1) There is nothing to make you feel tiny-tiny as looking a mountainous debt square in the face. That was how I started my month. Yikes. A simple series of calculations and phone calls and friendly advice led me to one conclusion - bury my head deep, deep, deep in the sand. Fortunately, since my debt is student loan oriented and not consumer, I can rid myself and my eventual heirs of this tremendous burden by the simple act of dying. After much consideration and checking of mortality rates, I have concluded, though I am not certain yet, that this may be my best option.
2) Tinyness rears its head again, but in a good way - I have a new hobby! This holiday season brought with it a dizzying array of backyard birdfeeders, field guides and even a snazzy new pair of Bushnell binoculars. Birds beware! I am watching you.
January is slow for birdwatching, but that has not stopped me from accumulating over 30 species to my brand-new life list. An auspicious beginiing, in my opinion. Birding is a new way to get small, an Franciscan exercise in humilty. You walk through the woods very slowly and listen very hard. When you hear or see some rustle or another, you stop and stand very still, binoculars in hand. A whole world of details starts to open and you notice the world differently. Seeing birds in the woods is a little like staring at one of those 3-D paintings; eventually, you just get it and a new way of seeing occurs to you. I have dreamt of thickets and birdshapes more nights than I can mention.
Highlights so far have been a very agitated Belted Kingfisher guarding his marshy hunting grounds from a juvenile Great Blue Heron, a Bald Eagle nest, two prehistoric-looking Pileated Woodpeckers on one tree, and the Cooper's Hawk who I saw in my yard every day for a week (I can only assume he was using my feeders as a fast food drive-thru).
3) Reading has not been going too well this month, as I have turned from a steady diet of novels to a steady diet of bird facts. However, one great occurence did take place and it also involves a tinyness of sorts. Life and age and debt and humility finally sychronized in my being to just that place where I can read Emily Dickinson. As a boisterous youth, I never understood her little flickers of imagination. I craved sweeping giants, avalanches of words, cascades of feeling. Fortunately, something has now clicked into place and I have a new literary crush - one who I have known for a long time, but never really appreciated before.
Also, I discovered that due to her use of common meter, almost all of Emily's poems can be sung to the tune of "Amazing Grace." Try it at parties and amaze your friends!!
