Pretty day, warm for November, like most all of the days have been in November so far. I can't believe how this month is flying by. This whole year, really, even though the passage of time is the most tedious and old person thing to complain about. I talked to my mom today; she said, "I don't know if I'm sick or just so winter depressed." 

I think it's helped me to be writing the daily shit in this blog again, and not in the way that I used to, like I was sending sad message bottles out into the oceanic nothing of my general depression. Once I found a real message in a bottle at Elkhorn with Travis and Josh. It was tied all up in that log jam you get to if you take that right hand path down at the trout hole site. A good place for cardinal flowers. I don't remember what it said, only that the message had been sealed into a Gallo brand chardonnay bottle and contained a kind of "let's see where this message goes" vibe. I thought I might could have made good friends with the person who wrote it. We scribbled something back about the day we found it and put it back in the water, although that was probably 5-6 years ago, and I'm sure we were just creating more litter. Litter at Elkhorn was a thing I thought a lot about, although I have maybe been to Elkhorn twice this whole year, the least since I discovered that place, and probably not picked up a single piece of trash I didn't bring in myself.

Big day for crow nonsense. There was a sparrow hawk of some kind hunting them, and even if I tried to get in the mix, it didn't give a shit about me. Six, maybe seven miles of running with them? 

There's one crow with a distinctive crooked feather that's bolder than some of them. He lands at my feet when I enter his murder's territory. I give him and his group their peanuts and dog food and any special treats I brought them. But this week, he's been gathering up the peanuts while I run on and then landing again and again right in front of my feet, like he wants more, even though I can see his beak is literally full of peanuts. I didn't understand for a while, then I realized he wanted me to wait next to him, crouched on the pavement, while he stashed the peanuts I'd just given him, then give him more - fresh, better peanuts! They're very clever birds, and they manipulate me with this wanton, loveless disregard that makes me adore them all the more. I want all of their carelessness. I have emotion enough for them.

My "back of the graveyard" murders - which have always been more wild than the murder that hangs out literally on top of my house - have been learning a kind of aerial routine. They are the ones that chase me or swoop the most when I'm running, and I'm figuring a way to toss them peanuts as they are mid-air alongside of me. It's very cool, but we need to work a little more on it. I love the way they changed direction and dogfight against the gusts of air around me. 

Me? I'm less of a flu symptom today. Fucked up a bit at work, read some stuff. This year I've only read Sally Rooney novels, historical biographies about the founding fathers, and Song of Ice and Fire shit, but I finally picked up a really good history of the Comanche people written by a woman who is writing them as an actual 18th century empire instead of the cartoonish villain version put forward by the historians of the last 300 years. It's good, but a little out of my depth. Well, we'll see.

Tomorrow I'll be back in the swampy lakes and mires of Virginia Beach with the big hot moon casting down a perfect mirror on the black bogs. Always how I love Virginia.