2 deer

i watched 2 deer in the field outside my kitchen window this morning.  a calm came over me.  those are the moments it feels everything will be ok.   

i think of the book "the hidden life of deer".  i also think of the time i hit a deer with my car at almost midnight on the highway.  i was driving the exploder which, incidentally, i just sold for parts this weekend.  a car is just a hunk of metal but i drove it for close to 10 years and a lot can happen in 10 years.  so it's also a vehicle (punny) for memories.

hitting that deer was a turning point in my life.  maybe this is what would be a called a mild case of ptsd in common terms.  the event really hit me in my heart.  the physical and tactile experience is still so present for me...the feel of the night air and the fur of the animal, as if i had actually touched it.

beautiful animal

my son ethan and i went for a walk in the woods today.   we traveled from the old covered bridge and along the river away from town and toward the place i live now.  we ended up in a beautiful field.  the weather felt too warm for late november but it also felt too good to disagree with.  it's hunting season and as we crossed the steel bridge a pick up passed by with a small deer in the truck bed.   

The Beautiful Animal

BY GEOFFREY BROCK

By the time I recalled that it is also

terrifying, we had gone too far into

the charmed woods to return. It was then

the beautiful animal appeared in our path:

ribs jutting, moon-fed eyes moving

from me to you and back. If we show

none of the fear, it may tire of waiting

for the triggering flight, it may ask only

to lie between us and sleep, fur warm

on our skin, breath sweet on our necks

as it dreams of slaughter, as we dream

alternately of feeding and taming it

and of being the first to run. The woods

close tight around us, lying nested here

like spoons in a drawer of knives, to see

who wakes first, and from which dream.

...

house of woe

no kidding.  that's how i feel lately.  but i think i'm the classic weeble-wobble or one of those big blow up toys with the weigh at the bottom...you know, you punch it and it leans and then rights itself.  NO MATTER WHAT.  (well, until it pops.)  man, do they still sell those?  if not, they should. 

my car is in the shop (see deer accident) and i'm driving a rental corolla with louisiana plates.  it's making me talk with a southern drawl.  no kidding.  ok, not in public but once in awhile while i'm driving i think in my head in a slight lilt.  i'm very impressionable.

latest: i'm down to 8 hens.  if you didn't catch my tweets of late something, maybe a racoon, got into the henhouse 2 nights ago and killed 3 hens and my rooster.  boo.  my dog started freaking out, about 5 AM, and i ran outside to find something killing the rooster.  it was dark and i couldn't see what it was.  ran in and got a flashlight and by the time i got back the killer was gone.  but the back yard looked all armageddon.  feathers EVERYWHERE.   and not to gross you out (well, yes, to gross you out) the dead hens were strewn about and headless.  but that's it.  the d$@# racoon didn't even eat them or anything.  pisses me off most, really.

you should have seen me when i first realized what was happening.  i was all like screaming and running around like a crazy lady.  no, not really.  i was very calm and collected.  kind of like when i hit the deer and had to make sure not to get myself and passenger smooshed and get the car to stop without landing upside down or something.  so there's that.  i'm good in a crisis.

......

moving along, the pictures here are from the shelburne museum doll collection.  doll houses.  duh.  some of my favorite images from the trip.

and also, i just wanted to let you know that remodelista says i'm hip.  so it must be true.

stop laughing.

xx

me

dear deer

eventful.

this two-video post has been sitting around in draft form since yesterday morning.  after putting them on here and getting on with my day i proceeded to have a ......very......long......day.  and not in a good way.  i will spare you the details. 

however to give you a feel for the thing i will share with you the very end of it.

i was driving home at midnight which parenthetically is WAY past my bedtime.  i was about 5 minutes from my house on a smallish highway driving about 55 mph.  when i hit a deer. 

i'm tempted to describe the event to you in some detail because it was rather surreal.  not your usual everyday sort of thing.  all slow motion and swerving and trying not to do something like flip the car and end up in a ditch with flashing blue lights.  etc.

the deer was a pretty tawny thing with one of those dark sooty deer noses.  it was cold out but not too and as the deer lay there on the side of the road i could see the heat of it's body steaming up into the night.

at first i thought it was dead.  and i was relieved.  but then it became quite clear it was not. 

it took awhile for the police officer to show up with his shotgun.

so that is that friends.  maybe it has happened to you.  it had never happened to me.  but as i was falling asleep last night on the sofa after watching a part of the late show, which i don't think i have done for some 20-odd years.....i was thinking about the deer.  it was that moment when i first saw it right to the left of my car.  it was running.  and for a moment it just felt like me and the deer were running together.  me in my car and the deer on the pavement in the night.  running together.  it was a nice moment.  the dark, the headlights, the deer's rythmic running.