post-election

well.  the upside to sickness is the quiet.  it's been loads of reading and even long stretches of just thinking.  when does that happen anymore?  just sitting on the couch, staring out the window, noticing everything and nothing.  how the telephone poles seem to come together like knitting needles, where the birds congregate and then fall apart, how the sun hits the mountain and makes the house melancholy.  work enters without a sound, creeping up on me, announcing its urgency and revealing my own.  everything throughout the long, quiet, sick days seems to be instructive.  as though somehow all i needed was to just be quiet.