the sky gets in the trees

I made this four years ago to try to convey a silly thought I had about autumn many years back: when you look at the colors, it's like the sky has gotten mixed up with the trees, and the trees have gotten mixed up with the grass.

Technically, it's three times the same slice of the same photo, with the Photoshop "crystallize" filter at 15 and 50.

cuz you can never have too much glitter

Went to the pride parade today... ended up covered with glitter and happy. Loopy didn't want to go - she hates crowds and heat and sun, which pretty much covers any parade. So for once, instead of any compromise involving either a disgruntled me at home or a disgruntled Loopy at the parade, we did what was most likely to make us happy: Loopy stayed home and I went by myself.

I walked 1.7 miles (happy tipsy glittery exercise!) through the crowd - loved looking at the crowd, couldn't care much less about the floats - ate a coconut paleta, had a sangria, bottled water, and caught two strings of gorgeous purple beads. Like I said. Happy.

Then I went to see Away We Go, which, similarly, Loopy did not want to do. The first 2/3 were very funny. The last 1/3, where they're supposed to be making profound human insights/connections, was painfully stilted and stupid.

To finish up the night, I was just bringing the dog inside when I saw - could it - yes! I saw my first fireflies of the season. They always seem so fragile in the city, little lights against the mammoth glare, but they endure so it must not be too bad for them here... they always give me tremendous joy...

love to all from a glittery city :-)

delta means change

i've long been fascinated by the few "interior deltas" that exist in the world... these are places where a river passes through an area that is basically flat, but it is not the mouth of the river (thus "interior"). The river spreads out over the land and, instead of cutting a single channel, the waters separate and meet each other again and again and again.

Copper River delta, Alaska	Inner Niger Delta, West Africa (the "inner" part is on the left)

The wildlife in these places is rare and spectacular...

I'm forced to truncate this post, but all I was going to say is, sometimes it feels like I've gone over a waterfall on the edge of the world and spun out into space...

...but changes in life are much more like these waters...few things are final, few things are deadly, most changes will change again...lost things return or regenerate, deep things resurface to be healed... many things come and go like the phases of the moon i wrote about earlier, following their own cycles...

ok so it might have sounded less like a cliché if I'd had more time to write. :-P (and certainly would have included fewer instances of the word "thing" - sorry, Ms. Rogers).

Off to Miriam's writing retreat - can't wait to see her and experience the retreat for the first time! See you in a couple days.

beautiful

The lake was so, so beautiful this afternoon. All day we'd had storms and sunshine alternating, and this afternoon the lake was a gorgeous deep teal blue color, scattered with constantly moving whitecaps, and shadowed with darker deeper teal in the hollows of the waves. I refrained from taking any photos out of the window of the moving car, so at left is a photo I found on Flickr that somewhat approximates the colors of what I was seeing today... it was just breathtakingly gorgeous.

Another beautiful thing: last year with all the wild abandon of the pre-crash economy we bought a bunch of expensive annuals and stuck them in our outside pots. This year I planted seeds, though I think I'll round them out with a couple of cheap geraniums, if such are still to be found at this late date. So I planted - just a few days ago - some nasturtiums (left)(a mix of orange, red, yellow that should be gorgeous), and some Grandpa Ott's morning glories (right).

Last year I had my favorite Heavenly Blue morning glories (below left)—and I do see two of those coming up this year (yay for self-seeding!) so I've been careful not to disturb them—but I thought I'd try a different color...

So anyway it's only been a couple of days and the Grandpa Ott's are already coming up!!! wow! they're just popping up ploink-ploink-ploink like the plants in the Totoro video I posted in April.

I do also see a few little sprouts coming that might be the nasturtiums; we'll see. I'll be lucky if the nasturtiums even bloom - they don't do well with over-fertilized soil, and I'm sure that's what I've got.

I was gonna write about some of the dogs we saw Sunday and online that we might get but I'm falling asleep at the keyboard so I'll leave it at this for now...

