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Saturday, August 20, 2005 [continued from previous post] So, yeah, a good day. And real damn interesting in a way I hadn't anticipated. To wit: I've passed this summer in fairly solitary fashion -- me, here at the house, out in the country, surrounded by extreme beauty, floating through my days doing whatever needs to be done. And as just about any homeowner knows, once you have a house/land to take care of you can find work needing to be done any time you're in the mood to get busy. Add what might loosely be called business-related work to that, it's produced a summer that's kept me well occupied, between one thing and another. Essentially alone during the days spent here (not counting phone/email contact, occasional trips to town). Which has been just fine with me -- balancing out months spent in Madrid, in the middle of densely concentrated humanity. All of a sudden, friends show up -- people equipped with furry, four-legged adjuncts -- and I'm not alone in the space any more. I get to see my way of living contrasted with how other humans carry on here, and when one spends a lot of time on one's own, one develops ways of living, of doing things. Watching someone else here doing things their way provides the opportunity to observe me noting and reacting. Noting where I get the impulse (or not) to impose a way of doing things. Good information. And the first day had some bumpy moments along the way. Not, I hope, excessively bumpy. Not the kind of bumpy that gets friends running the other way, I hope. Informative. Entertaining. (Nighttime hours featured the pitter-patter of kitty feet as they did the nocturnal exploration thing, now and then slowing by the door to my bedroom, peering in at the strange human in bed there before running off for further snooping around.) Next day: much better, me having adjusted to sharing the space with other beings. Independent, well-intentioned beings I liked having here. Another morning of food, talk, waking up slowly. Whole different kind of day going on outside -- gray, cool, rainy. Nowhere near as user-friendly, though good for the Earth and all that. (Grumble, grumble.) The kind of weather that gets me ready to curl up with a book or something good playing on the idiot box. Went out for a hike in the woods with S., up into the woods across the road, along the series of paths that wind through the local hills. Paths apparently little traveled this year -- overgrown, with detours due to a couple of downed trees. Everything damp, soaking pants and hiking boots in no time flat. With many hungry mosquitoes about looking for a donation. I returned home within an hour, leaving S. to continue on solo for a while. Found myself with the desire to get the TV cranked, shove something into the DVD player. Managed to mostly stave it off until after lunch and friends' departure. At which time the tube went on. And stayed on. Reminding me all over again of television's time machine aspect: crank it up, suddenly it's hours later. How I sometimes react to intense bouts of time spent with other people: an immediate post-socializing immersion in book, computer, television (and/or food). Decompression, sometimes lasting quite a while. Monday: Another round of hacking/digging away in the garden, like every Monday morning for the past month. Becoming less and less diverting with time. More like, er, suffering, penance, something along those lines. Not the way I prefer to live. Think I might be reaching the end of that kind of activity for this year. After that, the traditional August cold snap settled into these parts. Days pretty, nights real damn cool. Temperature at 7 a.m.: 40 degrees. Couple of days worth of that, just to remind us of where we are and what lurks not too far off in the future. Last couple of days, that eased up, summer more or less edged its way back in. Gray, damp, but milder. Tonight, my uphill neighbors -- the local writing celebrities -- throw their annual 'neighborhood' party, an excuse for the six households scattered around this hill to get together, eat, drink, carry on. Probably provide all sorts of wholesome entertainment. Later. Madrid, te echo de menos. rws 5:09 PM [+]
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