Blood on the Floor

Wednesday was a day like every other. Absolutely nothing of note happened in Pinecone Park or in my mind. The one exciting thing of the day was finding a bloom on a bush I planted five years ago but that has never ever bloomed before.

Thursday was a much more interesting day. Her Highness and I took a nice long walk together to get the day started, and then I came home to do some yard work. It wasn’t a beautiful sunny day, but it wasn’t raining, and the sky was grey but bright. I was glad to get more yard tidying done. This time, in the backyard.

Following the work, it was lunch time, and after lunch I just chilled until it was time to head off to Gabriola Automotive to have my oil changed. And while they did that, Sheba and I walked together for an hour and a half. We visited Malaspina Galleries (a natural rock formation on the shore of the island, and we walked through Haven Woods for the first time. Then it was back to Pinecone Park to chill, eat and relax with a bone for her, a lovely warm fire and television for me.

 

Yesterday morning, after resting in bed awake for half-an-hour, I got up, and as I was dressing, I said to myself: Well, I didn’t die last night.

I don’t feel consciously responsible for generating that thought. Thoughts like that one come out of nowhere. Does it come from the same place as dreams? The subconscious? God? I’m kidding. Later in the day, I found myself thinking about my death. I thought: Oh, I should get my affairs sorted. And then I thought: No, wait a minute, it won’t be my problem if I don’t.

I pondered the probability of dying alone. It is, after all, the theme of my life. And that’s not self-pity, I think it’s factual. And then I wondered again about the message from nowhere. Have I crossed a threshold, I wondered. Am I going to die soon? When I read a good book, as I get close to the end, I often have found myself wishing there was more.

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Pinecone Park looks beautiful, with its raw surface. It’s green, and that’s all that matters to me. It may last a couple of months, and then it all turns to a matted dry surface, or dust. It’s brown. The Ocean Spray is covered in freckles of bright green. Come the end of Spring, it will fill the air with its sweet, sweet smell all over the island on a good year. And the Japanese Maples—I have 5 of them—have buds like drops of purple dew all over them. And the purple Rhodo buds are opening already. Spring is such an intoxicating season.

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I saw an interview with someone on YouTube; I can’t remember who it was, however, but there was part of it that I loved. Whoever it was brought up some examples of our language that confounded him. One example: She said that we can be underwhelmed and overwhelmed but not whelmed. And: We can be disheveled, but not sheveled; we can be ruthless, but not ruth. These quirks of our language fascinate me.

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This morning, I was distressed to come into the kitchen to find several large round drops of dried blood on the kitchen floor. Oh no, I thought, I will have to inspect all the animals carefully. But a several minutes later, coming in from the shed with wood to start a fire, I found a dead mouse on the carpet. 

Look at the rope; all from one piece of marble!