No, this post isn’t really revolutionary, it’s just a continuation of the temporary government theme. There are now not one but two posts waiting in the would-be wings, waiting to fly to you as soon as they are fully feathered.
It has been unseasonably cold here. I am usually unseasonably cold, so this is more of a problem for me than most, particularly as I forgot to bring my bedding with me when I made my weekly southern migration. Not southerly enough to render unnecessary the warmth of blankets, I assure you. It is therefore a happiness to me that I possess many fine and heavy jackets with which to swathe myself during those hours in which I must sleep. An hour spent in discomfort, a lesson in packing learned. Were I a swallow, I would not pack at all, but I would go all the way to Mexico, so there you have it. If it comes to that, the life of a swallow requires neither rest in bed nor the wearing of jackets. I may have to come to earth in the wrong material form entirely.
Just yesterday, as I was walking home from class, a flash of colour positively zoomed towards my legs, and I reflexively looked down to see the result and espied–a ladybird beetle! One with five spots. Not at fortuitous as, say, seven, but still a nice, odd number. I put my palms on either side of it so as to encourage it to leave my jeans (against which blue its red admittedly turned up well) and climb onto my hand, which it did without too much coaxing. I then walked along and watched it crawl about my fingers for a few moments before it flipped open its wings and crossed the street more quickly than I can run. Prior to this, it had been just more than a year since I had last seen and indeed held a ladybug. I was on the shore of Lake Michigan, and saw, very much to my surprise, one of the dear little bugs crawling amidst the beach pebbles! I admit that whenever I see a ladybug I want to hold it and it was so on this occasion. After succumbing to capture, this ladybug clung to my hand for a very long time, and did not want to seem to relinquish its hold on me, though I encouraged it to fly by flapping my hand. When it finally did go, I wondered where it would settle, since it seemed to have strayed so far from where a ladybug ought to be.
The thing that ties all this together is that at the time I thought I should write about the ladybug on my blog, which I had just started. Further in re of this, there was a duck on Lake Michigan that day or one like it, a male Mallard that bobbed in and out with the waves, nature’s own surfer, possessed of a delightful buoyancy to counterpoint my completely inexpert attempts to skip stones. (In truth, I fell to chucking stones that were obviously completely unsuited to the job, simply to disguise and demonstrate my failure as a futility of logic rather than skill.) The mallard, in whom my heart delighted (and at whom I did not throw stones, futile or otherwise), was another subject I considered for a post, and as my frequent reader knows, ducks are a favoured subject of my recent writings.
Thus it is shown that my yen for nature hasn’t changed; I’ve just finally got round to writing about it.