monkey mind

What looks like a bunch of cut white yarn is the frost on my car's windshield this morning. We're still waiting for The Storm. Yesterday winds reached 50-60 mph here and 88 in Albuquerque (140 miles away). We hear that Utah and northern CA also had extreme high winds. But no snow. The weather people were so sure of themselves that the Taos schools had a two-hour delay this morning. Not one snowflake fell. Hot sun streams into the house as I write, the magpies are making a racket, it's cold outside, and there's food, books and yarn in the house.

big ball report and closing of doors
     I finished and delivered the hand warmers so quickly that I didn't get to take a picture. But the giant melon-sized ball of yarn yielded a gorgeous pair and there's enough left to outfit a village.
     A three-decades friend is moving to Sante Fe in a couple of days and I feel that an era is ending. We two couples moved to Taos from Connecticut around the same time 22 years ago. One of us passed on and then there were three. Now he's moving away. And then there were two. Not so very far in actual miles, but light years in other kinds of distance. But so goes my life. Re-reading Joan Didion's Blue Nights keeps me musing on the subject. An incident in my doctor's office this morning where I went for a flu shot caused me to describe myself to him as "an impatient old lady" - he countered "first of all you don't look old (xo) and you just don't suffer fools anymore." Now that's good medicine.

a day in the life of Taos taken yesterday in the wild wind

"In our time, the struggle between old and new
will reach it's crescendo. It's not over yet, and 
we carry scars of this struggle in our hearts."
                 Thich Nhat Hanh