Tangerine: A Book of Hours

Our lockers, in kindergarten, were distinguished by stickers. My locker had a sticker of a lamb on it.

March came with a swirl of rain water silver. Warmth ticked up a few notches. It's a big month, a sturdy block of days. The image on my Michael Parkes calendar is "Dance of Secrets" -- leopards and ballerinas floating in mid-air.

I have five o-clock shadow. It's kind of scratchy.

There are fuzzy buds on the pussywillow and the beginnings of hyacinths sticking out of the ground. Things are still mostly Winter-tinted, though. Waiting for the equinox, perhaps. Still...the light. You can feel a real change in that.

I remember riding the school bus, in Spring. Looking out at passing houses while the bus rattled and lurched, and rain braided on the windows. Sometimes memories don't feel like they have time in them. They are just there: a still life. A photograph out of context. I remember how that rain smelled -- no real accomplishment, there: I can go outside and smell the same thing, now.

But the two twine.

Memories and associations float, like a rain-streaked window above the road. Like dancers and great cats in the sky. The moments are moving through the last of the White season -- marching toward the Green. Time and recollection.

Hello March.

And happy birthday, Kelli.

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Like a time-slowed wave, emerging in pieces from the sky (rather than all-at-once from the sea) it came, rested, and now pulls back. No sand beneath. Instead: earth, still tight with cold. This retreat is time-shifted-slow, as well. Regressing like water, but over days instead of seconds.

Winter and its court are measured, moving in a different layer of time. (Except for ice, perhaps, who is slow in its heart but fast on its skin.)

Here, now, in a day that is bright and slightly fretful, the snows are melting back: revealing earth, slumber-browned grass, and small puddles of frozen water. There is a plane slipping through the bright white sky.

And the roads are clear. And quiet.

I am tired...though it is not early, nor especially late. A bit light-headed from not eating enough today.

Sitting here, thinking of the snow outside.

That white wave, falling back in slow motion.

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Winter moves in like memories. Falls down from the black, like soft seconds floating from a clock. It piles up silence. And silence is cold.

The roads are gone now, erased into primary. They blend with the powdered landscape. As the sound goes, so does identity. Appearance and accoustics changing as fluffed, drifting moments, tumble down from an hourglass gone to glitter.

The lights grow halos.

This new cover holds, like a memory, the places we have walked. But those rememberances grow shallow, fill up and, eventually, are made smooth.

New time. White time.

Memory is a landscape that changes with time, endures its seasons. All memories have Winter nights that press in through the walls...and others that smooth over.

But here, now, you can go out in it. Look up, like looking at the darkness behind your closed eyes. Watch the sky flutter down, while your air floats up.

Think about memories and time, in the falling night -- when all is contrast and cold: snowflakes and breath turned to vapor.

And silence, deepening.

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In Tangerine Live, I typed a phrase that lingers now like an echo in my head. Evening rose. I'm picturing that, rolling it around in my mind like a pebble in the hand. Imagining flowers, twilight...more. Ripples. Words like the sound of a bell. Images that spread and interact, overlap. Memories shifting into thoughts and back. Tidal.

December is, I think, an evening rose.

Always something deeper to the one after eleven, for me. Time and days wash by in calendar squares, each tinted differently. December, however, seems more deeply steeped in thoughts and memories, rippled and reflected images. Concentric waves sent out by the year, colliding and piling up, here. Past and future, thinning. Meanings doubled.

An evening rose.

...tonight. It was cold and clear, pushing a sky of orange and pink. My favorite rose is like that; I remember it swaying at dusk, after a Summer rain. I remember its perfume. I remember the taste of that drop of rain, glimmering --

-- Like the stars in the tall jet sky do now, the first night into December.

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I saw the moonlight and thought it snow.

Put on a ring. Red like candy. Anime and soundtrack, backgrounding. Breathing years and memories. Beauty, the works of art. So much effort. So much expression.

How the air has cooled. "But, for a time, it was good."

I am watching Autumn slip past, like a knowing glance, carried along on a wave of air that tastes like snow. Water, frozen...and airborne.

Crystalline art, feathery and perfect. Dropping from the sky, slow. Like a dream. Like a thought.

So late, now. So deep in the night that is, actually, a day. Imagination revealing in the background. Keyboard tapping.

Intoxicants.

Funny, how just flicking fingertips against plastic can build up words...and images. Reveal thoughts and moments. Reality expressed.

Just flexing.

Just talking.

Words, disconnected images -- but a representation of a state. A person, at this point, late in the morning in November. With the air cooling down to deep night months, the smell of frozen water in the air. A year wearing down. Hours unfolding.

"Rational voices, dissented."

November.

