A Tidings of Magpies

In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment, the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

For those who don't know me well, I confess I enjoy blaming as many things as I can on changes in the barometric pressure. It's not quite as romantic and thrilling-scary as voodoo, but it's what we've got a lot of in CinCity. So, grumpy moods, fatigue, the fact that someone buys up all the bottles of our favorite locally made salad dressings, no good movies at my favorite movie theater?? All related to the effects of barometric pressure. The past two weeks have been full of weather drama and snow storm systems, Alberta Clippers, running about the country willy-nilly. Surprisingly, we've had few trauma related head injuries admitted to Neurodramaville, but quite a few Intracerebral Hemorrhages--head bleeds. They are many times the result of high blood pressure. Often cocaine related. The patients we've been receiving, though, are older and have older, fragile, worn-out blood vessels in their head that simply give out and break open. We seem to see more of these ...