saturday at home

I am drinking red wine and watching the pastel sunset from the couch. It is difficult to imagine that later, when I'm trying to sleep, I will toss and turn and worry, because right now I am so content.

hooky hike

KW and I played hooky last Wednesday at Mt. Tam. We hiked from Pantoll to Stinson Beach, where we had lunch. I ate way too much corned beef hash, and then we headed back up (and up, and up!) via Matt Davis. It was great to go on a weekday, when we could walk without tripping over dozens of other people. Also lovely to have cool temperatures, especially on the uphill.

I have been feeling lonely lately, so I was happy to come across this Walcott poem on That Kind of Woman. It bucked me up. The idea of a man who isn't more trouble than he's worth calls up all sorts of longing and lamentation. But it's just an idea. There are other ideas that I can convert into reality much more easily. It's a beautiful day and I had a good afternoon with B+A and tomorrow I go hiking with nb and hh. What in the world is wrong with that?

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott, “Love After Love”  

international farmers market

I was buying apples from the young Russian woman with the short hair, and a Chinese woman, maybe around my age, was tasting the apple juice. I was thirsty so I picked up a dixie cup and tasted it, too. It was so delicious that I decided to buy half a gallon -- the Russian told me it was $7 for one and $12 for two. As I was getting my money out the Chinese woman tried to convince the Russian to sell each of us a half gallon for $6. I laughed and told her we should have colluded at a slight distance. The Chinese woman said she was just trying to make things more affordable, that this was the way things were done where she came from. The Russian said she had left a communist country and now she was a capitalist. The Chinese woman argued that it would be more profitable to sell two half gallons than just one. I said, I'm a rule follower, and now I'm going.

life until death

Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.

-MLKjr.

stormy sunset

I saw lightning and heard a little thunder but it did not rain over my house. As I was watching the sky I was talking to MM, here to spend a last little bit of time with her Aunt Sheila, who died yesterday. I drove up to Mill Valley on Sunday to take a walk and have lunch with MM, and I spent a little time in the room where Sheila was dying, breathing but not conscious. I "helped" MM and her mother sort through a box of photos and postcards from France and other places. Eventually, though, I felt like my purpose had been served and I should let them get back to their vigil.

I watered my ceanothus that morning.