The infamous March winds are blowing today and I, for one, am ready to be blown away. Perhaps metaphorically, maybe even physically. So do your best, winds. Take me with you, wherever you’re headed…north, south, east, west…direction is of no real consequence.

I accomplished one small task in the house yesterday and it felt good. In fact, for the minimal time investment required, I expect to reap returns in spades.

I cannot continue allowing myself to live with the mediocre. I’m not a good person to be a homeowner because in general I do not enjoy doing the little (and big) things needed to make a house into a home. While I am (fairly) competent with tools and such, I am much more at ease with ideas, the vague, the blurry, the inconclusive, the shape of that cloud, the feel of this long grass on my fingertips…you get the picture. In order to facilitate a centering around these things I require Spartan surroundings. The less stuff there is around me, the calmer I feel and consequently, the easier it is to slip into the dream-world, where I live at least half the time anyway.

I am often at odds with my environment. It’s absurd that I live in a city, for cities overflow with the ugly, the extraneous, the superfluous. There’s all this stuff around me that I don’t need or want to see, with rare exceptions, such as the following, recently spotted in my neighborhood during an afternoon dog walk:

Yes, you can believe your eyes: it is indeed a scrap metal armadillo. Perhaps I need to seek out and befriend its handler. Perhaps this person is some sort of shaman, willing to lead me on a vision quest. Maybe the armadillo is the talisman and I will touch it, fall asleep and awake in some leafy glade in Middle Earth.