Tea and Rain

     There’s a bugler who has begun to play “Taps” across Prince Avenue every night at ten. That lovely brassy tone of his instrument cuts easily across the little-trafficked street and through the bamboo in my backyard on these early summer nights. It’s become one of those comfortable sounds now that I know when to expect it. I believe he’s a real man - the bugler, that is - for I hear him warming up sometimes earlier in the evening. 

     A warm meal of parmesan ravioli, swiss chard from my parent’s garden, some toasted sourdough on the side, and a chilled double cream stout are working on feeding an appetite that’s finally starting to make a reappearance. The temperature could not feel more perfect. I’ve got candles lit and placed in glass jars to keep the bugs away and add to the delicate glow of the lights strung across my porch. This is summer, and I feel so at peace with the night. Can you hear all those crickets? The noise from Prince? The dog barking next door? The dog barking back a few houses down? The growl of the neighbor’s AC unit that just kicked off? The train that’s making its way out of Athens to the east? This is peace. This is everything right now, and it fits. 

     I think a friend and I finally reached a place of resolution tonight. Closure was the term first used, but I think we’ve reached a state more balanced than finished. I’m not yet sure how the rest of this year should go, but I’ve already started generating plans again, which is something new to the agenda of these past few months. I feel more like myself, and I have confidence it’s going to last.

     We’re terribly delicate, aren’t we? I’m one of the lucky ones, my family more beautiful than you can possibly imagine. The bugler should be playing reveille for me tonight, but I may just have to wait until morning. Until then, goodnight, all. 

     If I needed another excuse for why I’ll never be hip, I found it yesterday in Little Five Points. Thanks to a brand new pair of very old leather boots, I stand a better chance of personifying that vintage-tinged class of collegiate aesthetic I so cherish. Don’t worry, it should wear off soon (though I’ll swear now that the brilliance of the form will remain unchecked by any temporal fluctuations and restraints). 

     The lovely bit is the feel of wear; the shoes fit like a glove (like shoes?), but the previous owner wore her boots much differently than I would ever wear mine. Where the soles run thin, I notice the comfortable loss in the middle because I place my weight on my heels, where these boots still remain solid. It’s the idea that I’ve taken someone else’s most foundational possession, the thing that keeps one grounded and at the same time protected from those grounds, from those elements most base. It’s… ah, it’s the fatigue talking, but it’s intimate. Intimate in the manner of, or to the same stability that, the worn soles of these shoes could ever offer. It’s nice. 

     My first pair of borrowed shoes - at twenty, no less! I’ve no claim to knowing this business. 

     Music just loud enough to make everyone speak up a bit, the café-bar getting slightly more conversational, and outside the neon lights of the burger joints warming up as the windows of the dress boutiques lose life. Broken Social Scene shifts into a more familiar Black Angels bit. 

Backs of heads and slivers of smiling, concerned, laughing faces greet me from over the walls of wooden booths. The lights dim just when you think they couldn’t have lowered any further. It’s a scene mixed with as much dialogue as isolation, but the headphones are transitioning into shared beers. Heading home on a much-saturated Spring day in Athens. 

     So I think we’re all just looking for the pieces of the lives we want to live, and we hope we can gather enough of the right scraps of paper, colors of paint, shards of glass and tesserae, bits of wood and stone to make the picture believable, believable to others and, more completely, to ourselves. It can never really be whole, this picture, but we know that. We’re reaching for as close as we can get without settling, and people really put together some beautiful images; sometimes they even create something really original. Look for the frames first, and then let yourself be surprised by what they’ve set right next to that frame. What they might have placed right outside. What’s really something is when you realize you’re glancing at the whole of human art, the entire picture, everyone’s portrait placed alongside, overlapping each other, and knowing in that glimpse that you’ve managed to catch an illustration is no artifice. You see instead, for an instant, that map, enormous and with no conceivable boundaries, that leads closer and closer to what we’ve all been creating for ourselves for millennia; something not wholly achievable - but we know that. 

     It’s finding religion in all of that that polishes the night. 

     To find words. Any word will do. 

It might be      troubling    ..    .   sinking   buoyant    ..    round  

                                  brimming     spilling ..   .

Let them gather. I have paper and I have a wall. Send me a jewel or two, will you? 

     The aggregative properties of it all astound me. Let the accumulation begin. 

