The faded earth, the heavy sky

Currently at Bancroft: 1. High today: 2. May get our first snowfall of the season tonight, except I won't be here to see it. Finally took the water apart today. November 21st! I can't imagine what my grandfather would've thought. The first time the pump froze on me, in 2012, I think it was October 16, and I was mad at myself for pressing my luck too far. It is partly luck--no nights below -10, no days that don't break freezing--but it is also running the water through the night (not leaving taps trickling, because I can't stand having the pump run that much and trickling taps, but waking them up hourly like someone with a concussion) when it gets below freezing for more than a few hours and leaving as little to luck as you can. Still I had to get out there twice with the heater last night even though it didn't get below about -3; as far as I can figure it was actually the pressure switch rather than the water in the pump that froze, but as with so much else I'm just guessing from outside the black box. Anyway ... this is the seventh time I've taken the water apart, under close to if not actually seven very different sets of circumstances, and no matter what the circumstances I don't suppose there's any repeating event in life that fills me with so much despair. I'll be back here tomorrow but it won't be the same. Fact is I've never learned to know the love of bare days before the coming of the snow, whether in November or October or September, and I don't think I want to. Love isn't the right thing for them (or at least not from me it isn't). My sorrow can have them.

And now ... I feel like I'm moving to a hotel. There's a box on the wall that you poke and it makes heat come out of the floor! The extravagance, my word.