Poetry Day

I'm still not feeling great so no adventures but here's a poem for today!

Living in Sin

She had thought the studio would keep itself;
no dust upon the furniture of love.
Half heresy, to wish the taps less vocal,
the panes relieved of grime. A plate of pears,
a piano with a Persian shawl, a cat
stalking the picturesque amusing mouse
had risen at his urging.
Not that at five each separate stair would writhe
under the milkman's tramp; that morning light
so coldly would delineate the scraps
of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;
that on the kitchen shelf among the saucers
a pair of beetle-eyes would fix her own--
envoy from some village in the moldings...
Meanwhile, he, with a yawn,
sounded a dozen notes upon the keyboard,
declared it out of tune, shrugged at the mirror,
rubbed at his beard, went out for cigarettes;
while she, jeered by the minor demons,
pulled back the sheets and made the bed and found
a towel to dust the table-top,
and let the coffee-pot boil over on the stove.
By evening she was back in love again,
though not so wholly but throughout the night
she woke sometimes to feel the daylight coming
like a relentless milkman up the stairs.

Adrienne Rich

Musical Monday

Silent Sunday

Scratching posts & catnip

My cats have 2 small scratching posts and a cat tree. When I moved I was going to bring the cat tree but for various reasons it hasn't ended up here yet. It, along with their small posts, are in a storage shed in the Bay Area right now. Don't worry that they have been deprived of an appropriate place to scratch though, they've made good use of my wicker baskets and couch. I decided yesterday that I needed to get something for them in order to salvage baskets & couch. Figuring it was cheaper to buy something small here rather than drive 200 miles round-trip, I bought a small cardboard scratching box today at PetSmart. It came with a small bag of catnip which I sprinkled on the scratcher. As you can see from the pictures, Pippin loved it! I sprinkled a little catnip on the blanket also which is why he's ecstatically rolling around there. So far Mellifera has ignored it but I think eventually she'll be out here - she loves catnip also. As you can see from the last picture, he hasn't lost interest in the basket. Oh well, I didn't really think it would work.

A few leaves

I'm feeling better but still kind of tired so I haven't been doing much. I did take a couple of pictures of huge piles of leaves in front of my apartment! I don't know why the leaves fascinate me so much!

Wordle from Emily Dickinson Poem

Update

Well I haven't lost interest in exploring Sacramento or picture-taking, I've just been sitting at home miserable for the last few days with a cold. Hopefully I'll feel well enough tomorrow to go out for a short walk but the last couple of days the only pictures would be of me sneezing and coughing. Not really worth looking at!

NaNoWriMo update: I didn't meet the goal which was to write a 175-page novel by midnight, November 30. But I did do a lot more writing than I would have if I hadn't joined so overall I'm happy that I did it. I'm going to keep working on what I started and maybe someday share part of it here!