     Currently held together quite well by fragments of paper, inked stars, and French poetry. The best lines, the best words, are scattered on the tabletop, to reach my walls later this evening. The rain outside as pleasing as ever. 

     My cousins adore running to the back bedroom to create new worlds for themselves once the door shuts. Alise flounced through the room today as a fairy, decorating the earth with dewdrops, she told me. Why do we ever stray from such imagination? 

     It’s been quite a while since I’ve posted on this blog; I forget completely a thing quite easily once I forget about it once. Does that ever happen to you?

     I’m spending this Christmas in the lightest of clothing on the back patio of my grandparent’s house, enjoying the sunny morning and the warm weather after a long stint without any chance of such pleasure. Oxford’s rainy days chilled, Zurich’s snow froze, and even Georgia’s muggy days barred this forest-loving girl from spending too many hours outdoors. Here, I spend the morning picking lemons and oranges from the trees in the backyard, gathering grasses, magnolia “pinecones”, avocados, impatiens, jade, and various other flora for a homemade smoothie recipe for my younger cousins. Kristen and I managed to toss together a rather nifty shake without letting Camille on to the fact that we left out her small collection of flowers and leaves in place of ice, honey, and Greek yoghurt. The rain predicted has since arrived, but I look forward to more such mornings spent just as my childhood days were, exploring the shadier regions of my grandfather’s garden and delighting in the snails I find, the smell of the damp brick underneath the hydrangeas in the front yard, and the succulents whose leaves provide ready paintbrushes for dry pavements. Sharing these images with my younger cousins, this world that remains hardly altered after over a decade, seems the perfect way to spend the holiday season. Teaching them the names of the plants and their purposes (let’s leave alone the flowers on the shrimp plant – they bring the hummingbirds that Granddad loves so much) expands this landscape for me, and as I recall for Alise the tree that used to tower in the corner (the pine?) and the bottlebrush across the lawn now long gone, I can’t help but remember the daisies that used to spring from the side beds. The bougainvillea still overgrows the wall by the railroad tracks, though the rose beds that used to lie underneath have now been replaced by the household’s time spent traveling rather than gardening. The stained-glass lamp above the dining room table, the watercolour wallpaper in the hallway bathroom, and the comfortable warmth of the piano parlor keep me nostalgically content. The addition of a plumeria to the front garden beds is an “improvement” with which I happily concede. For all the transitions this house continues to see, I love it all the same. Or perhaps all the more. There’s something to knowing that the orange chair and trundle beds are gone but still recognizing their presence in this old house.

     I imagine my planned voyage through the photos of the past four months will provide an interesting frame for the next week and a half spent here in southern California among well-known family members instead of perpetually new friends. With Gram’s trick to removing the lime from the bottom of my teakettle and endless closets through which to scavenge, I’m sure I’m ready for the task. 

Tonight, I sleep with the birds. 

     A heady jump into our collection of Hitchcock films downstairs will keep my lazy evenings occupied for a few weeks. One more week of seminar courses until Michaelmas term begins, and only two more essays. I’ll be tackling Ulysses and apocalyptic literature as found in the Old Testament, so my weekend should offer an interesting combination of dreary Dublin and biblical drama. A few more letters to friends keep my friend Alfred waiting, but then I submit my tired head to technicolor thrills. 

     As I tried to focus on the essays of my peers today in class, I found myself distracted by the lines possible with my pen, loose curves and curls of ink on my paper, and the smoke drifting over the brick wall behind the young man smoking outside the window, just across Banbury Road. I want more than ever to fall into the emptiness of air and the rigid forms of worn furniture that populate this house, but I want to find a welcoming resistance that will support my body in its weariness. I want sleep, and I want the warmth of a rag quilt stitched by my grandmother. I find fulfilling fragments of this desire in my morning cups of tea and milk, the scarves I refuse to remove, and the few times I allow my headphones, in place of my endless responsibilities, to embrace me. 

     We are taught to talk, but not to speak. We are taught here and there to listen, but I wish more people would sing. Where does the infertility of passivity meet the human invention of creative respite? When are my musings justified, and when are they simply obstacles to mental rest? I find I crave comfort more and more as I presume to mature… 

Sitting in the kitchen of our house on Banbury Road a few hours before most of the house will wake. My mind is a little fogged from the cold that Paris gave me, but my tired throat welcomes the earl grey I found in the cupboard. 

