Poor Ruckus got beat up by his Nemesis, a giant black and white ex-tomcat who looks like a Marine and whom Ruckus hates passionately. Now he is moping on the hearthrug, trying to avoid going outside. I guess it is pretty humiliating to come home with a grass stain on the side of your head.

It's been cold here . . . not winter yet, but it feels imminent. I kept the woodstove going all day yesterday, and drank hot ginger tea, and imagined snow. The grass is covered with leaves but I have not raked them. I am trying to detach from the land, trying not to care so much. But I still woke up this morning with a clutch in my heart.

At least I don't have to deal with a Nemesis, lurking in the shrubbery, waiting to cuff me into a tree trunk.

I copied out some Rilke last night, while Ruckus and I were watching the baseball game. You might not think that Rilke and baseball would blend, but they make a rather comfortable combination. I've also been reading Andrew Lang's The Crimson Fairy Book, which I'd forgotten I'd left out on the shelf in case I found myself in an all-my-books-are-packed reading emergency. Fairy tales as the readers' version of an ambulance: it makes sense to me.