I like it when The Shrew visits me on weekends because we can just go to our tent and sit on moss together. She really is lovely company once I get her settled in from her long trip.

The Shrew is back. This explains a lot.

"We are entering the howling waste but we are armed...With our hearts that are targets and shields, with our skulls that collect the dew! Mystics in the Wilderness!" - grille

The High Times Will Come Again.

Mein liebster feind

Though my week felt uncomfortable and unsettled, my weekend has been very nice. There have been some important milestones since I came back here. For one thing, I harvested and ate my first wild mushroom all on my own, and it was only about a half a mile from my doorstep! It was a lovely lobster mushroom, poking its fiery tail out of the dark earth at me. I made two batches of fruit kimchi. Moonshine is getting happily settled here - he likes to watch birds. And I have been through one week of school. It often feels like a frenzy of information exposure, but hopefully I will learn to organize it well.

Yesterday I spent some time walking around good old White River Junction, probably tied with Fellow's Balls as my favorite VT town. There is a new all ages pool hall and the man in charge, in faded yellow suspenders decorated with tools, spent a long time showing me around the place. They have Atari arcade games and a player piano and their flyers say, "White River Junction - An Oasis in the Crumbing Empire." Then I stopped by the Center for Cartoon Studies but it was closed so I went to the COVER store which is like a thrift store and found a little present for one of my Jophet-flowers, the Bomb in Gilead one. Next, I went to the clothing store and donated a fur lined wool coat made in Pampa, Texas that had been given to me by the original owner, herself in Pampa bred and born and bred. They should be able to fetch a pretty penny for it. Then I went to the yoga studio and found myself behind a two children and a man. He said, "Is she in there? Is it this way? All right, I'll follow you." and the little ones wended their way down corridors and around corners until they saw a woman behind a desk. They all lit up when they saw each other and ran into each others' arms. The woman was so happy it almost seemed like she would cry with joy. She said, "I didn't think I would get to see you!" All of these things made me feel very very good about the town.

Later I watched My Best Fiend. So much integrity, alongside the most intense open childlike mad driving desire for love. There is something about the people who are trusted by butterflies.

Mount Moosilauke, 4802 ft

Off to a good start.

The orientation session that is going on right now is a presentation about disability insurance in which, to warm up the crowd, the sales reps showed photographs of famous people with disabilities and asked us to identify each celebrity's name and disability. I'm proud to say that I won a water bottle for correctly identifying Larry Flynt.

"Rachel?? We are just so fucked up on the internet! Put that on your blog, why don't you? Or are you trying to avoid using the f-word? OK, I'm checking my email...I have no new messages...that is just so devastating to my self-esteem..."
- Abel Santamaria

When I pulled up into the driveway on Rand Road, I accidentally locked the keys in the car in a way you can only do with cars that lock automatically. I locked my phone and wallet in there with them, but somehow was lucky enough to have placed my shoes outside the car before shutting the door, or I'd have had to show up barefoot to the funeral. I wandered through the garden and saw someone rustling around by the pond. It turned out to be Jason. He put on some presentable clothes and we drove to the cemetery on the Old Concord Road, just across the road from where the Bennett boys place lilacs every Memorial Day. On the way over I used Jason's cell phone to call the mechanic, Danny's. He said he could go up and get my keys out of my car while we were at the funeral and leave an invoice there for me. So we parked in the cemetery and as we walked up to the small crowd we saw two cows pulling something behind them...Jason guessed they had pulled Shirl's casket up to its final resting place. People were placing flowers on it - lilies and wildflowers, zinnias and sunflowers. A Skip McKean fuel truck drove by. The religious figure presiding over the service said a short prayer and spoke of Shirl as an old friend. Then Morris Day, the well digger told the story of the time when he was ten and he borrowed Shirl's horse, Duchess, and walked her out on frozen Pleasant Pond, and when he came back and told Shirl what he had done, "Shirl kicked my ass, and that's the truth. That was the only time cross words were spoken between us." Then his nephew Tim/Mo spoke. He said Shirl always worked with them and taught them how to do things the old way. He said, "Whenever we were bringing hay in, he would leave some of it loose. I don't know about any of you, but I could get in a load of loose hay right now." He was followed by two of Shirl's great nieces. Then several people stood up and told stories about him. After it was all over, we went up and hugged Lucy. She asked me what I've been up to and said, "I have your letter! Shirl always saved it. He took a lot of pleasure out of it."

Back in Bloomsburg, feeling the ground shift beneath my point slippers. Everything feels familiar but strange at the same time - somehow its not very comforting that I recognize rivers and buildings, establishments and even people. Would it just feel even harder if I was anywhere else? Right now I'm looking out a window at a girl who was in my general chemistry class two years ago. And I'm also looking at the back of the head of long wavy black hair of a beautiful dancer who used to intimidate me (and still would if I gave her a chance). Some nice things have happened, like I told the young woman I was sitting next to today that I'll be gone tomorrow for a funeral, and she just leaned over and gave me a big hug. Also I made an instant friend - someone I just knew I could talk to even though we didn't know anything about each other. Then I found out hours later that she's a doula. Then there's the boy in the Caribou High School t-shirt - we had a nice long talk about Maine and then started a new table at the picnic. The director of anatomy came and sat with us and the table soon filled up and we talked about cadavers and their families and the memorial service we will hold for them. On my right was a boy from Southern California whose humility and sense of humor put me at ease.

But I feel a little lonely and I've been thinking about death - the sort of selfish callousness and detachment with which we keep living our lives when someone dies, especially if it is not someone from our innermost circle, not someone who can bring down all the walls. Shirl was tired - why should there be sorrow? I was crying for myself, not for him. But I've learned that my dream was not true. I'm not ready.

The Kind Land

Orientation started out exciting with a speech from Jim Kim, but it has quickly turned into a black hole of smiles and unnecessary well intentioned "information". Everyone is very welcoming, though, and I don't take that for granted. I just want to get the thing started anymore!

Yesterday Abel and I had a picnic of honey roasted peanuts, potato chips, and beer by the Tooky. As we were discussing all these important things in our lives, his mother called him to say that Shirl Davison has died.

"Hey, Shirl, did you ever ride a horse into Henniker?"
"Oh, sure, lot's of times!"

The night before he died I was with Sarah in South Portland where she taught me the song, In the Kind Land.

"They don't know the life we keep
They neither fish nor sow nor reap
And for them the land is cheap
In the kind land"

Highlights of the Evening

"Marat/Sade and Equus just left me unable to function after I watched them...and that's really what I'm looking for in a film."
- Zoe

"When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before."
- Mae West

"I'M READY TO DIE!"
- Lenya