     The forty or so of us will take a small walking tour of Oxford this morning come ten, and then we’re off to the Bodleian to register ourselves before a real meal at Keble College tonight. More news from the shire soon, I hope. I imagine the various pubs, bookstores, Stone Henge, and classes (that start Monday) will keep me otherwise occupied. 

With weeks upon weeks to catalogue, I relinquish the task to the always-welcoming future. I’ve been told I enjoy hoping too much.

     Now, however, a brief from the day spent in St. Germain des Prés: I arrived in Paris in the late morning after a delightfully carefree train trip from the outskirts of town. Realizing I had forgotten my map at home, I decided to spend a few hours wandering (an exercise in stubbornness that probably would have occurred with or without a map). With a few hours to spare before the shops opened, I drifted past the Musée d’Orsay to check the entrance fee. Stumbling upon a free entrance, I tripped myself up by more than a few hours. J’ai passé plus de six heures dans le musée!  Afterward, I hardly had time to explore le 6e arrondissement, so I made it to a small crêperie I remembered and headed home with a notebook full of artists and paintings to revisit later.

     Of the dozens of names scrawled over the leaves of my book, the one I feel most worthy of sharing: Adolphe William Bouguereau. Call me a sucker for perfection (please, do!) and now name me conservative. This artist, known for his works that epitomized the style of le Salon, neither strayed from the lessons at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts nor catered to the growing impressionist movement. (The impressionists cared little for him as well.) However, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen work as beautiful, lifelike, or radiant as his. His female characters glow, are simply resplendent in their staid and yet frolicsome poses. Take the time to expand your knowledge of Bouguereau; the time will be well-spent. 

My dreams swim with Irish dialect. I try to conquer the English language concomitant to understanding the French. 

     I have recently installed myself just outside of Paris with a delightful family who open their house to students like me. Here just a week, I will spend my time finishing Ulysses before my courses begin at Oxford. Anxious to comprehend the necessary elements before sitting shocked and tongue-tied in front of the infamous Bradshaw, I have hardly left my work these last two days, venturing out into the crisp air only to find the local supermarket, a post office, and mille-feuille. This banlieu, a short ride from the city center, offers my tired mind a calm space to expand and settle. A neighbor who keeps pigeons down the street serves as a landmark when I go out to stroll. The chilling weather has me in long sleeves and jeans, a welcome turn. 

     Off to Rue St. André des Arts tomorrow to revisit a small café I cared for last summer. The street also brings me into an intellectual district, near the Jardins et Musée du Luxembourg and the site of several old authorial hangouts. Joyce himself visited Sylvia Beach and other English/American authors at her librarie anglaise (first in Paris) in the Quartier de l’Odéon. The novel that plagues and inspires me currently was first published at the house in 1922. Photos tomorrow from the Latin Quarter; more posts tonight of the first two-thirds of this awing trip. 

… in a temporary position. Awake at 1:30am and feeling perfectly alive, a sensation I will not experience come wake-up call tomorrow morning. 

     Zagreb is beautiful. The streets remind me of Paris, the only other European city I’ve had the chance to explore. This evening spent wandering the streets with only the company of my camera reminded me of the need to continue writing, venturing, conducting, and perfecting communication. Paralysis by analysis sets me in ruts, but even more so, stagnation by anxious complacency. Lists and the occasional glass, held to my feet in the mud, my head in the air, keep me going. 

    The bells of the cathedrals all rang out in unbalanced unison this evening, a magnificent sound from the top of Gradec. Exploring, then recording. Streets filled with cobblestones and only a few tourists. The sounds of Eastern European languages crowded the cafés where, all day long, conversations continued long after the drinks were finished. I stopped to pick up a small watercolour of the city in an artist’s market and strolled through the well-traveled Museum of Broken Relationships (a hilarious as well as heart-breaking memorial to common culture). A few sips of gemist at a cafe covered in ivy and lights sealed a perfectly delightful day, and the sounds of American jazz and Croatian tunes carried me back to my hotel through a nearby park. Off to meet the boys tomorrow - hope the light literature is able to continue! 

     Last night, I fell asleep blinking away the stars that crept through clotheslines and the design of the iron grill outside my window. Palm trees shaded the soft orange glow of the courtyard where inhabitants quietly made their ways to and from the medina. The salon felt the tender kindness of a breeze lightening the normally heavy heat, and the prayers of the city’s imams drifted in through the dusty air, the voices from each mosque blending into one song in my fatigued mind, the fan above slowly beating out the rhythm. Red City, I leave you in open and roused anticipation of the Eid. 

