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Bill is the sort of person who really wants to understand things. Therefore, when you stick him in a chair that overlooks a beautiful scene, he spends a certain amount of time marveling at the beauty. And then he gets down to business and starts hypothesizing about stuff. I'm a pretty serious Understander myself so I'm happy to jump right in, sometimes as the instigator.
So, here we sit, staring at the water and the sky, appreciating the view and saying things like, "Why do you think that one gull is floating out there all by himself? And crying like that? Lost? Hungry? Looking for a girlfriend?" Using our acutest powers of observation we work that one for awhile and then move on.
"Why do you think those rivers of lighter colored water are meandering all over the surface of the lake? Like that one that comes from all the way out at the horizon and ends up over by the harbor? Oil slick? Naw. Doesn't look oily. Thermal differences? Maybe."
"Hmmm."
"Pretty though."
"Yeah."
"Why do you think some sunsets linger in the clouds for an hour. And others just 'plop down' and are done?"
"Well, I suppose atmospheric conditions...."
There probably is a factual/actual answer out there. Somewhere. We can Google around some of the questions. And we do. Every now and then we get an expert down to the deck and grill him or her. But harsh reality is, we're never going to know for sure why sometimes geese fly down the shoreline and sometimes they swim.
"Maybe it's because they're stopping to eat some goo? Goose buffet. Maybe it's because the babies can't fly yet?
"Maybe. But I don't see any babies, do you?"
"Uh uh. Do you think the babies are grown up already? Where are they anyhow?"
Experts on thinking and knowing tell us that, in the world of the human head, there are the things we know and the things we don't know and the things we don't know we don't know. I would add to that the things we'll never know. But just like to sit and wonder about until the sun goes down and the stars come out.
"So, where is Venus? Last summer it was right over there...."
June 27, 2009
Something I didn't know before we moved here: That when Venus sets into the water, she casts a tiny trail of reflected light. Like a pinprick moon sinking down into the lake. Who knew a mere planet could do that? Not me. That's for sure. I hadn't seen, either, that a gull will chase an eagle and that the eagle seems to take that rather seriously.
I was ignorant about a ton of other things actually, but there's one that's particularly pertinent to today's post.The sunset moves. (What the heck?) A lot. And not just from early until late through winter and into spring. Not merely from 5:00 p.m. until 9:05. Left to right. From way over there, to way over here.
From the winter solstice, back on December 21, to the summer one, which is today, the sun swings wide across our horizon on its way to splashdown on June 21. From left of the Northeast Yacht Club harbor -- almost out of our sight -- around the back of the house, to where tonight it will shine in through the kitchen door. Right in my eyes when I'm fixing dinner. It will still be in plain view from the kitchen deck when it collapses into a thin little spark and vanishes. At 9:05 tonight.
I suppose lots and lots of more knowledgeable people than me already knew that. And most of them probably understand more about how it all works than I do. But I also have noted that quite a few people whom I consider to be smart and capable don't know this either. "You're kidding!" they say. And I feel a little better.
So. The days have been getting longer ever since I took that photo last December 21 until today. The sun started its trip that evening and now it's turning back. Official time will linger at 9:05 until July 5th when it will clock out at 9:04. But after tonight, the sun will be heading, almost imperceptibly but inexorably, back to December again.
How does that make me feel. Okay, I guess. There's a lot of summer left. In fact, since it wasn't officially summer until today, I shouldn't be too torn up about it. But it is a marker. In December I always feel ever so slightly better, even with winter stretching from there until May. So on June 21 I always feel a little twinge of worse.
But never mind. It's a lovely afternoon in June. (And did Henry James not conclude that "Summer afternoon" are the most beautiful words in the English language?) We can still count on a few more days that last until 9:05 and lots of twilights that linger in a band of rose on the horizon until 11:00.
But it's all downhill from here.
June 21, 2009
Two layers of water. Lake water. Sky water. Me in the middle. Yum. Just like I like it. Listening to Astrid Gilberto sing "Here's That Rainy Day" and considering putting together a playlist of rainy songs. For example, if you haven't heard Seal's version of "I Can't Stop The Rain," you ain't heard nothing. Go find yourself a copy of Soul. Quick. Before the storm passes over.
I was planning to take the laptop up to the Waterloo Cafe and get some work done for a change but now I'm all conflicted. Go there where it's warm and bright and congenial. (And there are probably muffins or something.) Or stay here where it's quiet, dark and somber but beautiful like there's no tomorrow.
As you might expect, I'm a fan of rain. Oh, I can get enough, although I believe that people who believe that it rains all the time in Cleveland are just working their preconceptions. Generally speaking, we don't get a ton of days like these, dark with the sound of falling water and distant thunder. I know. Because I lurk around, waiting for them.
Ah. Wynona. "Come Some Rainy Day." This is getting good. And "Love By Grace" -- that's got good old moody rain, too. You can always count on Wynona to bring you down in a good way.
One thing I miss, living so close to the sounds of waves, is waking up to the music of rain falling steadily in the night. Rustling bushes. Flattening the grass. Gurgling in the gutters. Patting down the roof. So often when it rains, the wind comes up. And wave sound trumps rain sound. Not complaining really. Just saying. Sometimes you got to choose.
Oh, "Rainy Day Man." James Taylor. Not the one on the eponymous James Taylor which, forgive me JT, kind of sucked. The one from Flag.
So if you're out there, tell me your favorite rainy day songs. I'll be here. Listening to water from the sky.
And in the meantime. Play it again Seal.