Except to just say that either my anti-depressants are working and/or I'm starting to regain my footing after the unspeakably awful last two weeks in April. Loopy and I have been doing a lot of fun things together, like last Friday we had a whirlwind trip to Milwaukee to hear a band she was really excited about. We have a lot of fun together just as we always have... Heartache doesn't heal overnight but... time is, as others have found, a remarkably soothing balm. So things begin to return to normal - although of course, there's never any "return to normal," there is always only a new normal. But new normal is shaping up quite well.

Not everything is redeemed: my Aunt's life is still flickering, possibly still ending, and even if not, she does not appear to be regaining any of her intellectual capacities.

And there's still a giant hole in our bathroom ceiling.

So yeah. Some things aren't beautiful no matter how you look at them... but beauty is around us still, and in our connections with those closest to us... very grateful as always...

Gotta sleep...

spring: deleted, rewritten. summer: anticipated, feared. life: life.

Miri wrote about spring on her blog... including this: "I am not a summer person, and I have noticed the poignancy of spring in a new way this year - I do not look forward to loud stereos and too much sun."

I do like sun, and all the flesh it brings out for my visual delectation, but was initially inclined to say that I dislike spring.

So I spent over an hour writing a long blathering post in which I wrote - with increasing difficulty - about how I like summer but dislike spring. I had lists of bad things that had happened in spring, I quoted from Eliot's overquoted "Wasteland" (of course!)...

...but gradually I thought of more and more good things that had happened in spring, and began to feel that whenever it was that I decided that I like autumn, don't like spring, etc. - whenever those moments were, they were utterly arbitrary, meaningless, and dependent on how I felt that moment... but I decided to attach a lot of weight to that feeling, codify it as "my opinion," then carry it around with me... could walk around much lighter without.

(None of this is meant to disrespect or distort Miriam's words - I'm fairly sure that I've wandered far, far from their connotation if not their denotation - and certainly far from the openness of the mind of the writer as expressed in her post).

So instead, a few fresh and immediate thoughts about seasons right now.....

I love the wave upon wave of flowers that break across the country, across the region (from Chicago to Madison in twelve to eighteen days), and across the street (from the sunny side to the shady side in three to six days)... i suppose across the hemisphere as well... don't know anymore how long that takes. We are just past the last of now-fraying tulips; glorying in the first full burst of lilies-of-the-valley; and just glimpsing the earliest lilacs and irises.

For those who have spent much of their lives on the academic calendar, spring tends to bring mixed feelings of the end-of-semester craziness and anticipation of summer pleasures.

For me personally, this particular year, the mixed feelings are intense. I look forward to summer, and dread, utterly dread, the job search and the unstructured time.

There are many simple summer pleasures that I anticipate cheerfully. First of all, hanging out with Loopy. Summer is our time to enjoy each other, and this year, as we renew our communion, I am really looking forward to that a lot. It makes me happy already to see how those things that should always be hers - my attention, my thoughts, my check-in texts - all these things are hers again. Feels right, makes me happy... And soon we'll spend all our time together again, which we love to do... and this year we're focusing on healing our individual mental health and our health as a couple, so as long as that doesn't turn inward too much, I think that this could really be a very happy summer for us.

Other summer pleasures.

Watermelon. Peaches.

Summer blockbuster movies. Loving the thrill and the popcorn. Coming outside blinking in the blazing heat.

Planting new plants in my pots outside... futzing with said plants... training morning glories to grow over my fence.

Warmth, heat, walking around in a skanky lil sundress (need a new one - shopping!), sweat running down, dress sticking to me...

Having time to let myself enjoy little things that only i enjoy, like watching insects doing insect things...

...as i did this morning on my way out of the front gate - there was this amazing, gorgeous spider, whom I watched and examined, and just now identified online by her iridescent green mouthparts - she was a Bold Jumping Spider. maybe she should be my totem.

