Not Homogeneous

[Cita]

The cricket in the corner kicks his song into high gear at 3:30am in order to compete with the alarm's shrill, and the sheet is kicked to the end of the bed because the air is heavy, dense, hot.

Still, coffee is what I crave as we read into the pinkening dawn, and hope is high that the heat will do its job, cook cook cook the clouds, pour blessed moisture over the land.

It is not a homogenized or homogeneous life, for my days are never the same and for sure nothing like yours, and today we ride, take all of the cows we've been gathering into the house traps down off the hill to the Dumbell homestead, brand the five longears, head and heel them, put them through onto the mesa, break up a bull fight (#16 is going to get his ass whipped), and then go on down to troll the creek.

Two hours later we've scooped nine head out of the delicate riparian area that shows damage (damnit), and we have to build a wood fire because our propane bottle spit at us with a sigh, so my hair smells of woodsmoke and we are laughing up at the black cloud, but just as we get the first calf stretched out, the cloud has the last laugh and my horse acts a fool as the cold rain slashes down.

We are soaked from head to tail in less than the 60 seconds it takes to let the calf loose, unworked.

Even a wood-hot iron won't brand through wet baby calf hair and soaked leather is hard to wear, but you know, even if the trot home was cold and the day's job didn't get finished and we'll regret those unmarked big-assed calves in September, at least my commute wasn't scented with petroleum exhaust or lit up with neon or accompanied by horns and gears; we ate burgers with salads out of the garden after our hot baths.

[Gita]

By the time I got here, the awol verb was fixed. But you can bet I would have caught it, Missy, with the long red pen of my inner schoolmarm.

Trying to think of the word to describe what you write here, quotidian popped up. I don't know if I can explain it -- I found it in Gail's songs, too -- the daily, usual and routine things in a life are made sparkly and interesting by superb writing. Example: we're out of  propane  became "our propane bottle spit at us with a sigh."  

[Cita]

You people are on my bad list.  I left out a whole "be verb" and no one called me on it??? 

Joking aside, thank you for your encouragement to write what is truly me.  

[Teresa]

Love the last sentence -- all of the sentences, but the last one is putting your arms around the wild and unpredictable, the infinite.  Life is not synthetic, not bought or sold.  Man is afraid of feeling small, of unpredictability, which is why he tries to reinvent, tame and own Big Mama Nature.  I'm afraid of the great cataclysmic event (perhaps a slow cumulative process) that will teach us once and for all that no matter how hard humans try to override mother nature, she always wins.  You know how to roll with "not knowing", and Mama's sometimes harsh surprises. 

[Angela]

Always good to glimpse another world.

[Mike Handley]

What sermon? So what if you feel your world is preferable to asphalt? You're more a real estate saleswoman than a preacher. Keep painting those brochures, lady.