Once again I start a post without a clue. A Wednesday, just after I quit on the last posting.
Now it is exactly 4:18 a.m., and I know because I have an atomic clock that fascinates me no end. Actually I have 4 of them, all purchased from Sharper Image. It is also October 17, 2017, "martes," since it is set to give me the day in Spanish. I like to have to think about the day a bit. What is truly interesting is to set two atomic clocks side by side and note that the faces reveal exactly the same information, second by second. I just purchased the next two and haven't set them up yet.
Now, I am so out of touch with the behavior of this culture and its possibilities that I did not think to take a photo. With a photo I could have held on to the moment and to the little visitor, for as long as I wished. It began like this.
I was sitting at my new desk in my new study at around 3 a.m. , when Frollie started to bark. Since she kept it up for a bit, I got up to see whether she was responding to something only she could see or sense or imagine. She's an old dog just as I am an old man. People are easily misled; our senses cause us to falter, well, at least mine do. I went into the hallway, turned on the hall light, saw nothing out of the ordinary. I turned on more lights, looked out the back door, nothing moving. I cautioned Frollie, read her her rights and went back into my study. If Mary was awake by this time she didn't say anything, always something to be grateful for.
No sooner had I sat down than the barking started again, only Frollie was joined by the dachshund bookends, Simon and Schuster. All were in the hallway leading to the front balcony, intently focused on the corner close to the door. There was the foul smell of strange poop in the air. (I am an expert in identifying dog poop; I have picked up enough of it for several lifetimes.) This was foreign poop. since the dogs were concentrated on the corner, I astutely reasoned that they had found something like a mouse to harass in the middle of the night, or rather morning. When I pushed my way past Frollie, Simon and Schuster, I found no mouse but, shock and awe, a baby possum scrunched down against the wall with nowhere to run. By this time Mary was up and coming at us.
Of course, the terrified little creature had also pooped in the corner and the three dogs were valiantly trying to get at it, especially Simon who is a real creature killer, hunter, tracker and so on. (Several days ago he found a rather good sized turtle in the deep backyard; Mary had to rescue it. I seem to remember having recounted his struggle to get at the larger possum who had taken refuge under, way under the toolshed.) This time the wall and the corner worked to our advantage. Mary got two cardboard boxes from the garage, and we used one of these to block off the dachshunds who were actually behaving in a fairly reasonable manner, for dachshunds. She got the baby possum into the other one and took box and possum to the hall bathroom, and closed the door.
Then she and I cleaned up the possum poop, very small and very smelly, and a trail of water and saliva in the hall, evidence that the large beagle, Dexter, had joined the excitement. It took a while for him to get involved since he is fairly deaf and obviously had not heard the earlier commotion. Once the various messes were cleaned up, we came back to the bathroom. Of course the possum had climbed out of the box and was sitting on the edge. That would have made a great picture, and he was so darn cute sitting there! Ah Well! I put him back in the box, and we decided that I would release him in the front yard. Which I did. At this point he had begun to seem like one of my own creatures or kids even. Watch out for cars little guy (the last I saw he was going down the yard toward the street) and big snakes, and Dusty the outdoors cat who was, fortunately for the possum, spending the night in our guest room, and the backyard dogs. The possum was very small and very vulnerable.
Well, it is now 5: 17: 34 a.m. so I shall only mention that while we were figuring where exactly to turn the little guy loose, one of the dachshunds had gone into the hall bath and soaked the rug where the box was sitting. We both know that it must have been Simon the determined. "If I can't have it, at least I can mark the spot, flood it actually." Mary was not happy.
Two days later, 2: 36: 40 a.m. I have looked around the yard and up and down Fairway but have found no dead little possum, for which I am very grateful. Of course the central mystery remains: how on earth in this magnificent cosmos did a very young possum get upstairs in our house. A mystery, certainly. If a dog had brought him in there would have been a ruckus that the possum would never have survived. My best guess is that since Tuesday is garbage pick-up, I take the garbage and recyclables down to the street Monday evening. In doing so, I leave the garage door open while I am transporting the stuff. The little possum could have wandered into the garage then.
Next, when I clean the cat box (yuck), I prop the garage door open because the Vivint security system lets the world know every time a particular door is being opened: "garage door." Hearing the feminine robo voice once is grating, but the chore requires various trips back and forth from the laundry room, where we keep the cat box, to the garage. Cat poop is worse than possum poop and dog poop. Suddenly I seem to up to my ankles in the stuff. The cat box has a roof over it, and, given the smell, Pinkie is one brave creature for crawling in there every time she has to pee and poop. After all, one dropped load from her rear can stink up the entire downstairs. Anyway, open garage door, open house door. The only other mystery surrounding this incident, if he came in that way, is how did he survive in the house that long without any one of the five creatures sussing him out? And, if he came in that way, he would also have had to negotiate the stairs. Thirteen carpeted steps. Perhaps Frollie barked the first time because she heard him climbing up. Yet there is a board across the top of the stairs to keep the dogs from rushing down every time someone rings the doorbell.
Well, we have had mice upstairs in the past, who did not endure long, but not a mouse. Not a mouse tonight.
It is now October 21, 2017 at 3: 13: 27 a.m. And I am back again. I was just standing in the kitchen eating a slice of Walmart's lovely provolone cheese, green label, which means no smoking flavor added! For smoking flavor you buy the brown label. With the cheese I had an expensive honeycrisp apple. I mention the cost because these are the most expensive apples available around this part of the cosmos. $2.47 a pound when I bought these last Saturday night; I have paid over 3.50 a pound for them in the past, at Walmart. But they are so delicious. Last Saturday their bins were full and I bought 3 bags full. I love fruit. Apples, raspberries, blueberries, bananas, mangoes, etc. I was thinking about God's pronouncement in Genesis that the new creation was good, unambiguously good. Then he made us and we were good, but then the ship sank. Eve listened to the serpent, did what she wanted to do and plucked the fruit. Only one prohibition in the entire cosmos but she disobeyed, humanity disobeyed, did what it wanted to do, be free from God; thus it exercised its very real freedom that God had given to us, in the garden; as Augustine said, we were free in the garden to sin or not to sin. Once we had acted, sinned, we were no longer free not to sin. One thing that is absolutely clear to me is that we are not what we ought to be; we are truly fallen creatures; as some theologian has famously said, there was an ontological tragedy in our distant past. But we or I keep getting glimpses of that underlying goodness, such as with the apple and the cheese.
Such as with the terrified baby possum, a kind of reverse glimpse of the goodness gone. Sentimentality aside, being is good. The baby possum was "cute" (the sentimental response); but underlying that, the baby possum was also good; his being was also a manifestation of God's creativity and continuing presence in the universe, in and behind the universe, perhaps. Possums tend to grow up ugly to our eyes, yet the baby was delicately made, especially when I saw him perched on the edge of the box.
This time it is now 4 a.m. And even though the sky is clear and Orion is up, I think I will forego the opportunity to see a fiery, glorious, meteor streaking across the sky. There is goodness too in the underlying sense. I seem to have acquired a double vision this morning. Perhaps, if I write long enough I may learn something. Everything that is, sooner or later, points to its source, one way or another: apples, a baby possum, dust from a passing comet. Goodness