Changes
Signs have aligned in the last week. The backyard fountain, tired of aerating fledgling corpses and mosquito eggs, died. A neighbor's pumpkins once again have thrown vegetal arms of invitation over the fence. Do I accept the characteristic swelling with the melon-flowers, or save the ersatz trellis from collapse? Autumn clouds steam in, imbued with November grey yet still pneumatically inflated with Summer. A jocular woman with curves squeezes into a man's suit, and age then shrinks her to fit.
Windows open, the insects are now more muted than with the windows shut. Cicadas no longer scream their slasher-movie soundtrack. The hum of life is sinking, down to the height of the grass. Even the basement cricket - who has been using a wet-bar sink for amplification - takes no more requests for his toilet-paper-and-comb waltz.
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Two aging galoots on bicycles this morning, sporting dingy wife-beaters and silver hair. One screams: "How the fuck did YOU get paid?? Jimmy didn't get paid! Frankie didn't get paid!" Perhaps coincidentally, the paid one was wearing a helmet.
HERR KEPLER'S NOTEBOOK
Time is the bully anchor of the opposing tug-rope team.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
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"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
The person with a happy home life tracks glitter through the world; the solitary person leaves snowprints.
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"The grasshopper warbler's song comes up out of the earth just as you think the day is quietening down. It has no prelude or warm-up: it starts midperformance, as if switched on by the dark, as it if has been singing like this beneath the earth until it was dark enough to come to the surface. As if, though we hardly hear it, this singing never stops."
A Year on the Wing (Tim Dee)
All writing and cartoons on this site copyright 2008-2010 Julia Martin, unless otherwise credited.
Everyone seems to be catching intimations of Fall all at once, today!
ReplyDeleteWonderful, wonderful writing.