Walking on Thin Ice

11 tent nights done. 3 tent nights to go in my current sentence before we bus to train town for 1 night B&B before training back to 5 weeks london.

night temps dropping to low low 40s. i wear stocking cap t-shirt sweater long john bottoms 2 pair of socks to bed - and even then we spoon snuggle cuddle for warmth.

i search the sky for brief bits of blue break in endless cloud for brief sun, hoping to thaw foot, finger, ear.

later.
not to be. the rains came down. technically day, though wet and gray. i sit in tent enwash in water reading The Drowned Earth - j. g. ballard’s 1962 sci fi novel. film buffs will recognize his name - cronenbergs filmed his 1973 Crash, and spielberg his 1984 Empire of the Sun.

bit sad. lady wants to strike our planned 6 months in new orleans and year in seattle. she’s tired and needs to settle down. i understand. this year of endless world travel is wearying, and we’ve still 2 months to go. we need a home base, and new orleans isn’t it due to hurricane season.

it hurts the poet and adventurer in me to lose new orleans. seattle i don’t mind - that was all intellectual anyway. but new orleans was dark magic - a multi-national multi-cultured old foreign city inside the u.s. - swamp voodoo, rhythm and blues, hanging moss, joyous jazz funeral marches, vampires in the dark. i find it’s still in my blood - as is wanting to go to greece - so we’ll do it later. another time.

but she#s right - we’re both weary of this ever constant moving on of ours. we need a large city for mass transportaion, and we need a cultural city for our artistic poetic souls. there’s only 3 in th eusa - new york city, los angeles, chicago - the first i’m not ready for, the second i’ve seen and it sucks. so it’s chicago.

i’ve 3 magic images of chicago - frank sinatra’s version of Chicago ( i saw a man, he danced with his wife / they had the time, the time of their life in chicago - my kind of town) … an outstanding retrospective of my second favorite artist (edward kienholz - marcel duchamp’s still number 1) … artist / professor / friend melissa jay craig lives and teaches there.

so we trade warm new orleans winter for brutal cold chicago. i worry about our finances in such an expensivecity, but my whole life has been impromptu, and luck has always been there when i needed it. so we’ll wing it once again. what, me worry?

next day.
yesterday we walked to Castlerigg - a 5,000 year old neolithic 48 stone stone circle on top of a hill surrounded by mountains. it’s the oldest stone circle in europe - pre-dates Stonehenge. everyone says it’s a druid circle, yet it pre-dates the druids by thousands of years. lady believes it’s to worship the mountains. i feel it’s more cosmic sundial stone calander ceremonial meeting place.

camp owner asked if i thought it’d rain. i said no. 8 minutes later heavy rain came. rained for hours and hours. when it ceased, i walked down to the water point to fill our bottles. no water. tried every spigot on the property. no water. all the water you don’t want falling from the sky, and not a drop to drink.