Sunday, November 2, 2008

Fall back

click these images for a larger view.





Ah, good thing I went to bed early - five year olds don't know from Daylight Savings and the extra hour means nothing to them. Here he is, the boy in question, wedged between my knees as I try to type, jabbing my morning tummy-ache with his pointy elbows. Sneezing on my keyboard! Good thing I love him so much. (He's reading over my shoulder now, perfectly understanding each word. He hugs me when he gets to the "I love him" bit.) And now he's off in his room, working on a new "machine" -- an assembly of various toys carefully fitted together to some new imaginary purpose.

I woke up thinking about snow-storms today. I miss thunder and lightning through the long winters, and rain; but sometimes a heavy snowfall makes up for it. Large groups of snowflakes drifting down slowly and steadily, blanketing the world with silence. The kind of silence I love, the kind that is the sole redeeming feature of a bad head-cold: everything muffled, all the distant crowding city noises obscured, leaving the simple nearby sounds to catch at your concentration. I find it immeasurably calming. Perversely, the perfect head-cold leaves me feeling kind of relaxed and optimistic. And so does a really great snow-storm.

On the opposite end of the environmental spectrum, I miss the ocean, the Atlantic, and the way a long vacant horizon draws all complex thought out of consciousness, leaving a similarly vacant space in the mind. A good long sit on the beach is as wonderful as a perfectly timed, uninterrupted nap. No reading, no sketchbooks, no radio. Nothing but waves and seabirds. I pinned up some photos here from my last trip to Cumberland Island, years ago - down in south Georgia, just a few minutes from Jacksonville FL -- Cumberland Island National Seashore and historic site.






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