Sat, 25 Jun 2011, 07:16 AM (-06:00)
Meet me in the middle of the day.
Let me hear you say everything’s ok.
Bring me southern kisses from your room.
Meet me in the middle of the night.
Let me hear you say everything’s alright.
Let me smell the moon in your perfume.
—Steve Forbert, Romeo’s Tune
Saturday morning, after having seen him at a small cafe the night before. The signed Jackrabbit Slim CD sits on the desk. “For Trudy and Dave,” it says, with a great cruly-wavy autograph in black.
The song plays loudly the speakers in the study. He walks back into the bedroom. She reaches out to him.
“Oh baby, it’s ok,” she says as she kisses him.
The dog barks and paws at them. They open up their hug and let him in so that he can join in the Saturday morning hug.
And now it’s time go get eggs at the Farmer’s Market.
Thu, 16 Jun 2011, 04:39 PM (-06:00)
1. Toad
Its almost dark. The heat of the day is finally letting go. Sweat is dripping down my sides, but the cooler air of evening feels good, and the breeze feels absolutely wonderful.
Something scurries on the ground, making straight for my feet. A mouse!? I’ve never seen mice here. I stomp my feet, and it dashes under the bench.
I turn around. There’s a toad sitting in our ground level water tray. It’s our “toad bath”. They find them. They can smell the water.
It sits in the water a minute or so and then hops out, making for the underbrush beneath the Monterey Oak.
2. Owl
There are chattering/scratching sounds in the branches of the Ash tree. In the fading light of dusk, the sounds are familiar. I whistle my Eastern Screeh Owl A-song [audio].
The chattering stops, and I can see three owl silhouettes in the branches looking down at me, bobbling their heads [video].
I whistle again, and the owls come gliding silently out of the branches, across my head and into the branches of a Red Oak on the other side.
The toad is nowhere to be seen.
Wed, 15 Jun 2011, 09:21 PM (-06:00)
And rain? We’re filling the rain barrels with tap water.
Oh, our tomatoes and cucumbers and squash. There’s one cucumber on the two remaining plants. The squash are blooming, but there’s not much sign of any fruit.
You don’t believe me. I know you don’t believe me when I say that we’ve had no rain forever.
For the past year, that is since June 2010 (see City of Austin), here are the days where we had more than one inch of rainfall.
| 07 Sep 2010 |
4.57 in |
| 08 Sep 2010 |
3.23 in |
| 24 Dec 2010 |
1.02 in |
| 09 Jan 2011 |
1.57 in |
Folks. This is for the past 365 days.
Fri, 20 May 2011, 05:31 PM (-06:00)
“I didn’t see the woman with the brace,” she said from the other room.
“What?” I asked.
I was trying to find a Friday movie for us to go to and was having trouble figuring out what she was mumbling about.
“I didn’t see that woman. It was your own experience.”
The wheels turned a bit, and then I caught up with what she was talking about.
“You’re right,” I said. “It was my own experience.”
“It was your own experience.”
Because it was Friday evening and I was feeling good, I sarcastically added, “Yes, you’re right. It was. It’s my own blog. You can write your experiences to your own blog. Have at it.”
She laughed. I smiled. And now I’m in trouble for telling you this. … But it’s Friday.
Fri, 20 May 2011, 04:54 PM (-06:00)
A taxi honked at some poor soul waiting at a stoplight just a little too long. The brakes of a metrobus squealed as it rolled slowly along the street. Two men at the table at the other end of the sidewalk patio spoke to each other in Vietnamese as we ate our Phở.
A lady’s dog across the street snarled at a poodle walking by. A man at the Moroccan restaurant nearby stood proudly in his doorway anticipating the dinner rush. And as we sat there our shadows grew long, stretching across the table onto a planter of petunias and onto the sidewalk along P Street.
It wasn’t a bad way to end our trip, not a bad way at all.
Fri, 20 May 2011, 04:34 PM (-06:00)
I saw a woman walking slowly up the sidewalk along P Street.