(Yes, I'm not just a nature geek but specifically an insect geek - check out this post all about a giant, six-foot weed that I couldn't bring myself to pull because, among other fascinating insect life, it featured an enormous colony of aphids being methodically destroyed by a few ladybugs.)

(Ok, so spiders aren't insects, but saying "insects and spiders" or "members of the Phylum Arthropoda" wouldn't flow as well in the writing).

But over all this looms a lot of fear about ... in short... not being able to handle unstructured time and the job search very well. about teaching again in the fall. about my life.

But here's a ray of hope.

This morning I woke up and went into my usual unstructured time mode. First I poked and prodded myself into misery. Then I moped anxiously about how I was depressed and not being productive. Finally I called dear Miri and cried freely. There is sadness in me and it's reasonable, it has reasons, many. It comes out.

But somewhere in there I forced myself to eat, and Loopy reminded me to take my pills.

And in spite of myself, I feel better. That last bit about Loopy and summer and insects, I wrote after the pills kicked in. You can tell, can't you. Well I know I can.

I'm still really terrified of how this summer will go. But I deleted a lot of anxious blather about that. Somehow, the movies and spiders and morning glories now seem to dominate the fears as easily as the fears dominated the strawberries a few hours ago.

Maybe we're getting close to the right combo of meds. Maybe, finally? this year will be different. Is it too un-Buddhist of me to hope that it will?

"O swear not by the moon, th'inconstant moon,
That monthly changes in her circled orb,
Lest that thy love prove likewise variable." (Romeo & Juliet, 2:2:109-112)

For some reason, I loved those lines when I first read them in high school, and remembered them (quoting them at annoying moments as any pompous Harvard windbag is wont to do).

Recently it occurred to me that it seems there are two things Juliet didn't know, though perhaps Shakespeare did.

First, the moon doesn't change. It's still there. We just can't see it sometimes. But unlike many things in life, it's pretty damn reliable.

Second, everything changes - everything's "variable." Eventually the sun will explode and eat the moon. It's just hard to know what changes will happen and when - there's the rub. Juliet lived less than a week after saying these lovely words. So yeah.

So, moons. It's been a month since what was pretty much the worst week of my adult life. My wife almost left me, my aunt almost died, I lost a dear friend, and the bathroom ceiling fell in. Yeah, literally. Apparently there was a leak upstairs.

The whole losing my job thing, that was a week or two later, but maybe I can kind of toss it in the mix.

So now, a month later, I take stock: still big holes where friend n bathroom ceiling used to be; job still lost. On the other hand, aunt is revived and seems ok (though her mind seems to be gone), and marriage has revived more promisingly than aunt (with its mind still intact) - revived much, much more than I'd have dared to hope a month ago.

So, I have much to be grateful for (what do you do with that dangling preposition? Much for which to be grateful? :-P ).

As I walked down the sidewalk with wifey yesterday laughing and talking about the Star Trek movie (separate post!), as she woke up this morning all sleepy-eyed and beautiful, as she made me breakfast and made me take the dog out, i felt and feel so lucky, lucky, lucky. The absolutely most wonderful person in the world is my wife. And she still loves me! After all that's happened, all I've done, all these years.

My moods are getting more and more unpredictable, the tears and laughter sweeping over me like waves, like storms, like tides that rise and fall at the whim of a moon I can't yet see or chart... I know at times it makes me seem unreliable or confused, confusing...

...but my love still is true, my friendship is true, I am still here after all these years, and so are you. Thank you.

intense flurries, no accumulation

for about 24 hours it snowed furiously... flakes whirling out of a leaden sky, stinging cheeks on a strong and bitter wind... it snowed and snowed, and yet a day later, when it slowed and stopped, there was hardly any snow in the streets... just the barest of white limning in the gutters... it was a weirdly dry snow anyway, and in the end one could imagine that somehow it had all blown away, or else evaporated without ever hitting the ground, like rain in the driest months in the desert.

friday they told me i was 'non-re-appointed' for the fall, i.e. fired.

the whole year feels like that snowstorm... flurry of furious activity, and... and nothing.

melt

springy coupla days here... muddy, drippy. lake's still frozen but water on top of the ice. i try to be cranky about the mud the dogs track in, but it's hard to be cranky about spring. saw two cranes today and a lot of red-wing blackbirds... wow. it'll be cold again, but, we're on the way...

