )
Walking back, we found a bird on the ground with something wrong with its foot and its wing; it kept trying to fly in short spattering bursts and not getting far, although it clung tenaciously to the chain-link between the loop trail and I-93. I became very upset because I couldn't think how to help it or take it safely anywhere. Finally it fluttered up into a tree and stayed there, where Rob thought it had a much better chance of healing. I wish it well. I wish it so much better than I wish the administration of this country. Its feathers were a beautiful oil-sheen of purple and blue and black; I am trying to decide if it was a starling or a kind of blackbird I know less well than the red-winged. It was sweet of the young man on the skateboard to steer out of its way when we thought it couldn't move. Also on our way back we spotted a couple of PETA-esque posters on the side of a utility box (a) plastered over some perfectly nice, Muppet-ish street art (b) blaming the general consumption of meat for COVID-19. I do not want fake science in my neighborhood. There is too much of it in this country already. I tried to peel the paper off with my keys, but they had been soaked flat to the metal in some kind of glue, so I settled for scratching them across repeatedly to indicate disapproval and hopefully improving their chances of being rained off in the next storm. I don't think I'm doing especially well right now, but I try at least to point it in the right directions.
Last night's dreams concerned themselves with a TV production of Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy rebooted into WWII, which feels like my brain forgetting how metaphor works because I know that Alexander's own wartime experiences informed those books, especially the second and third. On the other hand, the production values were quite good and all the cast had interesting faces. I especially liked the eyebrows on the gloomy police inspector. They had seen enough shit to become permanently quizzical.
