The post-Texas-trip return to my studio was spent in the office part of art life Monday. I cranked and crammed in an all day attempt to catch up in my perky little Limalicious office. Thank goodness the desk offers vista views of mountains and sky. Afterwards I was startled by a rattlesnake while walking to my cabin. Ok - “startled” is hardly the right word. My heart leapt into high-gear and tried to Tick Tock its way right out of my throat when the bugger sprang into coil-up-rattle-and-spit-fire-from-its-eyes mode all in about the sum total of .0002 seconds. My reaction time was less impressive. I couldn’t take my eyes off its BIG fangs and my feet were stuck like a mouse in a glue trap less than ten inches from the snake. I took a slow step back and looked for Zaydee. Perked, alert and curious - she seemed glad enough to heed my command and high-tail it forty yards to my front door.
Phew!
The snake had nothing to do with a middle-of-the-night round in ER. The snake encounter was just one dark Oreo cookie paired with the ER dark Oreo cookie. The yummiest unforgettable white creamy scrumptious filling stuffed between those two events was a Gillian Welsh and Dave Rawling’s concert. Their performance was the best soul-spark, heart-grin bright light batch of magic I’ve witnessed in a long while. They are soul-food of the best kind and the evening’s helping came complete with a cherry-on-the-top chance encounter with them under the Montana night sky a half hour after the concert. My feet still felt light and skippy from the performance and I gushed in a totally star-struck jumbled up tongue jam. Dork.
Oh well.
Heart happy – I headed to Paul’s house full of kids and out-of-town company. Cliff called. He was choking on his own blood while driving himself to the hospital with an insane gusher nose-bleed. I punched my truck into 90 miles an hour over the mountain pass between Bozeman and Livingston to arrive at ER less than 20 minutes behind Cliff. They had stopped the bleeding but he was nauseous from swallowing so much blood, his blood pressure plummeted and he quickly passed out. His body twitched with all the drama of a cardiac arrest. My heart cemented itself in my throat and the medical team descended upon him. I firmly called his name over and over in an attempt to call him back into his body.
Lordy.
Seems he had complications as a result of the nose surgery 3 ½ weeks ago. Hours later I brought a woozy, white-faced, plumb-tuckered and nose-medically-stuffed Cliffy home to what looked like a bloody murder scene in his cabin. Crawling into my own bed an hour before sunrise, I closed my eyes to conjure the creamy Oreo cookie part of the evening and counted my blessings.