OLIF (therapist) said today: "You really, really want to move to Chicago and get a job there... and I think this time you might actually give yourself what you want."

I had to ponder that for a while. There's a lot there... how things have worked in the past... haven't allowed myself to get what I want... hmmmm.

summer definitely ending...

for a couple days, the opening line of a Keats ode to autumn I had to study in college has been running through my head.... the line that keeps repeating is, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." I love that. Of course, I hate the next line, "Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun..." I hate all that Romantic personification, blah blah blah.

I remember I loved that class when I took it, freshman year, with my friend Sylvia; I loved the feeling I was reading Great Literature, I loved the poetry, I loved reading out of a big heavy anthology edited by my professor. Today kids accuse the prof of just trying to sell books when s/he assigns hir own work... I was star-struck that my prof had written an actual book, he was actually the authority in the field... I have no idea whether that was true, or whether that's just my youthful naivete....

Here's the whole poem. It's about equal parts insufferable affectation:

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee* sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind...
[* "Thee" = Autumn, personified as a lovely woman, of course]

and gorgeous, succulent imagery:

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

and

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

*sigh* how long has it even been since I've read a poem?

ah, summer in the country

So we drove back home last night... I was lying down in the car because my back was hurting, so I watched as the city lights and grimy air gradually faded away and the stars appeared, in greater and greater numbers... I always forget how many stars there are... in New York we used to joke about "wow, it's a really clear night, I can see all three stars!"

The lovely country smells welled up, too. The air smells so delicious out here. That's probably what I miss the most in the city... the gorgeous rich smell of the earthy, green air. Well, there's the occasional manure-spread field or smashed skunk, but hey, it's all natural... the last twenty miles Loopy was constantly dodging wildlife... she would suddenly say, "run, little fox!" or "c'mon, silly possum, which way are you going??"

There are a lot more bugs in the country. In the city, one of our windows didn't even have a screen and we could still leave it open, even at night, without being inundated. Here, different story. This morning I got up and a huge moth was fluttering madly about the windows. I don't like huge moths, as you may know, but I wanted to get it out of here, partly because I don't like them. So I got an empty jar and snuck up on it... after much sneaking and coaxing, it was in the jar and I took it outside.

It fluttered about for a bit before alighting on the ground just below the door. Great, I can't open the door now without it flying inside. I contemplated it for a moment. Then it moved, and Jackie spotted it and gobbled it up. Mmmm, yummy, she said, licking her chops.

Well, so much for the moth. And welcome back to the country.

more on the dead 'possum

[Really disgusting post—you have been warned]

Regarding the possum that Loopy posted about...there's more to the story of course.

Snog was very proud of himself for killing the possum at his advanced age and he strutted around like a big macho stud. Of course I made him leave it, shut the dogs in the house and went to dispose of it with the snow shovel.

(Note: Loopy claims to be the man but I'm the one who operates the power drill and disposes of dead animals and live insects. Of course, I don't believe in someone being the man. I'm just sayin'.)

So the first time I dumped him in the woods the crows dragged him right out into the middle of the driveway. The next day after Loopy headed out to work, I got a plaintive call: "Loooooopyyyyy, the possum's lying in the middle of the driveway and he's LOOKING at me!" She made me promise to get rid of him before she came home that night.

So back I went with the snow shovel--fyi, animals are harder and harder to snow-shovel as they become less and less, uh, physically coherent. So all I could do was kind of shove/roll him out of the driveway and into the leaves.

