Tuesday June 22, 2004: crescent moon, twilight sky
I blame it all, every bit of it, on The Hat.
Really.
Perhaps it's a leftover from the days when I slid in and out of my lives every single moment, but I take on personas when I wear hats. My current The Hat, since it is summer, is a straw hat with a black ribbon around it, tied in a bow in the back.
When I am wearing The Hat, I become the sort of person who sits underneath trees and reads. I am usually a sit-on-a-bench sort of person, but for me and The Hat nothing will do but grass, underneath the cool arching cathedral roofs of trees.
Tonight, I walked down to the UW campus for the first reading in the Clarion West series, who was none other than Pat Murphy, who rocks. Just plain old rocks. It was a really good reading, and I got to tell her that I did indeed spend quite a bit of time in Murphys, CA when I was growing up, and the Clampers were always the best part of the 4th of July parade.
And on the way home...The Hat and I decided to take the long way home.
Instead of the more-or-less direct route, I walked along the Burke-Gilman trail, through a landscape intensely green with summer. It's the day after the solstice, and it was just before nine, and twilight had just come--I knew I had almost another hour of light coming to me, and I wanted to enjoy every moment of it. It's been warm this week, and the freshening breeze from the east brought with it welcome coolness. The mood was a waxing crescent in the sky above me as I walked.
I walked down the trail, bikers and rollerbladers whizzing past me. When I got to Blakeley, I turned down it, wandering by warehouses and dry-cleaning places. And when I came to the ice cream store, The Hat wanted to stop for ice cream.
I argued briefly, telling The Hat that I would be spoiling all of the goodness that walking had done me. But The Hat moves only for the pleasure of movement and the joy of being alive, and it has no conception of motion being "good for me". And it really, really wanted some rocky road.
I gave in, of course.
And after we'd waited in line for ice cream and then headed out into the evening, my feet decided to take the long way around--past Urban Hort and through Batelle. Anything to prolong the outside portion of the evening.
There is nothing so perfect as a summer evening when the temperature is dropping and you are out walking. Well, actually, there are a few things. But that was the perfect thing I had this evening, and I enjoyed every moment of it.
From the other day:
I laid in bed last night and listened to the storm approaching.
First off, you have to understand this: thunderstorms in Seattle are rare as hen's teeth. We don't get more than a few flashes of lightning a year, and to have a real thunderstorm, like the one we did last night, has happened all of one other time in the eight years I've lived here.
The second thing you must understand: I used to be terrified of thunderstorms. This made living in Iowa...interesting.
The third thing? Weather here moves west to east, or occasionally south to north. During the winter, usually, it's north to south.
Weather does *not* move from east to west.
It was about midnight--I'd just gotten to sleep--when I woke to the first flash of lightning in the distance. It was silent at first, the light traveling farther than the sound. In a half hour, as I tossed restlessly, I heard the first thunder.
About 1 AM, I heard the first raindrops pattering on the sidewalk, the wind picking up suddenly and announcing the arrival of the outer edge of the storm. And it did rain, torrentially--I imagine it had been dropping water all the way from Redmond to here as the storm moved from east to west, but there was still enough for a good hard rain where I live. Even if I'd been able to sleep through the thunder, the cats were caroming around my bedroom, tails fluffed and eyes bright.
By two, the rain died away as the storm wandered out to sea. To the west. In which direction weather *never* goes.
And I realized, as the rain slowed, that I hadn't been afraid.
Sometimes, you do grow out of your childhood fears.
This morning, not even the sidewalks were wet. If I hadn't been fully awake during the storm, I would have assumed it was a dream.
in praise of
my favorite things are all containers.
the silence that defines the bell's ringing
wine glasses half drunk
the way a glance can contain
information I could list forever
encyclopedias of what-you-mean
and still not decode
my favorite things are all containers
or things that cannot be contained:
weather patterns, heartbeats,
redwoods, blackberry vines, ravens,
the motion of the full moon east to west,
what runs happily riot amongst us
and causes irises to bloom in darkness
all manner of sweet things in the eye of the flower.
my favorite things are all maps
of places I cannot describe
but where I now live
no longer a tourist in happiness, it seems.
my favorite things are shifting singularities;
a welcome word, open arms, an ongoing and unlimited horizon
embodied in embraces--
each smile fireflies in the June darkness.
I have things.
In my head.
I have things in my head.
I am writing as fast as I can and I still can't keep up with the things in my head. I am taking pictures whenever I can and I can't keep up with the portraits I have in my head.
It's a good, productive feeling.
Maybe I'll stay here. With the things in my head.
My email address is changing--I'm getting way too much spam at the idat address, so it will soon be nothing but electronic dust. Email address on my Web pages will be changing to something that regularly changes, and my personal email address will never go anywhere public. I'll be posting a link to a contact page begind a password soonishly.
