The Rain Comes Down, the Birds Dont Come Round No More

Early buds coming out in the backyard.

Around 730pm I went for a walk. They said the rain is coming, big storm warning. My heart tightens. The birds have not been around in the longest time ever since I moved in here 10 years ago. I have been feeding them every single day--unless I am away--and now I have not seen them in like two three weeks. I miss them dearly. The song, being able to go to my bedroom to take a break, look out there and gain some sanity watching them eat. Seeing them at all. Hanging out in the cedar trees, on the laundry line, squabbling on the ground for food, pecking each other away at the feeder. Their sudden take-off if they heard a noise and then descending back down all a pretty flutter.

Print I was given to paint in.

The sadness I feel, the damp dread from the potential flooding again in the basement with the pending storm. It is physically the same part of this house. The flood happens in the basement where the cedar trees meet the house. My back bedroom window. It is a feeling like it is crumbling down.

The same way I feel inside. It feels auspicious. Portending an ending. I am at the end of my money. I do not see the way out. I believe there could be one, I have a glimmer of hope. In my deep feelings I am afraid and sad. I went for a walk, heading north instead of the eternal south on my walks around here. Lake Ontario is south from here. Walking there and back is a two hour gig and I dont always feel like doing a two hour walk, coming home too tired to do anything else.

I need to get in the bath or the shower but I sit in the dark typing my ragged heart. My cat is awake and sometimes brushes my knee. She is pouncing on something in the dark around me. Thunder sounds and Jazz 91.1 plays sad songs. I want the sad songs right now. My heart is a piece of origami and I am not sure how to handle this all.

Here is the finished painting. I used gouache paint.

I walk up a hill and see something white up ahead cross the road, dart across the road. It looks like a white dog. I see it on the other side of the road but it is not really moving. I think it cannot be a dog, a dog would not stay there like that. Someone would be walking it, it would be heading away from the road. Not crossing the road and staying right there on the other side.

As I approach I realize it is a large clear garbage bag. Empty and big enough that crumpled up it looks big and white. I look at it hoping it turns into a big white dog I could be momentary friends with. A white dog to take my blues away for a moment.

I walk north up a hill, down a hill and up a hill, turned around at Lambton Av and came back. I walked through the ravine on the way back. A tiny part of me wishing someone would snatch me and murder me so this aching fear would be over. I know I dont really want that at all.

A part of me is looking for a way to syphon off the pressure of what seems to be my reality. I trudge thinking "No one really believes in me, no one really wants to take a chance on me". No one who can.

It is not a pity feeling I feel for myself but a kind of out in the woods where it is wild.  I wish it was wild. I think of moving somewhere where corporate greed has not waved their greedy gloves all over it, ruining it, taking any natural element away. I long to live where the land is land and man has not spit all over it with his crap.

I made it safely home and came in the side door. My cat greeted me and made me happy. Happy within a terrific sadness I was feeling. I went to my bed and fed my cat. Her dish is on a bench close to my bed, under the window. I lay on my bed and began to weep and weep and weep. I could not stop. I looked out into the dark night where my curtains were not drawn. Into the branches of the cedars and cried for the birds not coming. I realized the location is too dangerous for the sparrows. Predatory birds have discovered it as an easy mark. I wonder waht I can do to change it. I wonder if I google where the sparrow experts are so they can tell me why they have gone. I did enquire the other day why and they said dirty bird feeder, predatory birds.

The bird feeders are not dirty. Now I want to find the sparrow experts. I dont want them to be killed, I want them to be safe. I miss their song. The highlight of the day, one of them, hearing them sing.

I cry and cry and cry and cry. My heart aches like a rock. This is pain, this is pain. My mouth hurts from clenching my entire life. I cry for so many things, my tears flood my face rapidly.

I begin to pray to God. I begin to feel better talking to Him.

My saddness rolls me on my side and I cry more, my tears coming out round and cold over and over and over.

I need to take a bath but I dont want to. I feel exhausted. The jazz music is an elixir. Sadness and complexity embraced with open arms.