June 19, 2009
Today, let us celebrate bugs and humidity and weeds going nuts in the garden. Let us embrace the sound of the air conditioner kicking on and enjoy the presence of water that moves and sings. Boats that aren't bundled up in tarps and parked somewhere safe on land. And birds that don't have to move to Akron to find food.
Today, let us remember that although January can be cozy and the ice is beautiful and changeable and romantic and compelling, it's also #%$#@* cold. We are approaching the summer solstice. A day so long I can almost not stay awake for all of it. Let's savor every second.
Wherever we are, let's soak up the summer!
June 18, 2009
And P.S. I know you're all whining about how chilly and overcast it is. This is nothing. Buck up.
Four years ago today, we came to live in this house by the water. Four great and interesting years. We bought it from a man named Curtis, and (Forgive me, Curtis, if you ever read this.) the transaction was hair raising. Because Curtis didn't want to move.
He'd lived here for 18 years. Bought the house when it was sold for taxes. Slowly, painstakingly, fixed it up and made it beautiful. But he wanted to bring his parents to live with him and this wasn't the house for that. He'd accepted our offer -- which we made about five minutes after our first visit -- and eventually, all his doubts and regrets were overcome, more by the steamroller of real estate procedure, than any real acquiescence to actually leaving. He's a good, kind man. And this was his home.
The house not only has a lot of very nice and thoughtful features, it also comes with a truly magnificent (and let's speak truth) demanding, exhausting garden. The backyard is, no kidding, water, but the front yard is land aplenty. Nice bones, cool specimen trees, pretty perennials that even our ground hogs can't eat all of. Curtis designed and planted it, and he knew what he was doing. It's a different world from the water at our backs. The best of both. We had a dinner guest once who asked me, "Do you ever think maybe you don't deserve all of this?" And I answered, "All the time."
Which comes to the roses. Curtis told me he'd always wanted a rose garden. So now we have one. Bill feeds them. I prune them. But Curtis planted them. Whenever I look at them, or at so many of the wonderful features of this place, I say "God Bless Curtis." And I mean it from my heart.
The Zen people have a saying, "The glass is already broken." I don't have much of a grasp of Zen thought, but I believe this means that in the creation of everything -- every thing -- are the seeds of its destruction. That everything that exists now will, at some point, not exist anymore. That the glass will have changed into something else and be gone. I also don't think the Zen people are being gloomy or resigned. That's not their way as far as I can tell. What they're saying to me is, "Enjoy the glass! Drink from it. Hold it up to the light. Feel the cool smoothness of it in your hand. Use it now in the knowledge of its impermanence, and your joy in it will be enhanced."
You can see where this is going. Someday this house will be gone. No question. Hopefully it will be hundreds of years. But realistically, all houses will have to go sometime before the sun burns out. (Especially houses that are built on The Brink of the Wrath of God.) And even before the house goes, we will. Hopefully not for hundreds of years, and hopefully feet first, but some day, probably before the sun burns out, we'll be outta here.
So the new people. (I hate them already.) will come. Hopefully the promise of impermanence will intensify our joy in this time and not degrade into the fear and sorrow of impending loss. And hopefully we will have been stewards of this place, and the joy of this place, such that the new people will love the things and the spirit that we leave.
And say, "God Bless Bill & Ann."
Happy Anniversary, House.
God bless you, Curtis. This bud's for you.
June 17, 2009
Sorry. The duck took off somewhere while I was finding the camera and getting coffee and just generally not being fast enough, even for the geese who were hanging around eating bugs and goo off the rocks. This could be a whole other set of geese, given how long it took me.
Geese love goo. I love geese. I understand perfectly that if they came and stood on the lawn and made goose doo all over the grass, or if I played golf and experienced "The Goose: Bane of the Golf Course," then I, too, would curse and revile geese like the rest of the civilized world. But they don't do that here. They float majestically by with their fuzzy babies and eat rock goo and squabble amongst themselves. In the spring, they spread their wings and do the mating dancing of geese which is akin to behavior in bars, which I have mostly observed on television. Only geese are more graceful and much less self-conscious.
Once in the night, the first summer we were here, a goose was searching for another goose, or maybe for a lost fuzzy gosling. And it cried so painfully, so anxiously and so long. I could hear it moving up and down the shoreline in the dark. Searching and keening. It was a sound to tear the soul. So, I forgive the geese for being obnoxious in the real world.
Truth is, almost anything afloat upon or flying over glassy blue water is beautiful. Geese. Ducks. Boats. Freighters, for sure. Even ordinary motor boats with their interesting paint jobs and cool names. It's even hard to hate a cormorant, diving. Or thousands of them, flying in undulating lines of black script on the horizon. "Fly, you nasty cormorants, fly!" we say. "You look just fine from here."
Not dead fish though. It's hard to warm up to a dead fish. Especially if there are several. Or several hundred. And soap bubbles aren't great. But a big log, that is really an escaped tall tree, can take your breath away. Partly by how big a hole it would make in your house if it could find its way over the rocks. Which you kind of believe it could.
Today, though, seventeen geese and a duck with an iridescent emerald head. Worth getting up for.
June 16, 2009
I ate a bug yesterday. I was trying to disperse the bug population on the kitchen deck with the blower. (Works. Kind of.) But I forgot the First Rule of Blowing Bugs Off The Deck: Keep your mouth shut. It was in and down before I knew what happened. Thus, the note. But on the other hand I think that sends a clear message. I bet the bugs out there are all saying, "Dude. She's a cannibal. Let's go someplace else." Or plotting revenge maybe .....
June 15, 2009
