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November 18, 2000
A long day, close to being too long at this point. It's 9:30 PM everyone is gone, 14 hours and counting. Sometimes, when the day is vast and empty, and the outside chill air finds countless ways inside these rooms, I often wonder if this might not be how a spirit might feel. Cold, hollow, endlessly waiting, like crying out to the stars and hoping millennia from now, they will hear me.
November 20, 2000
My God, the wind today has literally howled through every crack and cranny of this old building. I don't know when I have heard it so loud. In the great center room up here on the second floor, there are windows missing and the cold air is whirling about like something lost. My hands are cold from sitting here without heat so I suppose I should try and find some kerosene and get the heat on. The window in the kitchen where I am right now, is rattling in the frame. I can see out over the creek, and the hill behind the mill is full now of bare trees. All of which are rocking back and forth in this incessant wind.
It is awful dark today, the clouds are racing overhead threatening snow. That would really cap it all off, snow! And me stuck here alone in this big old creaking mill!
November 21, 2000
It's easy to see now what all that wind was about yesterday. It blew in a big cold front, it will be 13 degrees this evening. No way we'll keep warm tonight, no way at all.
Last night was a bad night anyway, I don't know if it was the howling winds or the coming cold or just the general creaking of this place, but something kept knocking over jars of canned food and scaring the cats and making the dog bark. Probably a raccoon got in again, although when I got up to check on it there was nothing to see other than three cats with their tails all puffed up! My little Chihuahua hid under the bed till I finally had to pull him out and put him in bed with me and Daniel. I kept drifting off to sleep listening to the roar of the creek out back and thinking I was hearing voices talking.
This doesn't happen often, but every now and then I'll have a night like that, it would be easy to get spooked, if I could get spooked. LOL
There's a big piece of milling machinery, we loving call "The Mangler". It's a huge feed mixer that has fallen halfway through the floor in the back corner of the mill. I think animals and things get in through there at night.
Friday, November 23, 2000
Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone and we are thankful we didn't freeze to death. No, just kidding, we have kerosene to keep the little heater going and yesterday we visited with Daniel's sister and her family so the day was not a complete loss. The other night, it was 12 degrees, an all time low for this area and we hope it is not a harbinger of things to come.
It is still pretty cold today and when the wind picks up, it gets drafty in here. I don't know where some of the air getting in. We have put plastic over the windows and I keep an old towel rolled up against the bottom of the door. The ceiling in here has holes in it, and I know a lot of our heat manages to get out that way even though we have patched as good as possible. Oh well, we do the best we can.
Daniel is asleep on the love seat right now, he is snoring like crazy. LOL He's all wrapped up in a blanket and I can just see his glasses and pointy beard sticking out. God, what a racket!
I am trying to get some pictures of this old place to put in here so you will get a better idea of where we live. Did anybody see the movie Fight Club? Remember dude's house? It was all tore up and falling down but he had a couple areas where he lived? That reminds me of the mill here. This huge rambling, drafty leaky building, with a couple little rooms to live in. Like a little island in a sea of collapse. LOL
These rooms where we live most of the time used to be a break room and the office when the mill was in operation. These rooms were just sort of framed up and built in the middle of the big room on the first floor. They were built in the 60's so there is electricity to them and phone lines. That's how we can have a computer here.
Now that's weird too I think. Here we have this nice computer (I think it's nice,) in the middle of all this stuff!!! LOL It's a funny contrast don't you think?
I think I'll turn on the TV to help mask the snoring coming from over on the love seat. You'd love this TV too. I got it at a yard sale several years ago, it's like a 5" screen black and white. Daniel's sister's little boy saw it one time and thought it was a camera and he was going to see himself on it. He couldn't seem to get his mind around the idea of watching television on it, or not having cable. And my God, where was the color!!! LOL
The creek sounds are tinkly today. Sometimes it's like that, like glass. It sounds different when the sun is shining, like it is today. A chill, sharp sunshine, reminds me of a televangelist's smile. Looks bright and comforting at first glance, but there is no warmth to it. Well, gotta go now, will be back later tonight, time permitting.
November 25, 2000.
It's about 1:30 in the afternoon now, Daniel is still sleeping and he will keep sleeping until I get him up. He was up really late last night doing something, I don't know what. I have that dark sick feeling today. Sad and depressed and the incessant sound of the creek is getting on my nerves. People think that listening to rushing water is soothing, they should have to listen to it day and night, day after day. It's like some kind of torture. I can hear things in the sound, voices, music sometimes. Sometimes people crying out or laughing. Mostly muttering and whispers. God damn but I need a vacation from this incarnation. LOL
At least it is cloudy today. I hate when the sun is bright and intrusive and shows every little detail about every damned thing. It comes through the windows and presto! I am living in a dusty, collapsing, infested place. Not the place I live in my mind where none of this is real, and everything is nice, like peoples houses on TV.
Sunlight kills germs I hear, well, it kills fantasy worlds too.
We have new neighbors across the little lane in front of the mill. I don't know them, but the man has a fake deer in his yard with chunks out of it, so that it's foam insides show white and ragged from his shooting arrows at it. That's brilliant! Of course he does have a pick-up and he wears camouflage and keeps a big dog in a cage, so I suspect it's par for the course that he should have a mutilated deer dummy as well. I'm glad I have plastic over the windows so I can't see him clearly when he's out in his yard lumbering around slug-like and stupid looking. And he can't see me either, sliding down this slippery black slope into my own personal hell. That sort of thing should remain private, don't you think?
December 1, 2000.
It's 5:30 a.m., I can't sleep. It's cold and the heat from the kerosene heater just isn't getting the job done. It's still dark out, I can see the stars beyond the bare black whips of the willow tree, looks like they are tangled there.
The neighbors across the lane are up, I see the light on in the kitchen. Someone is passing back and forth, fixing breakfast no doubt. The man there works an early day shift somewhere. If they knew I was watching them doing their simple task, no doubt they would get angry. I would. LOL It's the Styrofoam deer killer and his round little wife thinking they are alone in the world, yawning, clattering dishes and pans. He's probably looking at her round dimpled ass stretching the backside of her worn out robe and asking himself, "Did I ever think that was beautiful?" And she is thinking, " I wonder what shade of camouflage he will be sporting today?"
I am wondering what it would be like to have no one living across the lane, or anywhere. No one torturing my days with the ferocity of their normalcy. I hate having people so close to me.
I am wondering what it would be like to have no neighbors. No neighbors at all.
Daniel is asleep. He worked late and got in around 2:00 a.m. He brought us burgers and we had either a really late dinner, or a really early breakfast, I can't decide. We've been under a lot of stress lately, both of us are swirling round and round the drain-hole of hopelessness drowning each other trying to save ourselves. I think sometimes he would be better off without me. Better off just leaving me here and trying to find a better life for himself somewhere else.
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