     Refreshed by yesterday’s trip to the hamam and London’s cooler weather, I pause this evening to catch my breath. I feel I’ve had no chance to breathe all summer, but I’ve no mind to wait for the opportunity just yet. Not with evenings like this. 

Alright, a few of those posts simply will not make it here – my friend (or rather, master) Time enjoys playing tricks with me and won’t allow it.

     Imagine for me then a morning in Yellowstone Park, twenty feet from a grizzly bear, the sun pouring in shafts from in between the mountains that form the southern boundary of the Lamar Valley. See the steam rising from the bear’s sloped back, his breath visible, suspended in the light. Imagine a half hour or more spent in his company along with only three other park visitors, listening to the sounds of his morning meal, watching him dig through the dewy earth and pause, every so often, to raise his head and test the air for our presence. I cannot, truly, begin to describe it all. 

     Try to capture, too, a solid two and a half months spent in Montana amongst the most wonderful people and the most beautiful scenery. I ate my meals in the shadows of mountains every day and could hike every weekend if I felt so inclined – how will I learn to live without such an environment around me? I’m currently drafting (still!) a small recollection of my time on the ranch, and I find the process difficult if only because I wish I could include every single detail in the composition. Ayo – if only!

     Here though, because I must update this blog at least a bit, envision for me Marrakech in August. I hopped off the plane, twenty-six hours after leaving for the Atlanta airport, onto the hot Menara tarmac and a temperature of 111 degrees, the skies cloudy. I’ve warmed up (ha) to the weather, the current 99 degrees feeling balmy, but I would be lying if I claimed this were comfortable, even in the middle of the night. I’m here visiting the family that hosted me last summer during my month studying abroad. My اختي Zinab and I have kept in touch, and when the chance arrived for me to return, I tried my darnedest to solidify plans as quickly as possible. These people mean so much to me, and I could not be more grateful for another week spent with such a loving family in this vibrant city. 

     I sit here in the downstairs salon writing this post as we try to beat the heat of the day. Scarlet and gold upholstery surrounds me, sun streams through glass windows stained red, amber, and cobalt blue, the cats lie stretched to limitless ends on the tiled floor, and the sounds of the few vehicles on the road jump around the courtyard outside with the wind. The Islamic world is currently observing Ramadan, and my family, like everyone else, fasts from sunrise to sunset. I had hoped to fast with them, and I tried to do so my first full day here. However, fasting includes refusing all drinks (that’s juice, milk, water), and given the heat, the sun, and the dry air, I caved with only a few hours left to go before الفطور. Zinab and I had gone to a local charity to prepare the evening meal for men and women incapable of living on their own; the 200 women and 100 men trying to survive the heat with the help of only a small volunteer staff broke our hearts. Students from Zinab’s university prepared our visit, and along with this handful of young Moroccans, I helped pass out الحليب (milk), عصير البرتقال (fresh orange juice), مسمن (a flat bread, here filled with vegetables), pain au chocolate, and خبز (more bread) to the needy. I nearly fainted (then grabbed water and a seat), and I hardly put in an effort compared to some of the students! How the entire city continues business in this heat without anything to refresh the body, I don’t know. I imagine it takes a good deal more than simple patience. 

     The first day Zinab and I went to the medina, we arrived during the day. She wanted me to see the difference between its usual hustle and bustle and the evening crowd. I was amazed to find جامع الفناء (Jemaa el-Fnaa) completely empty, quite unlike the frantic mess in which I got lost last year. Because the days are so hot and only drain energy this month, everyone tries their best to sleep far into the day. Stores open late and stay open late. Families go out only once the sun has set, once they can enjoy a meal and a glass of water again. The medina quickly comes back to life around 7:30, and you no longer find only tourists populating streets and cafés. We went back to the medina last night between الفطور  and عشاء to pray and stoll through the marketplace. First, Zinab took me to الكتبية (Koutoubia Mosque), where she prayed four ركعات of صلاة العشاء (the evening prayer) while I sat next to her on the prayer rug amid the largest crowd of people I’ve ever seen outside of a concert or summer festival. The mosque was filled, and the sourrounding streets were barricaded to allow for everyone else to find room to pray. The minaret, lit up against a starry sky as the Quran was read to us all made for one of the most beautiful and profound scenes I’ve ever been privileged enough to witness. After finishing her prayers, Zinab took me to the medina where we fought our way through local and foreign crowds to find a croix de sud and some newer jewelry. We sipped thé à la menthe in the square while catching up on life and enjoying the view, laughing at the children scolded by shop-owners for harassing tourists. A quick (and risky) trip to a rooftop café without bothering to sit down and buy an orange juice got us a better view of the marketplace as it created its own constellation of lanterns and starry kiosks below the night skies. Then a hasty trip back to the house to warm up the food in time for dinner. I fixed an “American” meal for the family – look familiar? Something with peaches is always a must, half a 22 kilo watermelon will do just dandy, and a sweet salad with Aicha’s dish (something Moroccan, in case mine was a failure) complimented my pizza-of-sorts, made with what else – beets! My family in the states had only ever had them pickled – ay! My family here had only ever had them puréed – not bad. But roasted and served with red onions, rosemary, and gruyère? Why not? My dishes received an average of 7 out of 10, the peach tart winning a 10 out of 10. I was quite satisfied! 