Spam = evil.
Really.
Perhaps it's a leftover from the days when I slid in and out of my lives every single moment, but I take on personas when I wear hats. My current The Hat, since it is summer, is a straw hat with a black ribbon around it, tied in a bow in the back.
When I am wearing The Hat, I become the sort of person who sits underneath trees and reads. I am usually a sit-on-a-bench sort of person, but for me and The Hat nothing will do but grass, underneath the cool arching cathedral roofs of trees.
Tonight, I walked down to the UW campus for the first reading in the Clarion West series, who was none other than Pat Murphy, who rocks. Just plain old rocks. It was a really good reading, and I got to tell her that I did indeed spend quite a bit of time in Murphys, CA when I was growing up, and the Clampers were always the best part of the 4th of July parade.
And on the way home...The Hat and I decided to take the long way home.
Instead of the more-or-less direct route, I walked along the Burke-Gilman trail, through a landscape intensely green with summer. It's the day after the solstice, and it was just before nine, and twilight had just come--I knew I had almost another hour of light coming to me, and I wanted to enjoy every moment of it. It's been warm this week, and the freshening breeze from the east brought with it welcome coolness. The mood was a waxing crescent in the sky above me as I walked.
I walked down the trail, bikers and rollerbladers whizzing past me. When I got to Blakeley, I turned down it, wandering by warehouses and dry-cleaning places. And when I came to the ice cream store, The Hat wanted to stop for ice cream.
I argued briefly, telling The Hat that I would be spoiling all of the goodness that walking had done me. But The Hat moves only for the pleasure of movement and the joy of being alive, and it has no conception of motion being "good for me". And it really, really wanted some rocky road.
I gave in, of course.
And after we'd waited in line for ice cream and then headed out into the evening, my feet decided to take the long way around--past Urban Hort and through Batelle. Anything to prolong the outside portion of the evening.
There is nothing so perfect as a summer evening when the temperature is dropping and you are out walking. Well, actually, there are a few things. But that was the perfect thing I had this evening, and I enjoyed every moment of it.
From the other day:
I laid in bed last night and listened to the storm approaching.
First off, you have to understand this: thunderstorms in Seattle are rare as hen's teeth. We don't get more than a few flashes of lightning a year, and to have a real thunderstorm, like the one we did last night, has happened all of one other time in the eight years I've lived here.
The second thing you must understand: I used to be terrified of thunderstorms. This made living in Iowa...interesting.
The third thing? Weather here moves west to east, or occasionally south to north. During the winter, usually, it's north to south.
Weather does *not* move from east to west.
It was about midnight--I'd just gotten to sleep--when I woke to the first flash of lightning in the distance. It was silent at first, the light traveling farther than the sound. In a half hour, as I tossed restlessly, I heard the first thunder.
About 1 AM, I heard the first raindrops pattering on the sidewalk, the wind picking up suddenly and announcing the arrival of the outer edge of the storm. And it did rain, torrentially--I imagine it had been dropping water all the way from Redmond to here as the storm moved from east to west, but there was still enough for a good hard rain where I live. Even if I'd been able to sleep through the thunder, the cats were caroming around my bedroom, tails fluffed and eyes bright.
By two, the rain died away as the storm wandered out to sea. To the west. In which direction weather *never* goes.
And I realized, as the rain slowed, that I hadn't been afraid.
Sometimes, you do grow out of your childhood fears.
This morning, not even the sidewalks were wet. If I hadn't been fully awake during the storm, I would have assumed it was a dream.
in praise of
my favorite things are all containers.
the silence that defines the bell's ringing
wine glasses half drunk
the way a glance can contain
information I could list forever
encyclopedias of what-you-mean
and still not decode
my favorite things are all containers
or things that cannot be contained:
weather patterns, heartbeats,
redwoods, blackberry vines, ravens,
the motion of the full moon east to west,
what runs happily riot amongst us
and causes irises to bloom in darkness
all manner of sweet things in the eye of the flower.
my favorite things are all maps
of places I cannot describe
but where I now live
no longer a tourist in happiness, it seems.
my favorite things are shifting singularities;
a welcome word, open arms, an ongoing and unlimited horizon
embodied in embraces--
each smile fireflies in the June darkness.
I have things.
In my head.
I have things in my head.
I am writing as fast as I can and I still can't keep up with the things in my head. I am taking pictures whenever I can and I can't keep up with the portraits I have in my head.
It's a good, productive feeling.
Maybe I'll stay here. With the things in my head.
My email address is changing--I'm getting way too much spam at the idat address, so it will soon be nothing but electronic dust. Email address on my Web pages will be changing to something that regularly changes, and my personal email address will never go anywhere public. I'll be posting a link to a contact page begind a password soonishly.
Spam = evil.
