Be ye not deluded by false groundhogs!

In keeping with the earthbound-spiritual roots of “Groundhog Day,” while we don’t have any large hibernating mammals around here, I do observe that though it was about as cold here this morning as it ever gets, and while we still have pretty consistent snow cover, the birds are active but show no particular urgency in finding food. It seems a hopeful sign. If, however, you prefer theme-park heritage and formulaic self-parody, then let me warn you to beware of false prophets: the One True Groundhog, Octorara Orphie, did not see his shadow this morning, and we will indeed have an early spring.

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The hedgehog knows one big thing, but damned if he can articulate it to you. You’re just going to have to figure it out on your own.

High-pitched shrieking in the distance suggests that the small amount of ice-glazed snow on the ground at least makes good sledding. Otherwise, silence: the high-pitched sleet-static, that candy-wrapper-crinkling-in-the-movie-theater sound, has stopped for the moment.

Related to my last post:

Truth is the asymptotic limit of sensitive attempts to be responsible to our actual experience of the world… ‘sensitive attempts to be responsible’ means truth is the result of attention. (As opposed to inspection.) Of looking informed by love. Of really looking.

(Jan Zwicky, in Wisdom and Metaphor, quoted by Ian McGilchrist)

In the current issue of Plough Ben Quash explains an idea he calls mystical empiricism:

The empiricism bit is looking at the world and its objects, its creatures, with intense attention. Not idealizing them but looking at them as they are. And it’s mystical because precisely in that close attention to the very particularities of things, you find yourself suddenly feeling yourself to be in touch with ultimacy, with grace, with divine self-communication. These creatures are conduits of God’s presence and purpose, precisely in their unique particularities. Observation of them becomes a sort of mystical form of encounter with the divine.

That’s a term I’d been groping for.

I propose that those of us opposed to Trump’s plan to take Greenland by force quietly protest by eating more Danishes. In addition to being an excuse to consume pastry, a movement might force the president’s supporters to start referring to them as “freedom pastries,” which I would count as a win.

My father once took a shovel to a groundhog. He said afterward that it had charged my baby sister, but that was bullshit: he was just sick of the varmints digging up his garden.

The groundhog, not being more heavily armed, did not get up again.

“There is nothing so dumb as a tree in full leaf.” (Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist)

Enjoy it while it lasts: I’ll be carving the leaves tomorrow.

half-finished chip carving

Bare trees silhouetted against fast moving cumulus clouds

To do this week:

  1. Finish drawing, and carve, my depiction of the legendary Blumenganz (“flower goose”) who brings spring to the earth.
  2. Start learning third position on the violin.
  3. Make gumbo.
  4. Pay sales taxes.

One of these things is not like the other. One of these things does not belong.