Tuesday, June 23, 2009

how do you end a perfect day?


i mean, nothing happened! o, there was a little fire on the southern part of the forest, which i couldn't see. and the forest law guy stopped by, after having an abandoned truck towed from the lake. and i had a new lens for my infrared dslr, so i snapped pictures all day and took a walk in the evening.


yet none of this explains my blissful feeling. i woke up with difficulty, returning from my days off last nite. i thought, o god, i'm going to be dragging during this one.


but it didn't happen. and i think it might have been the weather, the clear sky, the warm east wind, and the absolutely perfect temperature. yes, there's a thermometer reading which puts me in heaven, a dry heat. i'm ecstatic, glad to be alive, nothing else needed.


maybe i lay in the womb at exactly these degrees, yet my mother had an apendectomy while i was inside her, the scar huge across her belly for the rest of her life. i can't imagine that invasive procedure didn't affect me. i wonder what drugs they gave her? maybe my love of daydreaming started then. i zoned out under those conditions and felt it in the air passing across the lookout today.


i do think a companion consideration might be in order.


leaving town, i stopped at barnes and noble for a cup of tea. now, i know traveling eased enormously by a book on tape. i'd listen to the stories of artemisia brunelleschi, the concentration camp saga of elie weisel, and another of a painter getting his delicious revenge on a critic in 'the portrait', as i traveled back and forth from the dental school in san francisco last spring.


and on the way to baja years ago with friends, we listened to 'west with the night' , all about flights across africa. i remember that story better than anything else on the trip!


i bought 'the castle' by franz kafka and listened to the first two disks on the way back into the mountains. i remember nothing but the story. and it reminded me so much of my favorite books, the alice stories of lewis caroll. no wonder i loved kafka, adapting his 'metamorphosis' for the stage years ago and playing the cockroach myself.


you see, it's the dreamlike, outrageous actions and humor that put me in a good mood. our everyday life depresses me, i might as well admit it (as if you didn't know already). true, i did nothing but lie around my house-sitting job this past weekend, enjoying the sense of having a home. within an hour i'd spread cameras, clothes, computer, grocieries, throughout the whole house. and for four days i enjoyed myself in lassitude, though i did take pictures and you can see them here:




breaking the rather dire story i'd been experiencing the week before at the lookout:




this still begs the question, how do i end the day? ah, yes, making out with the beautiful german art student, underneath the stars and a giant oak outside the youth hostel once the home of mussolini's mistress, florence, 1965, that's how i'd like it to be, perfect as the memory, high on wine.