So then as she described, he was removed from the leaves and spread out on the stump—Loopy mentioned crows but I'm pretty sure it's a crow/raccoon team effort. Ugh.

But I'm not going to shovel him anywhere now because (1) he is DEFINITELY not coherent enough and (2) I don't even want to know how he smells and (3) I'm sort of fascinated by the disintegration/dissassembly process... specifically, all that's left now is some bones, some scraps, and the whole head and the tail.

Specifically, the tail.

Nobody wants to eat the tail, even though it's thick and meaty looking.

I wonder why. I mean, we think the possum tail is gross, but then we think the whole thing is gross. So what's stopping the crows and raccoons and such?

Just wondering.

happiness is...

first snowfall of the season.

shoveling.

the sounds—the shovel scraping and sliding, the snow crunching and plopping—just make me feel happy. it seems to have the same effect on the dogs, who start jumping around and then running and playing like crazy.

it feels good to be outdoors, to laugh at the dogs, to have the cold seeping into my fingers through my gloves, to use my muscles and smell the air and see the beautiful white snow everywhere, trimming each branch.

finally a hard freeze—the end, or the beginning of the end, of the drab muddy half-alive late autumn.

must mulch the iris.

my favorite things about eclipses...

I was indulging my Flickr habit today & came across some cool eclipse photos.

A long time ago—twelve years ago in fact because it was the year Loopy & I got together—there was a partial solar eclipse in Bisbee, Arizona.

We drove down from Tucson, where we were living at the time, with my Dad and Mina, a good friend from Japan.

You always see eclipse photos in books and on TV, etc., but there were two things that surprised and amazed me about the real live thing.



First, as above, there were little crescents everywhere!

Why? Well, you don't ordinarily think about it, but when there are dappled shadows (like with leaves), the light is actually in the shape of little circles, because the sun is a circle.

When the sun isn't a circle... tah-dah!!!

COOL, huh????

Second, when the sun is right at the edge of the moon, you can see the mountains on the moon! Click here to see...

Isn't Flickr great? I don't have to find & scan my own photos of these events... you can enjoy other people's!


But thinking of that day makes me a little sad...makes me miss my Dad.

It hardly seems possible that he could have found out about the eclipse, planned & organized our trip and driven us down there. I'm glad, remembering that yes, he used to be like that—full of fun ideas and eager to make sure everyone has a good time.

*sigh*

I dug up a photo from that day after all...

<<<My Dad being a goofball, with the solar eclipse projected onto his shirt.

(Some scientific type person had it set up to be projected onto a white screen, so we could watch it safely without burning our eyeballs yadda yadda, but the darn eclipse just dragged on and on and after a while everybody got a little punchy).

I should take this photo next time I go see them... he'd probably get a kick out of them even though he wouldn't remember...

It makes me glad that he's still alive, even though he's half in a dream all the time. He still acts like a big goofball, teases me or Mom and laughs like crazy.

*sigh*

the sound of springing

tonight after everybody went home we got in the hot tub. after we got out and closed it up, I was standing on the steps looking at the sky and Loopy was smoking on the porch. I heard this quiet noise, leaves rubbing together very gently--I thought, it must be some small animal--frogs already? I went & got the flashlight.

"What are you doing?" said Loopy drowsily. "I want to see who's rustling in the leaves on the patio," I answered. She didn't respond--she's used to me after 12 years.

