so I looked up behooved. it was sort of what I had meant.

I mean, at the time I wrote it, I thought it, so I meant it in that sense.

(though the dictionary definition - and granted I didn't dig too far for alternate definitions and did only the minimum as far as etymological research. so what I mean I suppose, or mean I thought I meant, or-

uh huh. pardon the confusion, I'm beside myself, waiting to catch another glimpse of the raccoons that showed up beside the shed around eleven or so last night. sneaky buggers, but fat with whatever croaking creatures they had stuffed themselves with, coming to top off an almost-midnight snack with a dessert of dried then rain-softened brown bread, thrown out two days ago to rest obliquely on the hunks of dirt slowly sculpting or being sculpted, the ones I had plans for but no energy to move the plans towards any sort of fruition.)

the way the word has been defined in the past didn't completely suit my use of it in the present, that's what I might have been meaning to say a paragraph ago. I choose to call that art rather than error, or impulse rather than affectation of metaphor, or simile, no, metaphor. simile uses like or as.

so anyway, I got lost in the first bit, but whatever. raccoons came last night, behooved is a cool word, I made up a poem in the shed that begins

he behooved me.

there's more, but it's not ready to type yet. phrases have been coming to me for some time, years now, I've got notebooks full. lately I've been keeping better track, writing down more, remembering more. though other times my memory is hazy. I blame that on having to do not only my own remembering, but the reminding for three other people.

so I'll probably write more poems in bits and pieces, and then when there's quiet and a need to write, or cut and glue, or rip and turn over and paint through with food colouring mixed with water and glue, and tell stories inside my head, I'll make books. seems like a good occupation for winter nights. and if I start printing (and maybe drawing/painting on) some of my photographs, and cutting and ripping up my drawings and paintings, I'll have plenty of illustrations.

so what if it takes forever, or a week and then it's on to the next thing. at the moment, I see it, this possible bookmaking future, and it seems appropriate and sensible, a good use of my time, as much as any other, unless any other becomes necessary.

tonight I lit a candle in that three legged (now no-legged) lantern a friend gave me, and hung it in the window of the shed, because the screen another friend gave me, the screen that was hung with clothespins in the window keeping out some of the wind and rain was dusty and is currently being washed by the rain that softened the bread the raccoons started to eat last night before I gently clicked and shuffled to let them know I was there, and then, when all they did was look at me and wonder what sort of odd, lumpy lumbering creature was suddenly and erroneously in their restaurant, then I shuffled louder and chucked at them, and they chose to let me walk back to the house in some privacy, while they waited almost patiently in the bamboo.

two of the houses on my quiet

(ish. there are kids all over, of course. and leafblowers and heat pumps.)

dead-end street are for sale. the one across the street that the bank is selling, and the one beside us that the man is selling, his (ex?) wife gone, the foundations on the new house barely dug.

now is the time to be who I am. I want, after all, to attract new people as good as the people I am currently blessed with. I love my little neighbourhood. I'm so glad we found it, the girls are growing up as closely as I can imagine possible to the way I did, except for the sad distance of my own family, and my husband's.

so I have to work harder to keep those connections this year. there's a family history wanting to be written, that's another thing.

but anyway. I'd love to have kind, well-mannered, free-thinking

(and my definition of free-thinking includes belief in whatever, if the belief is considered and practiced, and not just inherited and spoken)

new neighbours in the new year. in case my wants are being taken into consideration, you know.

(and if they're not, oh well. there's always bamboo. grows like lightning, except it's much more subtly invasive. subversive, you could say, if you wanted to. a subversion of bamboo. my collective noun of the day.)