Getting Through This Day

We are home and the temperature is dropping and the sky is a gray bowl of cotton above us and I am wearing socks and long sleeves and a jacket and my body is aching as it seems to do all of the time now and for the very first time in however long it's been since I've begun this blog, I just don't feel like talking about any of it.
Not really.

We had a very good time in Fernandina Beach and we came home to a peaceful and tidy house and all is well. Fine. Lovely. Got laundry going, need to finish unpacking. Mr. Moon's off to town to show a truck to a potential buyer. He just drew bloody fluid off of Buster's ear and he'll probably be getting surgery on that tomorrow.
Life. You know?
Put things away, wash things, put those things away, take care of the animals, business, cook supper. Eat it, clean up. Go to sleep.

I feel as gray as the sky. As flat and uninteresting and uninterested as the sky is in all of us below it. I feel as if I've crossed some line into a world of even greater isolation. As much as I enjoyed our trip, I couldn't enjoy the shopping parts or the going-out-to-bars part. We walked into two bars after dinner one night and walked right out. I didn't want to deal with people or with stuff. Stuff. I'm so sick of stuff. The holiday season is coming up and here we go- one getting-together after another and I don't feel up for any of it. Not that I ever do but somehow, I feel even less inclined if that is even possible. I don't feel like discussing my ridiculous fears or my neuroses or my lack of interest in any sort of socialization at all.
Is this a mental illness?

It's getting cold. It's going to be in the thirties this week. A giant storm is about to deliver possible devastation to the Northeast. The presidential election is about to happen and I am so afraid. I have no desire to be with people and I am sorely bored with myself. I can't help but believe that there is nothing which comes out of my head or comes forth from my hands which is of any worth to this world at all.

It's gray and the wind through the trees sounds like bones rattling. My plants will be dying soon, or least giving the appearance of death. The only birds I've seen since I got home are my chickens, a hovering, floating group of vultures and a murder of crows.

Well, this is the way it is today. Maybe not tomorrow. We shall see. I keep thinking about a little dog we saw on the beach yesterday. She was free as a bird, no human in sight and if I have ever seen a happier creature, I don't recall when it may have been. She ran and raced with the incoming waves and there was no doubt that she was in love with it all- the winds, the foam skittering across the sand, the sand and water themselves. She was simply and completely at one with it all.

That was the closest thing to joy I've seen in awhile. I keep pulling the image out like a handkerchief and then putting it back in my pocket for safekeeping. I am sure there is something to be learned from it, that image. I am trying to figure out what that may be.