I went back down to the patio and listened--still rustling, the dry oak leaves quietly moving against each other--so I turned the light on suddenly, trying to catch the unknown animal(s).... nothing.... just heaps and drifts of leaves... and that soft rustling. I looked and looked, shone the light here and there... the rustling wasn't in any one place, it was all around, in every direction; it didn't cease when I walked closer; there was no sudden silence or scurrying to indicate that an animal had detected my approach... there was no wind at all--the trees were motionless overhead, and I couldn't see any leaves moving (usually even in a light breeze, one leaf will flap a bit to explain that the sound is a breeze not an animal). Could it be...? It seemed impossible to think that I was hearing plants growing. But after some investigation, I concluded that there was no other explanation for this sound, all around me. And it didn't seem impossible; the sharp shoots of bulbs will grow right through fallen leaves, puncturing them neatly--there must be some moment when the hole is made, and it must make some sound. On an infinitely tinier scale, it must be like tiny earthquakes--two surfaces press against each other until there's a sudden movement, except instead of one tectonic plate sliding under the other, it's a shoot sliding against a leaf, slowly but inexorably, unstoppably....it was really quite extraordinary.

Then a few days ago I was lucky enough to watch the ice melting on Lake Mendota. The wind was pushing it up onto shore and it was piling up on itself, creaking and breaking in a fascinating tangle. (In case you didn't know, I grew up in Arizona and all this is completely new to me...)

Happy spring--and may you, too, have some moments of wonder and awe, amid all the mud and midterms.

sueños animales

several items on this topic:

1. there are now more fireflies, lots more, like I remember from last year, all over the place. it's glorious. Loopy & I watched them from the hot tub tonight. (yes, this is the life!)
   
2. the baby phoebes flew away the day after I took the picture. be well little birdies!
   
3. last night I saw the strangest thing. I was bringing the dogs in to go to bed and I saw a shape on one of the bird feeders. Weird, I thought--either a dead bird, or a bat, or a leaf. I went to check it out with the flashlight. It was a flying squirrel!!
   (plus two more skittering around the tree). As I approached it jumped from the bird feeder to the tree (a surprising distance--I guess that's why they call it...yeah) and skittered off. As you can see from the picture, it is an eerie little creature--the big eyes give it a very creepy look. It was unnerving but also very cool. I want it to come back! but no sign of them tonight.
   
4. last night I dreamed I had this beautiful chestnut horse, and I had to go into some swanky dean's office at Harvard and take some kind of IQ test, but I didn't want to leave the horse by himself. This horse acted like a dog--it was very distressed that I was inside, and it ran around outside in an agitated state trying to find me, and I kept seeing it through the windows, freaking out and trying to get in, or wandering off. I kept having to interrupt the test (which I was totally failing anyway--it was impossible--something about tartar sauce and lemon juice or something) to go and calm the horse down or try to make it comfortable. It was very funny! But also weird. Is Loopy infecting me with her MFpre-prelim panic? (For those who don't read Loopy's blog, she has to take a major exam on Aug 2 and she's, shall we say, just a tad nervous about it).
   
5. our new satellite receiver finally arrived, which is like TiVo and lets us record stuff!!!, but the dogs ripped the package apart and strewed it around the yard. I hope to post a picture because I imagine it will be quite amusing if it's not YOUR receiver lying there in the dirt.
   
6. I finally found out what has been eating my beloved peach-leaved bellflower... Many of the flowers are chewed right down to the stem as soon as they bloom. I had suspected some kind of insect infestation, but no, it's.......... SLUGS!!!!! eeew!!! I was out early today and caught the little monsters in the act. I hope to post a photo of a slug in a flower (I took several, photos that is). I don't like to kill them, for some reason, but I did kill one and went back to bed feeling like a destroyer of small life forms.
   
7. lately a bat has been roosting in the carport where I can look up at it. They are so cute, crammed up in little spaces. I love them! Most people apparently are afraid of bats but not moths. Not me. A bat can fly right past my head without causing me the slightest alarm, but a really big moth, man, that'll send me screaming. Because, you know, bats are smart and would never fly into you, but those damn moths fly all up in your face and flutter everywhere.... aak! When I was a summer camp counselor, a moth the size of a dinner plate got into the house, and I locked myself in the bathroom until it was over. Some counselor, eh!
   
   
   

   nice bat	scary moth

   
   

And that's all I have to say about dreaming of animals, or animals' dreams...... anyway, animals at night.