This post is from February 2014. I just ran across it today. I was working on it while trying to learn how to blog. Still learning! It seems ages ago but it was just last winter, when it was so bitterly, horribly cold for many many weeks. My world collapsed a month later in March when someone who means the world to me almost died. Everything stopped. Then a miracle and they survived! Found this draft today, a very bitterly cold and windy day…. my feet and legs still cold from coming in over an hour ago. Decided to post this anyway nine months later.

Written February 2014
A grey mild day, the kind I like which means not subzero freezing like last week, or was it two weeks ago? Those blue sky sunny days are the worst. That’s when it’s usually twenty below zero. I don’t need the Vitamin D.

So still in robe. Trying more discipline. Get up. Don’t get dressed. No makeup. If you die this morning and are found dirty, disheveled, makeup less, white tongued and smelly. Who cares. You won’t.

You just need to write. Go straight to computer and write. Doesn’t work today, need coffee first. One for waking up and one for tasting. Then sit in chair and think. Pray. I pray in the mornings, but not before coffee.

That’s terrible I know. But I’d rather be awake when I’m praying.

Finally wrote for two hours. One hour first. Then a short break. Lazy!!!

Have been reading about Phillip Seymour Hoffman last few days, and watching clips of movies he was in. Reading every morbid little detail, and that feels wrong. He was a great actor and like many people I felt extremely sad hearing about his death. I didn’t know him at all– just his movies and his compelling and mesmerizing portrayals. All his characters were so believable and hit you in the gut. You can’t take your eyes off the screen when he’s on. Sometimes you want to because it’s too real and too raw and you recognize yourself sometimes. The ugly, vulnerable and hurt self that plods along.

So googling all day about him and heroin and wanting not to but can’t seem to stop.

Had breakfast, or rather lunch at 12 or so and back to writing. Just one hour. Then had a peanut butter and rhubarb jelly sandwich. Not really hungry but writing is too hard. Now I have acid reflux really bad.

Still grey and mild out but air looks heavy with more snow— we are getting another two or three inches. Suddenly I saw something in my tree outside– a robin!

There it was perched in the European Ash tree (which unfortunately is dying– it is also sprouting weird beige mushrooms on its branches.)
How early for robins! I used to only see them around March. How did it survive the last few weeks? Especially the days and nights of twenty below zero temps?

This robin looked very young. Its body was about the size of a tennis ball. It was standing up on those thin long needle legs. Its breast was bright orange and its bottom feathers were very white like snow. This bird looked so new, like someone just made it. The black markings on it looked like calligraphy. Everything about it like a Durer engraving. Then as I watched it started to move its eyes and look around and suddenly it just got up like a ballerina stretching. It stretched and stretched and was standing up like a person peering at something. And it seemed to be listening, maybe already hearing the call of another bird or mate. Then quick as a blink it flew off into the bushes farther from the house. What a miracle. All the writing in the world right now was not as magical as that little robin.