I gave Blossom a stupidly large pile of turkey tonight and watched him for a while. He gave me a look that seemed grateful, but I couldn’t help feeling sad for him; the one who spawned him living domesticated on the other side of the glass, his only real friend, his brother, gone and probably dead. So bereft, the other yard cats little more than competitors or annoyances.

Yet his soul burns beautifully wild still, for just a little while longer. I take a measured hope in that.

***

I wanted to make a single master list. But really there are at least two. The daily ritual one is a checklist now, a way to monitor my comportment with my own ideals throughout the day.

The other is more like the master list I had in mind. It has compartments for the big world outside, and for the important things that live in my yard, like vehicles and what needs to be done on them. Then it has more compartments that start at the front door, for the front room, bed room, bath room, kitchen, and all the little piles in between. And finally one more set for more abstract things, centered around the life of the mind and ultimately this computer. Bills to pay. Stories to write and videos to film. Useless distractions, like football schedules and politics, shunted off onto text file reservations where their harm can be minimized.

There are ambitions in all the parts that are stalled for money or time or both. Get the ignition on the pickup fixed (could I do it myself?). Finish off the remodel of the bathroom with flooring (yes I can). But more importantly: how to bring the monthly expenditure as close as possible to zero. Maybe having the money then, to obtain the perfect minimalist rolling home of an ALiner trailer, even maybe the tens of thousands it would take to set up a permanent base on the Silver land.

Do, you know, something seriously nice, for my self.

Smoke signals in the wind. Loop back to this day, mijo, I murmur in my self-reparenting voice. Where are you walking today? Has the sick cat been medicated? Did you do your situps yet to keep shrinking that civilized gut?

How do I change the things I can change, and how can I let go of the things I can’t, like some semi–buddhist version of a witless twelve-stepper?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

Unless I remember the two or three hundred milligrams of magnesium … and oh, do I need to refill on that shit?

So it goes.

On good days the loop is a thermal spiral, and I glide on it like a grizzled raptor. Other days, well let me tell you, I don’t have to tell you–you know how it is.