Tuesday, July 13, 2010

It is a quiet 3 AM of the soul, here in my home town, on the day past the new moon, seventy degree F and ever so quiet. The early hours Tuesday are among the quietest of the week, not much to do, not much to say. People are recovering form the weekend, get bed early on a Monday night. There are no festivals on a Monday. No crickets in early July. No mocking birds singing through the night in Western New York. The night train came through hours ago. The skunk patrol has left the neighborhood to explore trash night in the east side of town, the deer are absent. Nothing about but a small breeze and the sound of a window fan at some distance. This is an odd time for a bout of insomnia. It seems that the quiet has commanded me awake, it is acting like a fire alarm, it allows me to hear the panic in my deepest dreams.
But now that I am awake, I find it comforting. No paradigm's are shifting at this late hour. Everything is constant. One minute is much like the others. I know the sky is moving past and into the west, but it will be some time before I notice, I know that the ground is a mantle floating on a sea of lava, but for the geological moment, it is steady as a rock. One can almost hear some life form evolving, and if one listens closely, one can hear metal oxidizing before your very ears. Paint is slowly falling off the houses, the trees are resporating.
The worry is , course, that this is not the bedrock of existence, but the inflection, the boat at the bottom of the trough, or the roller coaster at the top of the first hill.

June , 20

It is not everyday that we get both an earthquake and violent thunder storm. I must say that Moxie never gave the impression that earthquake was imminent, even as the rocking chair shook under me, she was climbing up the front porch screens. I think tha she missed the whole thing. The air is so rich with moisture that it condenses on the windscreen as one drives.

June 23, 2010

After the Solstice - I took the spotting scope down to the garden this evening and found myself inspecting the moon in between the partly cloudy. I was there before sunset, but the sun was low enough that it illuminated the clouds from the side, turning low cumulus clouds into mounds of french vanilla ice cream with a waxing moon on top. Behind moon was a sky of light blue, almost green, framed by the low clouds. The clouds were moving quickly from the west, so I had to time my observations. As the light faded from the evening sky, it was like watching the Cheshire cat slowly appearing. The local murder of crows returned to roost just north of the gardens. Really, what so rare as a day in June.
I still enjoy watching the moon. It is comfortable; it feels like the ticking of the hall clock.

June 11, 2010

I was down at the boardwalk last evening at dusk. It seemed cool and cloudy, but it was so obviously summer. The honeysuckle has ceased to bloom but the wild rose blooms stuck out of the gloaming, white against the grey. I did not hear any peepers, but there were tree frogs and bull frogs, yellow irises, willow flycathchers and kildeers. And fireflies. Not a lot; at first I thought that I was having eye trouble, but it was fireflies. Fireflies always catch me by surpise, they always make the weather warmer, I can run faster, jump higher, it makes me feel like I am falling in love, even if i am all alone. In the winter, as spring approaches, I look forward to the peepers, the dogwoods, but I never plan on seeing firefies, but when I see them, it takes my breath away.

April 1, 2010

It was a warm and sunny day in East Aurora, this morning I heard a chorus of Robins when I went out to go to work. It was briefly almost 80 degree F, and people were in a noticeably better mood. Walking back from the Grill this evening it was mid fifties, and we could hear the spring peepers from Prospect (approx .5 mile). I had a clear view of Orion and Canius Major in the soutwest, it was quite spectacular.

March 31,2010

Brilliant sunny day with a mild wind, temperature approching 60 degree. The greens of the daffodills are getting taller, I see lillies starting and all manner of new green things that defy identification. It is enough just to feel the wind today. Without the bite of moisture, it feels like an old comfortable flannel shirt, broken at the elbows and the buttons.

March 25, 2001 - Very Clear Night - Orion and the dog star were clearly visible in the south west as we got out of dance. Earlier, I could see Venus in the west, just over the horizon as i drove to the studio. The day was sunny, windy and cold, the kind of chill that clears the sinuses and makes one think of the word brisk, very much the definition of an early spring day. The ground is littered with a fine layer of sediment left over from the snow along with dead leaves, twigs, sticks, branches and limbs, not to mention ladder, trash cans, tire, bottle tops and other flotsam of the village lifestyle. The daffodil greens are above the level of the grass and they are growing fast. Snow drops bloomed last week; this week we see some crocus flowers. The Killdeers, Persephone and Brigid have returned.