     I have only a few more days here, unfortunately, but Safia’s beautiful first child, now two and half months old, necessitates a trip to the states soon to see her husband’s family. Hopefully everyone can travel to the states next year, and I will have the chance to host them as they have so graciously hosted me! 

     I’ve been living in Montana for about nine weeks now, and I think I’ve done well by the animals. Dutifully spying on all the wildlife, here’s my updated list (of big guys): 3 grizzly bears (all adult), 3 black bears (one mother and her two cubs), 5 moose (a bull, 2 cows, 2 calves), 1 mountain lion (alright, questionable, but I’m counting it), about 10 bighorn sheep, a golden eagle, a nighthawk and her nestlings, 2 beavers, several yellow-bellied marmots, and innumerable elk, pronghorn antelope, whitetail deer, mule deer, bison, bald eagles, ospreys, kestrels, and red-tailed hawks. Add to this list all of the songbirds (and their songs), the ground squirrels and the chipmunks, the foxes and the hares, the toads and the snakes, the identifiable plants and the insects that feed on them, and then everything I cannot place, my senses have nearly reached their capacity for perception! Will I have room in this head of mine or space left behind these eyes to fit the views and the smiles I hope yet to see? The energy to dance when I hear music? The willingness to jump headfirst into adventure when it’s offered? With a little more sleep, I’m sure I’ll be able to manage. 

     I imagine I will update these posts less frequently in the next few months. Plans for this week include one last post about the ranch, a small note regarding the grizzly encounters this morning, and a few more photographs. Then the content of this muddled assortment of personal notes will turn dusty with the streets of Marrakech, will shift focus from wilderness to cityscape in Dubrovnik, Rome, and Florence, will age along with the Swiss Alps, and will grow heavy in the vineyards of France as I make my way to Oxford, England for my next semester of English and economic education. Watch for clearer images, different languages, and opportunities to stay in touch. Soon, this blog and its author may be coming to city near you! 

     A lazy Sunday in Polson, Montana. Cherries have started to ripen, and this small town of less than 5,000 welcomed visitors to its 13^th annual Cherry Festival this past weekend. I enjoyed the sun outside The Cove Deli, a pirate-themed diner to which I was directed to find the best ice-cream. Two scoops of black licorice and strawberry cheesecake blend well, but I think I was more anxious about digging into the four pounds of cherries I just purchased. Yes, four pounds.

     Over 150 vendors filled the main thoroughfare (or so advertised), selling everything from handcrafted arrowheads to miniature cherry pies, but mostly tacky jewelry. A surprising number of art galleries dotted the street, pulling one away from the crowd and into the darkness of frame-filled rooms. A few local photographers captured my interest and sparked inspiration – faces never fail to intrigue, no matter how familiar, it seems. A nonprofit co-op here, running one of the nicer galleries, sponsors several scholarships for aspiring art students, and the history of the group delighted me. Lemonade stands and the smell of festival food carts beckoned me back into the light. It seems I missed most of the cherry pies having arrived Sunday instead of Saturday, but even after inquiring about the fruit, it seems the festival caters just as much to crafters as growers, if not more.

     The weather was perfectly calm, and Flathead Lake, the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi, felt like an ocean inlet, a cool breeze passing over the waters into the streets and keeping the sun bearable, reminding us all of its colder past, itself a fragment of the ancient Lake Missoula. Children scattered around me, thrilling over the “Happy Hippo,” the aquatic tourist bus that passed us blasting the air with a honking song. I’ve gleaned from the toddlers that if it were allowed to access the streets we were on (closed to festival traffic), it would also blast us with water. Thank goodness for cherries!

