Primal, Animal, Portable

Margot's summer, inside and out:

I haven't been doing much work wise, but I did manage to rearrange my plants on the balcony where the napping pavillion was. It is complicated stuff and sometimes takes hours, because they like certain things...I repotted a sword fern, and rearranged everything so that it is private and cozy. Over the weekend I bought a 6x8 rug of astro turf for the front patio (no more splinters) the green color takes getting used to, but it's loads better than chaos!

I cannot recall if I told you about the hilarious meeting of bambis and Smoochie. That deer family was feeding in the back again and Smooch was interestedly watching, and worked her way closer and closer to the grass. By the time she got to the shrubs by the grass the deer were about 25 feet away. It was delicately taking a dump in the ivy, with its tail obscured in the leaves. Right then it noticed Smooch and bounded excitedly over to her. It was the young male, his antlers just starting to make bumps on his head (like those implants that were briefly de rigeur) and he bounced over to check her out, curious as perhaps a cat might be. At one point, he got too close, maybe 3 feet away, and Smooch jerked back, and he jumped back a tiny bit at the same moment, each unsure. It was pure Disney, until the young female came over to check things out and Smooch sauntered off, not wanting to appear outnumbered. She sat under a shrub and watched them from there. For my part, I snuck off to call Paul before I burst into laughter and scared everybody away.
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This morning, I had one of those recurring dreams that makes me want to check myself into a bakery for gateau therapy. Over the winter, I saw a Discovery Channel program about archaeology in the caves near the Dead Sea. Excavations at one site were very interesting but to my horror, workers had to crawl on their bellies through a long fissure in the rocks. The thought of the first desperate people through these fissures and the horror of unsuccessful searches for caves scared me silly. Since then, I have this dream over and over, with little variations here and there.

I am crawling through this tiny split to get to a place I have to go every day. The hole twists and bends and sometimes goes straight up and though I am tiny and barely fit, somehow people of all sizes and shapes greet me at the other end of my journey, in a wide-open space. This morning's variation: one of my young co-workers carried me upward through the narrow caves. It is completely impossible. And now the path is so well-worn there are cheesy metal handles.

Margot sends me sun-drenched idylls and I am wedged into the cold and dark.