Patch Of Blue Sky

Tiny patch of blue sky I spot through the black tail feathers of Louise, lame crow to whom we toss peanuts every day. There’s a hole in her tail feathers where (according to my theory) she reaches round to fuss with her bad leg. We see her every day now. Soon as we get to the top of Highland or anywhere around Ward Street she appears. She must recognize our voices. Athena keeps sneezing. I change the litter in the litterbox. The Costco litter is extremely dusty. We refill the litterbox with another less dusty brand. It’s rather alarming to discover the number of reasons that cats sneeze. I’ve named the two women apartment-sitting upstairs Emily and Charlotte Brontosaurus. They’re extremely heavy on their feet. The pharmacy lamp by my writing desk chatters when I turn it on. This both irritates and amuses me. I talked to a crow today while she pecked at her peanut. She seemed to enjoy having me watch her eat. The females have sleek heads. The males have round heads. Intense burst of sugar as a Reese peanut butter cup melts in the mouth. Imagine being stunned and incapacitated by the jaywalk of a phylum. The paintings have changed at The Fountainhead Gallery. The still life by Sandra Power of a bowl and pitcher and a glass of water rendered in the manner of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin is gone. R and I like this painting quite a lot. If I had the money I’d buy it, though I might put in a request to have the small shadow under the handle of the ladle resting on the edge of the bowl painted out or redone so that the shadow is consistent with the source of light. It’s very incongruous, as if it were added later to give stronger effect to the weight of the ladle and the illusion of it resting there. Sudden fragrance of rock daphne at the corner of Galer and Willard Avenue West. If this odor had a sound what would it be a Picardy third or a bell? Gaston Bachelard liked to fantasize about bell towers and living in a world of steps and ladders. Bell towers are old and spectacular places resonating in history. The world’s earliest bells, it turns out, date from the 3^rd millennium BC. Their origins have been traced to the Yangshao culture of Neolithic China, and were made of clay. The earliest metal bells have been dated to 2000 BC. I like the way the bells sound in Iggy Pop’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” “The Bells of Strasbourg Cathedral” is a cantata composed by Franz Liszt between 1868 and 1874. The lyrics were taken from the prologue to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Golden Legend.” Church bells are the loudest musical instrument in the world. I don’t know what got me thinking about bells. Oh yeah. Gaston Bachelard. He called the ascension to the bell tower in Strasbourg Cathedral brusquely inhumane. When you near the summit the columns disappear and there you are, faced with the void.