Much as I can sometimes feel the warmth of Spring on certain days in January, when the sun shines brightly upon the tan Winter grass through the naked tree branches, so I can now feel the coming Fall, which I realize will not be coming for another month and a half at this latitude. It doesn't help that I received the most recent issue of GQ, which is the Fall clothing issue. I also just happened to pick up a package of Irish Breakfast tea bags from a company in Northern Ireland when I was at the store. The British Isles sell the best teas in my opinion and teas also bring me back to Autumn.
I can't help it. I am remembering Falls in the late 70's spent on football fields in the mountains of Tennessee, the Bluegrass of Kentucky and the Shenandoah River Valley/ I was walking up trails from my apartment along Woods Creek to the Collonade, kicking orange and crimson leaves across the brick walkway. Listening to lectures on British literature as I stared out the second floor window at the world of Lexington, Virginia drifting slowly by. Caught up in a late Victorian dream captured like a wasp in amber.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Defenestration as family profession
The good citizens of Praha,
Living separately from the power
Of the Viennese throne
And its papal messengers,
Thought it right to wrest
Conscience from the hands
Of those priests and friars
Under which they had struggled
For, lo, so many years
And take a more direct path
To God, through his word and Holy Spirit;
And so, with conscience as their guides,
These laymen took matters and priests
Into their trembling hands
And cursed the messengers
By heave-ho out the window
To the "holy" dung hill below
And, thus, liberated their souls
For a brief time, until the Austrian Emperor
Sent cardinals and envoys and soldiers of fortune
To do the work that God would not.
And now, six hundred years later
Poor Pluto is divested of its status
By a new generation of Czech citizens
Who would take their solar system
Into their own hands
And remove little Pluto
From its place in this part of the universe,
Diminishing its place as planet
To dwarf, a designation less meaningful,
An astronomical defenestration.
Living separately from the power
Of the Viennese throne
And its papal messengers,
Thought it right to wrest
Conscience from the hands
Of those priests and friars
Under which they had struggled
For, lo, so many years
And take a more direct path
To God, through his word and Holy Spirit;
And so, with conscience as their guides,
These laymen took matters and priests
Into their trembling hands
And cursed the messengers
By heave-ho out the window
To the "holy" dung hill below
And, thus, liberated their souls
For a brief time, until the Austrian Emperor
Sent cardinals and envoys and soldiers of fortune
To do the work that God would not.
And now, six hundred years later
Poor Pluto is divested of its status
By a new generation of Czech citizens
Who would take their solar system
Into their own hands
And remove little Pluto
From its place in this part of the universe,
Diminishing its place as planet
To dwarf, a designation less meaningful,
An astronomical defenestration.
Advent
Again the alarm failed to go off and we slept until the sun was beating on the tops of our heads from the window behind our bed. We are on an altered schedule at this point. I smell some danger from the possibility of sleeping too late and finding myself explaining myself to some judge somewhere who probably would have little sympathy for my new sleep schedule.
I heard somewhere that it takes thirty days to create or break a habit. If that is true then we have a lot of work to do within the next month. I also need to work on that alarm clock. Night before last it was simply a product of the clock losing power and shutting off the alarm mechanism. I thought we had that figured out but obviously this morning's alarm failure showed that we either didn't set the alarm last night or there is something wrong with the clock itself. I'll have to take a look at that this afternoon.
The humidity has been leached from the weather this week and we are supposed to have some days where it is hot, but dry leading into this weekend when it will get cooler. It seems that Fall is on its way. Hurrah!
I heard somewhere that it takes thirty days to create or break a habit. If that is true then we have a lot of work to do within the next month. I also need to work on that alarm clock. Night before last it was simply a product of the clock losing power and shutting off the alarm mechanism. I thought we had that figured out but obviously this morning's alarm failure showed that we either didn't set the alarm last night or there is something wrong with the clock itself. I'll have to take a look at that this afternoon.
The humidity has been leached from the weather this week and we are supposed to have some days where it is hot, but dry leading into this weekend when it will get cooler. It seems that Fall is on its way. Hurrah!
Monday, August 23, 2010
Beauty at the coming of night
When I first noticed the moon this evening, it was twilight and the purple darkness of evening had not quite covered the eastern sky, but behind the pine trees was an azure color which bought a bit of the close of day and the beginning of night and mixed both together. Later, when I saw the moon again after the dying of the day's sun, I noticed that the sky was now deep blue and lightened by the now silver moon. It was a full moon, I think. Its creamy color was now the silver of a bright, new silver coin. There seemed to be little humidity in the air, and it intensified the colors. The moon sitting there in the eastern sky looked like a piece of silver jewelry on a skien of velvet. There was a part of me that wanted to stand there and watch as the moon slowly passed across the sky. Tomorrow is another work day. The beauty of the evening is lost as we take our nightly rest.
Looking for proof of Autumn
I woke up about my usual time today, around 5:30. After clearing the decks, I headed upstairs and ended up sleeping until around 8:15. As it turned out, the electric clocks, with the alarms we depend on so much, had gone off at sometime in the middle of the night and so we were without the electronic aid we need to badly most of the time. I personally was coming off the hot part of yesterday afternoon when I was trudging around a field in Meriwether County, picking figs for Cindy.
After I took my shower and shaved, it became apparent to me that Cindy was not going to be ready any time soon, so I left for the office, arriving about an hour later than normal. I have been attempting to catch up ever since.
The heat has returned this afternoon and my air conditioning system has ben struggling to break the strain the sun has placed upon it. I guess it was the water vapor in the upper atmosphere, but the clouds that have crossed the skies these days have been magnificent lately. Yesterday afternoon, Cindy and I were noticing the clouds as we drove back from Hudson's Farms to home. A lot of the clouds seemed to have a pink cast to them and one formation looked like a calvary charge of clouds across the sky.
When I was little, I remember seeing cloud formations and imagining skyscrapers and apartment buildings of cotton, like the Navajo villages built into the buttes of New Mexico. This past week, my memories of those childish imaginings were brought to memory as I looked at the elaborate formations in the blue, blue skies.
The rain that came to us during the end of last week greened up the vegetation around us. The trees and bushes looked so alive compared to the way they were growing during the mini-drought we were having in July and early August. If we can keep this occasional rain pattern, perhaps we can have a colorful Fall when late September and October roll around.
After I took my shower and shaved, it became apparent to me that Cindy was not going to be ready any time soon, so I left for the office, arriving about an hour later than normal. I have been attempting to catch up ever since.
The heat has returned this afternoon and my air conditioning system has ben struggling to break the strain the sun has placed upon it. I guess it was the water vapor in the upper atmosphere, but the clouds that have crossed the skies these days have been magnificent lately. Yesterday afternoon, Cindy and I were noticing the clouds as we drove back from Hudson's Farms to home. A lot of the clouds seemed to have a pink cast to them and one formation looked like a calvary charge of clouds across the sky.
When I was little, I remember seeing cloud formations and imagining skyscrapers and apartment buildings of cotton, like the Navajo villages built into the buttes of New Mexico. This past week, my memories of those childish imaginings were brought to memory as I looked at the elaborate formations in the blue, blue skies.
The rain that came to us during the end of last week greened up the vegetation around us. The trees and bushes looked so alive compared to the way they were growing during the mini-drought we were having in July and early August. If we can keep this occasional rain pattern, perhaps we can have a colorful Fall when late September and October roll around.
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