Sunset with Solitary Crow

I had great plans for this day but woke with a crushing migraine that did not respond to medication, so the day has been pretty much a wash-out, but for three things.

1) The blip by Melisseus today says just how I feel about this season of excess, indulgence, extravagance, and nostalgia. Here’s to childhood magic.

2) I listened to Joan Armatrading’s new album on Apple Music. Her songs are part of the soundscape of my youth, and here she is, 74 years old and releasing a new album of original work in which she is the lead singer and all the vocalists, and she plays all the instruments. Truly a one-woman show. Awe-inspiring. My favorite song in this album is “Irresistible.”

3) In the spirit of nostalgia, I sought out again the book from my childhood on which I imprinted: “The Cat That Walked by Himself.” I loved that story before I knew Kipling was a white supremacist colonizer, and before I understood that I was a she, not a he. I was a quiet non-binary child being reared by grandparents, isolated from other children by my illegitimacy, left to fend for myself in the back yard with a basset hound for company. These lines (pronouns adjusted) at the end of the story vibrated in my four-year-old heart: 

She is the cat that walks by herself, and all places are alike to her. Then she goes out to the Wet Wild Woods or up the Wet Wild Trees or on the Wet Wild Roofs, waving her tail and walking by her wild lone.

I have learned to share my solitude with Sue, who shares hers with me, but we love living separately and spending much of our time walking by our wild lone. At 3:30 pm on almost-the-shortest-day-of-the-year I went to the end of the building where I live and made several photos of crows and the sunset, and I’ve chosen the one that resonates with that story from my childhood.