Cabin fever

Anne Kilmer viceroy at gate.net
Sat Jan 5 09:41:55 EST 2002


I've been reading Sue Hubbell, and if you can't get outside at the 
moment, or outside is miserable and you hate it but there you are, and 
you'd enjoy reading about somebody else being cold and wet for a change, 
and looking at bugs, and caring about them, well, you might enjoy being 
in my predicament.
Here I am, with Broadsides from the Lower Orders in one hand (it begins 
with butterflies, beautifully). In the other hand, A Country Year, which 
I read on the train back from St. Simon's Island, Georgia, until I lent 
it to John, whose book, The Two Towers, had become too sad to be borne.

So, for Heaven's sake, if you can't play outside, go see Lord of the 
Rings, see Harry Potter, read the books, breathe ...
Put a slosh of whiskey into the hot lemonade, to prevent that flu you're 
flirting with, curate your collection, whether it be photos, dead bugs 
or books, and Lord have mercy on those of us who are currently mostly in 
the dark, but for whom the year is (I promise) swinging back towards 
summer.

And for those of us, like me, who are currently clutching a hot rice bag 
to a cheek that doesn't think sunrise on the beach is romantic, I hope 
it was worth it. Millions of birds, vast skeins of them, lifting from 
the water, swirling, lighting again on the mud islands that were 
shrinking as the tide rose ... for me, indeed it was worth it.

There were five elephants, parading, trunk to tail, through a field in 
Deland punctuated with shabby circus train cars.
  Butterflies, though? None that I saw, and indeed I looked, as the 
train idled along, increasingly late ...
Here, of course, the zebra longwings chain just outside our back door, 
where we see them as we sip our sunset coffee. My winters were long ago 
and that was in another country ... but I'm cold, just the same.
This eclectic group is so much enriched by voices from all parts of the 
world, and we are all discontented, as well we should be, for we have by 
no means got the world the way we want it yet.
But, have you noticed, we are approaching a sort of consensus on what we 
want, or at least defining our terms before we draw our swords.
  I also find it very easy to use the delete button.
Peace
Anne


 
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