Reminder

Crikey, almost forgot: I’ll be emceeing and telling a story at Rural Vermont’s Black Market Bounty Storytelling and Potluck event this Sunday in Montpeculiar.  Come on down! 

This morning we awoke to an uncommitted snow, just enough to soften the air and lend a milky haze to everything. I walked up to the barn in a fine mood, whistling tunelessly, the small flakes melting into my skin as quickly as they landed. I love the austere dullness of November, the gradations of color reduced to slim subtleties, beauty defined as much by what is absent, as by what is present.

I am working hard these days, or at least hard as I define it, which means I’m spending the bulk of my time at my desk and very little time out-of-doors, engaged in some brute task or another. My body and mind reject this schedule; both feel at once balky and mushy. It’s funny, but I’ve come to understand that my brain is better exercised by physical labor than by the focused thought necessitated by my paying work.

No complaints. This is merely one of those phases every self-employed person goes through from time-to-time and, as I am fond of saying, “it sure as hell beats working for a living.” Times like these, when I get a sort-of taste of what it is like to be confined to a desk for 40-hours each week, I am particularly thankful for the routine of chores, for the unrelenting needs of the animals under our care. They draw me up and out each and every morning, and again each and every afternoon. They suffer no excuses, and they respect no deadlines but those imposed by their need for food and water.

In a way, I see how our animals’ lives are as uncomplicated and austerely perfect as this very month. Maybe that’s what I love about these creatures so much; maybe that’s what I love about November so much. They’re both a reminder of how little we really need, of how simple life can be, if only we just let it.