She held a brace and moved deliberately, choosing each step with care. There was an ashen look on her face, as if she had been sequestered for a long time and had just ventured back into the outside world.
She wore a sweater over her shoulders, and the wind of early evening made me put on mine. She held a cigarette in her left hand.
We sat outside at a café waiting for our dinner, and I watched her make her way slowly up the hill, headed perhaps to the fountain at Dupont Circle, to the sounds of running water and the laughter of kids running around and the murmuring of people chatting after work as the sun’s last rays threw shadows across the plaza—a good place to recuperate.
Thu, 19 May 2011, 09:03 PM (-06:00)
I would have taken a picture of you sitting by the fountain in Dupont Circle among all the other people enjoying the evening.
I would have taken a picture of you under the blue sky in the cool breeze with green trees standing far down P Street across the Potomac.
I would have taken a picture of you, if only I had changed the camera battery the night before, but I didn’t, and so I couldn’t, and as a result, we have … this.
Thu, 19 May 2011, 04:52 PM (-06:00)
We came just to see the pandas and have something to eat. Our agenda for the day lay mainly with the rented bicycles we had locked to a rack down by Rock Creek Park. And now it was time to get back.
“Let’s go see the cheetahs,” I said.
A sign said that the cheetah exhibit was just off the sidewalk leading back to the zoo entrance. And there they were lying in the grass looking just like they might look out on the Serengeti. Except of course for the fences and walls. And except that just beyond the back fence was a pen of zebras.
One of the zebras walked up to the fence and stared at the napping cheetahs. It just stood there fearlessly and looked over at them.
A cheetah lifted its head and stared back.
And time stood still for a moment as the two of them gazed into each other’s eyes. No fear. No threat. Just quizzical gazing from prey to predator to prey.
Even they knew something about the setup was not quite right.
Thu, 19 May 2011, 03:54 PM (-06:00)
There was a regatta on the Potomac that day. College crews were unloading their sculls and warming up. Spectators were standing by the water’s edge. The Thompson Rowing Center clubhouse was busy, but there were bikes available to rent. We put on helmets and stashed the bike lock in our backpack. I left my driver’s license at the desk, and we set off to find Rock Creek trail.
With the Connecticut Avenue bridge above us, we locked our bikes to a rack at the foot of a steep, grassy hill and picked our steps thru blooming wildflowers back up into the hustle and bustle of Washington DC. Looking for a place to eat for lunch, we came to the National Zoo. We went in to see the pandas and ate overpriced sandwiches. We rested a bit and then returned to our bikes.
There were runners. There were walkers. There were people on bikes. There were kids. There were old folks. There were hipsters with white wires hanging from their ears. The creek was gurgling. The sun was shining. And we were grateful for the periodic shade and cool breeze as we followed the wide upward sloping road into the park.
There were Beech trees there—big Beech trees with trunks like elephant legs, silvery grey on the hills with spring leaves filtering the warm sun, enveloping us in a gentle green glow. And there were Dogwoods at the margins of the forest reaching out over the trail with bright white blossoms in full bloom.
We stopped at a picnic table beside the creek to snack and to rest. Runners and walkers and bikers passed us. Trudy lay down and was soon breathing deeply. But amid the Tulip trees and Elms and Oaks and Beeches and Dogwoods and trees unknown to a Texan, and amid the rushing water making its way to the Potomac across tumbled-down boulders, I could not close my eyes.
In what seemed an instant, hours had passed, and it was time to turn back even though we had barely just begun.
Wed, 18 May 2011, 09:54 PM (-06:00)
At Kafe Leopold in Georgetown on a rainy day. Down a cobblestone alley between red brick buildings.
We sit at a small round table. If it was warmer and sunny, we could be sitting outside. But it’s not so instead we are inside holding our coffees in our hands waiting for dessert.
I take out my phone, holding it secretly below the table, out of sight from the Fair and Industrious Trudy. I text her without her noticing.
I like you.
Her phone rings. She jumps and looks down and then laughs.