9/5/14, Day 14,003 (Mercena Day 21): Mercena Week Three
How we count life:
First in days,
Then in weeks,
Then months,
Then years,
Decades and anniversaries;
Then, near the end, months again,
Weeks, days, hours,
A moment;
Then, at last, a life.
Of course, that’s if you’e not a weirdo like me who also counts the days everyday. But, as we celebrate her third week yesterday, and my parents’ 45th anniversary today, counting life is especially on my mind.
(Sidebar: as sincere and sentimental as the poem is above, I also can’t help but hear my ridiculous Fluxers belting Seasons of Love in sweet mockery.)
And of course again, having a child prompts all of us to feel the whole of it in the present (exhausted) moment, and ask again how to hold it, measure it (if such a thing can be measured), carry it forward and hand it off in better shape or at least not too badly broken to those who come after; and I am thinking again of To The Lighthouse, the book I carried with me as I skipped my college graduation and wandered:
“…the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularize itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs Ramsay saying, ‘Life stand still here’; Mrs Ramsay making of the moment something permanent…”
I just read that passage to her as she squirmed out of a sleep next to me, making this day her first encounter with Virginia Woolf, though with me as her Dad, definitely not her last.
Yesterday was also hard: she was fussy most of the day and night. We had an oasis of a Skype chat with our dear friend Tiffany, and an aborted stroller trip that began well before spiraling into her worst meltdown yet.
I put in another hour plus of work at TCG, and am now up to page 45 with KD and The Band. I do believe I’ll be able to finish it before I return to work, which would be marvelous.
Technique never stands still: it only advances or retreats…
Writing: 136 out of 172 days (KD and The Band)
Spanish: 127 out of 172 days
Music: 40 out of 77 days
What small things did I do yesterday to help build the Honeycomb?
(And what does it mean to “Help build the honeycomb?”)
- Ate and cooked local, organic, vegetarian food, and used cloth diapers for Mercena;
- Emailed WDFW’s Phil Andersen to request the kill order be rescinded for the Huckleberry wolf pack;
- Asked the FWS to withdraw the rule that allows developers to kill bald eagles;
- Asked FERC to reject the Algonquin Pipeline Expansion;
- Voted on my U.N. priorities;.
Corinna Schulenburg 
Love!