Pony update

For those of you who kindly inquired about my ailing ponies; so far all is well. Vet spent 3 hours here on Tuesday tending to a number of issues and all that remains now is result of blood test for Cushing’s, and, if everything else heals well, Big Brown Pony ought to spend a day at the clinic having a cracked molar removed. I swear they are like an old married couple mirroring each other, sore footsies, sore teeth, a little local infection the details of which I won’t disgust you with.

I’m still feeling uncomfortable with the fact that they will one day have to leave, despite all rational arguments that keeping farm animals is too much work for my level of physical ability. But for now we muddle on.

Mary Oliver: The Artist’s Task

“It is a silver morning like any other. I am at my desk. Then the phone rings, or someone raps at the door. I am deep in the machinery of my wits. Reluctantly I rise, I answer the phone or I open the door. And the thought which I had in hand, or almost in hand, is gone. Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart — to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.

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