Pretties

I've spent this weekend popping on and off chimera_fancies's journal in an effort to gift myself with pretties that she makes. I have successfully done this. These are beautiful, and I'm eager to get them into my hands-- and inspired-feeling.

If I had the time I'd make a set of leaf mail with lines from TS Eliot's The Waste Land enameled on each scale so the whole suit was the poem.

Juggler has a silk-screening kit that I might play with some. I should set up my sewing machine. I will have all this incredible weekend time-- well, it feels like all this time, really it should be exam-studying time, but if I collect my inspirations now I can attend to them over Christmas.

Today has been lovely and relaxed and domestic. This whole weekend has been relaxed. Today was the day where I cooked and cleaned in procrastination on my homework-- as a result I 'pulled' a chicken (Angus' suggestion-- pulled pork but with a chicken. Lotta food!), boiled the stock I was going to make risotto with dry and ruined it, started an apple-cinnamon-wildrice dressing, and assembled five meals for the fridge in addition to dinner.

I really do need to make my map for surveying though. Pre-final tutorial's tuesday.

I miss making pretty things. Most of that energy has been going into fancy dress-up, but somethign more enduring is likely in order. I just don't like making nonfunctional objects lately-- I'd do a teapot or a jingly belt but not something to put on the wall.

Too Long

...since I was a conduit for a poem. I read so many good ones but haven't had time...

Not a Sparrow

Just when I think the Buddhists
are wrong and life is not mostly suffering,
I find a dead finch near the feeder.
How sullen, how free of regret, this death
that sinks worlds. I bury her near
the bicycle shed and return to care for
my aged mother, whose suffering
is such oxygen we do not consider it,
meaning life at any point exceeds
the price. A little more. A little more.

That same afternoon, having restored balance,
I discover a junco fallen on its back, beak
to air, rain pelting the prospect. Does
my feeder tempt flight through windows?
And, despite evidence, do some
accomplish it?

Digging a hole for the second bird, I find
the first gone. If I don’t think “raccoons”
or “dogs,” I can have a quiet, unwitnessed
miracle. Not a feather remains.
In goes the junco. I swipe earth over it,
set a pot on top. Time
to admit the limitations of death as
admonition.

Still, two dead birds in an afternoon
lets strange sky into the mind: birds flying
through windows, flying through
earth. Suffering must be like that too: equipped
with inexplicable escapes where the mind
watches the hand level dirt over the emptied grave
and, overpowered by the idea of wings,
keeps right on flying

- Tess Gallagher

Walden Pond! Ha! Math Assignment.

21 November 2010

Environmental Services Technician

Highland Valley Copper (COMINCO)

Box 1500

Logan Lake BC

V0K 1W0

Dear Ms. Erin P:

Request for Information to Support our Habitat Conservation Project Proposal

As COMINCO has now granted our Federation access to the Highland Valley site, and permission to correspond directly with you, we would like your assistance so that we can complete our HCF proposal by deadline.

Projects funded by the Habitat Conservation Trust Fund are accepted on the basis of 1, 2, 3, or 4-year durations. When we submit our finalized Reclamation and Stocking of Walden Pond with Rainbow Trout proposal we must assign a definite project length to it.

As we understand from your Geologist, Walden Pond, an exhausted open quarry pit, will gradually fill with rainfall and rain runoff, and that earlier rock and earth “berms” have been removed from its circumference.

Our Federation’s individual clubs plan to regenerate riparian and aquatic vegetation, but we require your help to determine two hydrologic factors that will decide our project length:

(1.) The length of time required for Walden Pond to fill to the desired depth (see enclosure) from only natural rainfall and rain runoff.

(2.) The presumably shorter time required to fill the pond to the desired depth if the nearby unnamed creek were to be diverted into the pond. (For this scenario we would apply for a Ministry permit to divert).

As the Federation’s volunteer biologist, I have been assigned to correspond with you on behalf of the Federation and its President, Stephen Carper. Please provide me with a letter outlining the basic answers to these questions, with data and calculation sheets attached, and please ‘copy’ our President on the letter only.

As soon as our Federation decides on the project’s length, and has submitted the project proposal to the HCF (their deadline is 1 April 2009), I shall write to you again to schedule site reconnaissance visits by our members.

I look forward to receiving your reply by 8th December 2010.

Sincerely,

Roberto Shorto

Pond Data:

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