Just a little color at 7:09 p.m. A shot taken of the beautiful color-shifting sky, from behind my new bottle light project.
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Color
Category Archives: Gift
Moment
I took this picture after the one I posted last night of the beautiful bottle lights competing with the sunset for color dominance.
I watched her sit on the tailgate of my neighbor Mark’s truck, taking pictures and trying to capture the same brilliance I was seeing. I don’t know her at all, but she’s a young mother. You can’t see her kid sitting beside her playing because the truck bed obscures it. It’s a memory for her, and a cotidian moment that can’t be expressed adequately with words.
She’s gonna be fine as long as she keeps trying to capture what she sees.
Fall Fell
I took the picture around 12:30. I knew I needed to walk up the hill and stand where the wind would push hard. It sounded like several hundred pieces of paper being rubbed together by a mob of angry teachers.
When the drops started at 12:47, the change in the smell was dramatic. You can probably imagine the smell from the picture. I felt truly young for a moment. In part because I was alone up there.
I zigzagged down the hill a bit and stood under the open spot in the canopy I discovered a couple of months ago. The wind found me again as I became a little soaked.
The moment was fall in a way that can be experienced but rarely described.
Immerse
What used to be beautiful, uninterrupted backwoods now has a modern trail running through it. A dad with his two kids told me this afternoon that they will soon put in a huge elevated bridge across the creek. I’ll have to find a way to get down past it, even if I have to hang a climbing rope ladder on it.
I don’t want to traverse. I want to immerse. Convenient rarely equals joyful on a long timeline. If it were true, all of our fast vehicles and massive roads would have led us to be happier.
What used to be a massive cattail marsh is now just a small patch. I remembered last year after most of the hummingbirds migrated that it was one of the last places to be abandoned by these little jet fighters. I wasn’t disappointed this afternoon. There was a small squadron of the hummingbirds there, joyfully feeding on the little red wildflowers growing around the cattails.
As for birds, my Merlin app confirmed what my eyes were seeing. It tracked 36 different kinds of birds. I’m certain some of them were migratory, unlike me, who will return more frequently now that it’s rained and the weather is cooling.
When I arrived at the creek, an older man stood on the low water dam looking down at a turtle with a little bit of damage on its back. He told me his dogs had gotten a hold of it and that he feared it wasn’t alive. He left before he found out otherwise. The turtle came out of its shell and then I had to rescue it from one of the flow drainage pipes running under the low water dam.
The dad I mentioned earlier in the post took the opportunity to talk to his two kids about turtles and nature. I waded up into the creek away from them. The little boy was jealous that I was allowed to roll up my pants and walk barefoot in the middle of the creek. I heard the dad tell him that the next time they came, they would all go into the creek without shoes.
I never see people my age roll up their pants and get in the water. It’s their loss. Sure, I can slip and fall in. It’s happened before. And I hope it happens again. Everything comes with a price and a risk. Just as much as the decision to play it safe.
Some bastard with chalk defiled an offshoot of the trail. It’s so strange that he used red for the hat and orange for the stick body. Who in the hell carries chalk out across a creek? Crazy people, that’s who.
Sunrise Tunnel
The briefly lived September sunrise tunnel over the crest of Appleby.
Why does the car cresting look like an antique car?
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Smart!
I was ambling out of a building today.
“Uncle Richard!” It was a high-pitched little girl’s voice. Looking up, I saw the most precious little girl with brightly colored glasses smiling at me. She was probably 5 years old.
Her mom stopped and softly told her that I wasn’t her uncle.
Looking at me, the mom said that I did look extremely similar to her brother-in-law.
I was going to ask if he was prone to wearing brightly colored glasses, but the little girl spoke again.
“What’s your name?”
“Do you want to play Rumpelstiltskin? I’ll give you 27 guesses.”
This is where it got fascinating.
The little girl smiled. “I don’t need any guesses. Your name is X.”
I know I looked stupid for a couple of seconds. It’s not just that I forgot about my name badge. No one looking at it ever correctly assumes that the big X on there is my name. As far as I can tell, only psychopaths and weirdos have names like mine.
“How do you know that?”
“Your name is in the corresponding space for names.”
I laughed and looked at her mom in surprise. For a child that age, her vocabulary and logical deduction about my name and badge was truly astonishing.
“You are a very smart girl aren’t you?”
“I hope I will be.”
“Say hello to your uncle Richard for me, okay?”
The little girl smiled. “Of course.”