     I was more focused on figuring out how to print out the last of my projects for the ranch before Wednesday, my last day, and wondering which chain to use for the coin pendent I found in the market. A Canadian one cent piece with everything carved out but the two maple leaves and the outer ring; I love bargaining. I figured I should begin to make my way back, but I loved the feel of Polson, the abundance of families connecting with each other by my picnic bench, the picnics in the park by my car, the sound of splashing in the water and plunges by the pier. Mission mountains crowded in the background, and the sky could not have been more blue…

     The small ice-cream parlor adjacent to the diner drew my mind into decades past that I cannot remember but only recognize from novels and movies, the coolers humming gently and the Dipwell, a relic straight from the fifties, helping the scoopers keep up with the crowd. A little boy to my left, enthralled by the spoon dispenser, much to his mother’s delay. A grandfather, chuckling, scolding his grandson for attempting to steal a sip of his beer. Cherry pits covering the streets.  A worthwhile trip to lake city.  

This past week I had the chance to see how my subculturing job had really gone. Hot dog! The little guys weren’t too contaminated. I should switch majors. This stuff is a breeze.

     Aren’t they beautiful? These are samples of the mycorrhizae researchers here isolated from cheatgrass (with my help!). They hope to determine which fungi tend to grow in healthy plants versus those infected with Ustilago, a blight that inhibits the cheatgrass from producing its seeds (infertility never tasted so sweet).

     Excuse me for that parenthetical comment. This weed can bother like none other, though. The seeds stick to absolutely everything and can become a health risk for animals with fur; the seeds continue to burrow, given their shape, and the little suckers get lodged in skin if not careful. We try to keep the dogs out of it as best we can.

     Anyhow, lab work again proved fascinating, even if I did just prepare more agar dishes, organize subcultures, and enter data into a spreadsheet. They put little old me in charge of differentiating between the endophytes – what responsibility! I felt like I was working with a butterfly collection. 

I complained just yesterday that the thunderstorms here have me longing for southeastern squalls, as these small and frantic bouts leave me little in awe.

     However, I sit now in amazement on my back porch, listening to the sounds of a brilliant line of storms that sweeps through the valley. The thunder in the mountains roars, the claps echoing back and forth between the ranges on either side of this viewpoint. The gusts grow stronger, and the breeze that whips my face is a refreshing, humid thought underneath all this anxiety. Energy is not so much freed from the bounds of the earth by this phenomenon, but rather stressed, collapsed, and held at bay beneath the clouds, straining to find room to breath in a smoke-filled and stifled atmosphere.

     The storm arrived swiftly over the mountains, a fleet of thunderheads like a battalion, like ships, their mission to swing my doors shut, rattle the windows, and threaten, now, to push me over where I sit. The rain begins to fall, small, ice-like stones sent to chill me as I stand guard over my ranch. The boards creak underneath, but are barely audible against the continuing reverb of the thunder, bellowing through this valley from one side to the next, overhead, to the east, to the west, and back. I feel I am the willing guest in the opera house of Nature’s violence, waiting patiently in my seat though the lights dim and the rest of the audience has taken shelter, perhaps just beneath their seats, under my nose in the juniper bushes, in the crawl space below, but invisible and quiet as death.

     Now the wind comes from the east, teasing these poor poplars in its cruelty, bidding me return to the dry safety of my home before worse befalls my body and my writing. I persist, if only because I can see the sun hitting the south of the valley in front of me, already having weathered the worst of this surprisingly powerful tantrum.

     The mix of sunlight and steady, light rain that now penetrates the yard and the fields looks so reassuring, and I’m sure the plants are thankful. No matter how terribly the storm rages, now behind and overhead, no longer to my face, the sun proves more powerful. The wind scatters the tumble mustard over the hills – I see it rolling swiftly downhill – but the sun will dry up this dry land within seconds, perhaps more cruel than the storm, only allowing the parched earth a single sip of the sweet water before stealing it back.

     Now the smell of rain on hot earth, the sound of the winds hardly retreating, though I know they are doing so, and the light bringing back the birds. On to more work, the signal for me to start again are the sounds of life about once more. How will they know what has passed, while they closed their eyes and prayed?