TodayToday was one of those days spent tying up loose ends, emptying out and sorting the junk the accumulates in the lower desk drawer and strewing it all over the coffee table in an effort to make sense of it all.
From the pile of crumpled bills, I have aquired a five (a new-coke five. I don't really mind the new-coke money. I worry that they'll do in the two) upon which is written, depending on interpretation:
I don't know what that means.
It reminds me a little of a two I found last year that has a little cartoon word bubble rubber stamped in purple ink next to Jefferson's head that reads "I Grew Hemp". I don't know what that means, either, except maybe that somebody gave enough of a damn to go out and craft a rubber stamp that allows the mass production of said cartoon word bubbles. Which is something.
Go you Huskies!
An Old Saw IndeedAs I pass though the valley of shadow,
May God stand between myself and harm
Because harm tends to bounce off of God
Stupid valley of shadow.
The Wind of SleepIn the mornings, depending on the whim of the night before, we are awakened by either the quick buzz of the alarm or the gentle insistence of the radio, the latter usually being set to the local NPR affiliate.
But this morning the radio was somehow turned low and tuned badly, and I lay awake in the dim light listening to a human voice rising and falling in every way like the wind can howl outside in the middle of winter. It was exactly like that: the voice rose, waited, fell, to fall silent for a while. The tones were wind tones, the words muddied by the quiet. The volume was low enough (and the dream I had awoken from odd enough) that it took some time to convince myself it was real.
In fact, I was momentarily gripped by the fear that this was in fact a radio station of a man chanting without mind to mimic the wind in winter, and I was terrified. The remote was on top of the radio (why does that always happen?) and I did not want to get out of bed.
But I did, and it was a rendition of a Catholic mass. Radio got flipped to AM somehow. Nothing sinister at all.
Additionally, I have found more text on my money. Today's bill says:
SPOONY-HERMINIE#2PH 6-8-01
No idea. None whatsoever.
Small TruthToday is a day of small truths.
Toast really is better with butter.
That little "you have new programs" pop-up balloon in Windows XP makes logging out annoying, sometimes.
Having some trust issues with food, yet.
WalkaboutYesterday, I was walking around the local large urban center, and I chanced to pass a person talking loudly into a cell phone. They were not just being loud because of the traffic noise and such, but also because they were carefully holding the phone an even quater inch from their face. It was a clamshell type phone, but the ear piece part was a very thin piece of plastic, and it trembled gently next to the ear as they spoke.
Today, I am again downgraded to toast and clear liquids. I have a box of melba toast rounds before me, which has (how did that happen?) promotional pictures of Nadia Comaneci scattered on the back panel. Also: Nadia Comaneci (how did that happen?) is now older.
In the HinterOne of the nice things about living in the specific urban blob that we do is that it takes very little driving time (except, perhaps, during rush hour) to get out, out into remarkably agrarian spaces.
And so, I am here, far away from the shimmering mechanical hum. Instead, the air is alive with birdsong. A carpet of tiny violets invades the slate stones that cut a path by the garage and out into the back yard. There are things to be pruned, and dogs to be walked. At night (but not this time) the milky way peers from the heavens, faint but true.
The most amazing thing is that the backyard (which is something right there, frankly) backs right up against a large clear space of farmer's field given over to knee-high grass, with nothing past that but some cows far on the other side of the dell, and trees. All trees.
And if one is lucky, one can stand on the dewy edge of that field early in the morning with steaming cup of coffee in hand, and have a whole flock of birds rise up from hiding in that grass as one, to swirl into the sky and be gone into a new day.
Bits and PiecesOn our way back, at sixty-odd miles per hour, a bug died.
I am not sure what particular kind of bug it was, but it left an almost perfectly diagonal green smear across the windshield, right smack in the middle of my field of view, turning the rest of the return into a fight against focus and a strange, well rendered video game with a strange, alien aiming reticle.
Anyway, the weather has been interesting.
Four days ago, it was remarkably pleasant. The air was cool and light, and when one was in the sun, one could feel the whispered promises of the heat to come in one's ear, gently: "I am coming," says the heat, "but not yet." After the day has fallen, those kind of hours lead into cool twilights that are perfect for eating out in the air, so we went to a favorite Italian resturant, and one cream sauce and pasta dish later I think I can safely say that I am over the latest round of stomach wrack.
Two days ago, the world turned dim with cloud, and the day softened occasionally with rain. Always raining the hardest when one wanted to walk someplace, of course. Breaks in clouds caused buildings to appear lighter than the sky behind them, and I managed to view a bowl made of glass that had the property that it was impossible to judge the depth of it.
Yesterday was just vaguely nasty.
But today, summer sat up and stretched a little. The season does not stand yet, but it has made it clear that the eyes are open.
On the Way Back OutI have learned how to knit.
It is my little joke that I am being extraordinarily precise in that statement: in general, knitting is turning a strand of yarn into cloth. In particular, one specific method of manipulating the yarn into itself is referred to as a knit stitch, and I can do that. I can also do this thing called casting on, which is how it starts. In full disclosure, I cannot yet purl, graft, rib, increase, decrease, slip, or yarn over, expect by accident. I can bind off (this is how it ends), mostly. But I can knit.
I feel I can claim this because it is my fingers that know how, now, so I can click away at doddering speed while listening to NPR, or sometimes MTV2, stopping in the latter case when MTV2 decides to allow Michel Gondry to show me something impossible, which I enjoy.
My efforts have been clumsy and odd, so far, because while the manipulations that give rise to the particular topologies of knitted material are simple, there are also subtle considerations such as tension in the knit that I am not near to understanding. I also lose a sense of the work when in the middle, the row divided across the needles and angled strange.
But I trust it. That should be enough - it turns out that it is.
A while back a friend of mine needed folding screens. I thought of a way to do it with string and pieces of bamboo (with the help of a glue gun - not strictly necessary, but makes it all much easier) to make frames that could be covered with paper or cloth. I made some on the kitchen floor, working over stark pages of The Wall Street Journal. When I was done, I said to myself: "if I ever get stranded on a deserted isle, I can make folding screens. I should learn to make cloth, so as to be able to make a sail."
I can make a really shitty sail.
Whether WonderThe weather again? Yes. But the weather has been interesting.
Last week, we were coddled in a string of bright, shimmery summery days. Blue skies and clouds, with the sun pouring in. Birds returned. The local campus lawn became an explosion of bodies, each in their own little world of urban privacy. One could tell it was for real, this time, because the trees believed - they blew up with green, all in a day.
Then came the reminder that it was April, after all: the clouds came back, and the mercury dropped, and freeze warnings were issued. Snow was in the forcast. As the light failed in the twilight under a mottled slate sky and a knife wind came in over the houses into the back patch, I was given a taste of an obscene autumn, where everything had a sense of dimming harvest except the damn trees, all still valiant, struggling green.
Some of the leaves on the ivy on the fence actually turned. Red leaves in spring, pigments crawling out from under the corpses of the chlorophyll.
Now it has all spun again: the sky is clear eye blue, moted with bits of cotton, and the sun again pumps warmth into anything it touches. The air is moderate. The red leaves on the ivy yet remain, but the detail is lost in the power of spring; the trees believe again.
And they really mean it this time, because every last damn one of them is trying to make sweet, slow love to my nose.
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