I would say that I thought I might have just met one of our future presidents. But she’s much too smart for that.
PS The picture is one of the talkative and quarrelsome crows that likes to fly by me.
Komorezuki
Is the picture a snapshot of dirty concrete or dappled moonlight? Mottled moonbeams is another way of describing it. The Japanese call it Komorezuki.
The shimmering effect results from moonlight or light creating pinhole cameras between the leaves.
Several times this week, I’ve stopped in the dark and watched huge expanses of this effect. It’s almost like two superimposing realities are trying to click into the same space.
I can take a picture of it, but I can’t really capture it, no more than I can descriptively recall why some moments are more vivid than others.
This is just another variation of my Septembers, when the light jumps and slides across the memory markers I’m accustomed to.
I’m 59 and still waiting for the click. When you get older and look back, it’s astonishing how many of the important moments feel like they’re not?
A Story Of Revenge
Because I got up even earlier than should be possible, I walked the dead man hill route and cut south. When I made it to North Street, the number of young people out around 1:30 was ridiculous.
By the time I looped back around and walked a short stretch of Leverett, three different cars had driven by with young men screaming from the windows in an attempt to startle me. It happens a lot. I wish I could tell all these young guys who have obviously been drinking that riding around with the back passenger window open while wearing a backward baseball cap is tantamount to catnip for police.
After I turned on Leverett again, a little white Hondaesque car drove by me slowly. Can you guess? Yet another inebriated young guy leaned out the window and screamed. “Wooooo!”
Even though I was expecting it, I jumped and laughed. The young guy leaned further out the window and waved, laughing.
The car turned on the very next left onto Hazel Street. It’s very close to Leverett. For no reason at all, I walked around the same corner. The Hondaesque car had stopped at the intersection of Hazel and Storer. The brake lights were lit, so I knew somebody was in the car.
I’m pretty sure one of the occupants was either stopping to confirm his membership in the chess club or securing more alcohol. I’ll let you decide which is more likely.
It was at that moment that I realized that Bobby Dean was calling. I walked quickly across the grass and against the trees just in case one of the car’s occupants might see me. When I was about ten feet away, I darted over to the passenger side. Keep in mind it’s about 2:00 a.m.
At the top of my lungs (two feet from the car), I screamed: “WHAT’S UP C*******ERS!”
(You have to use the terminology that young university men are prone to use, not to mention a nod to my dad.)
It turns out that two of the occupants had exited the vehicle when they arrived. Both passengers in the back seat screamed like elementary school girls.
It was as if they moved in slow motion as they overreacted. It didn’t occur to me to run off.
Both of the young guys fortunately thought it was hilarious.
“Be safe and watch out for the Watermelon Man,” I said before walking away, still grinning like an idiot.
PS The Watermelon Man is a fable invented by my dad, Bobby Dean. He’s always out at night and you never see him coming until he wants you to.
.*The picture is of beautiful new buildings recently constructed on the corner of Sycamore and Leverett. I had what should have been beautiful shots of the university skyline, but both turned out to be Mr. McGoo shots.
Saturday
I had a couple of more great moments. Spending the morning watching the multiple hummingbirds jet around was definitely worth it. I have one I nicknamed “Machine Gun” for obvious reasons. It is non-stop LOUD.
I waited until later to take Güino for a walk. As soon as we got around to the back of the building, a squirrel announced his disapproval from on top of my barbecue grill back there. I don’t speak squirrel, but he called my cat every dirty name in the book.
It started sprinkling big heavy drops. Güino danced around and darted back and forth because evidently he decided that he could evade the drops if he just acted crazy enough. He led me on a fast march down the alleyway. And then decided to borrow into the deep pile of leaves close to Gregg. I had to dig him out.
He must have learned a bad lesson from the squirrel because he spent the trip up the stairs onto my landing complaining about the utter disrespect of being made to go back inside.
Orion In The Trees
Orion through the gap in the top of the old post oak tree. The Lepus constellation was visible too, even though it doesn’t show well in this picture. I earned this picture. Post oak trees don’t get massively vertical. Instead, they get broader, much like genX as supper at 5p.m. becomes the norm. That’s why these trees have huge thick branches that extend perpendicularly close to the ground.
It was easy to get into the tree. Quite another thing to get past the middle of it in the dark. Once I was up there, I defied gravity by not wanting to come down.
I already knew it would be the memorable moment for the day. Coming down felt like defeat.