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While fishing (but not really casting line into lake) I sat with others on the shoreline. Evening eased down into the sky, pressing light toward the horizon. As the night fell slowly, the lake grew still: a mirror-sheet. Bats flicker-flapped across tree-tops. Time pressed down further.

And the water started filling up with sky.

Pinks shifted to purples, cobalt blues and orange. Yellows and even greens. If you shine a flashlight upon a wall, it makes a glowing circle. Slide the beam lower on the wall and, eventually, it bends and starts to wash across the floor.

That's the way the sky came down with twilight, into the lake. At one pristine point they were evenly matched. Mirrored. Selectively see that and you can talk your imagination into not knowing where sky ends and water begins. Think that, and you are floating -- timeless.

For a handfull of moments.

Right now, I'm sipping a cup of tea, and typing this. The night outside is perfectly crystal-black. I took a picture of me, doing this, with my cell phone.

But that was a while ago. When I was thinking of the lake. The mirror-moment is different now.

Hello, October...

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Latency. An echo, ghost, a lingering scent: Summer has moved past. The swish of a deep green skirt made of rain and flowers. Sky-blue eyes.

An after-image.

Mysterious Autumn: now. Hiding, behind a Goth lace fan, eyes the color of pumpkins.

The air is cool. Cicadas. The greenery is still fresh, strong. Flowers in bloom.

But a change in the quality of light, perhaps. Longer rays. A slant more pronounced. I have seen Orion, low in the night sky. Risen, again.

Here and there leaves have fallen. Hints.

The windows are still open. Music slipping quietly out while cool air slips in. The evening sky is a deep, dusty lavender.

I'm a bit dizzy...in need of a light meal, and a tall glass of water. Thinking of the passage of time and the balancing of hours.

Equinox.

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Sound has always had the ability to pull tears and chills from me. Shivers and smiles. If the moon were made of notes it would pull on me and create tides like music does.

I saw a news article about infrasound, late last night...

Researchers think that very low frequency sound may be responsible for some of the effects that people associate with hauntings. You can't hear infrasound consciously -- but it creates effects within. Shivers, apprehension, other feelings and phenomena. Elephants use infrasound to communicate over long distances. They also use it as a weapon.

Makes me think that sound fills up the world like water...and that we move through it not noticing most of its weight and influence upon us.

The world outside ourselves is much deeper than we think -- and it effects us much more intimately than we tend to give it credit for.

All kinds of tides and currents out there, in here...

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The water is cool, going down. Long deep swallows. The feel is sky blue -- like the tall air of this Wednesday. Surges in sunlight are slow waves, breaking over the landscape. The coffee has me jittery.

But the day is bright and smooth.

Into August, already, the calendar-point seeming mythological. How can Summer have drifted this far along?

Still.

The cool beauty of it. The hours: opened out, in shades of Robin's egg and sunlit green. Yesterday, the sky glowed a gold-tinted peach and pink at sunset. A few nights earlier, the crescent moon was a high-contrast ghost, set against indigo. The sun shows and hides during daytime.

But Summer, it is.

Even further in, and along.

And I am smiling at it.

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Everything holds still when the current fails. Silence, as batteries, summoned, whisper of a future solid-state and untethered.

The interior goes pre-industrial, architectural. Natural light (or shadows) shading walls and doorways...differently.

Devices are subdued.

So. Drift to the outside like a ghost, unlinked. Water in a glass. Pen and paper. The ticking of a tiny second hand on a wristwatch.

And sunlight, tall sky blue, unconditioned air. Here there are birds, the confetti-flutter of butterflies, and the high-contrast color-pop of flowers. Vast mountains of living green.

Environmental photosynthetics with high resolution details and endless sight-lines.

Then the power is back, with a whirl and flicker of digits. The answering machine’s synthetic voice whispers instructions and light bulbs open their glowing filament eyes.

Reboot.

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I like the taste of red wine. That tart, velvety feel on the tongue.

And the way a chip of ice melts inside your mouth.

Barbecue sauce (especially if it is sweet) and tofu both have contradictory flavors that I enjoy. After swimming in the ocean, I like the way the sea water tastes, sun-drying on my lips.

Mmm, and a kiss...

The stereo is randomly shuffling. The day is sunlight and blue skies. I'm kind of stretched out and vaguely tired -- but not that bad. Thinking about sensory data. And the coming holiday weekend.

Into July, already: Summer standing tall, flowing out in all directions.

I definitely have a taste for it now.

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I love the memory of slightly distorted electric guitar playing low from a boombox -- carrying across beach sand. The way it mixed with the liquid static sound of the thumping waves. And the heat that pulled sweat from mostly bare skin. The golden wash-out of pouring sunlight through closed eyes.

"Today is the greatest..."

I remember the smell of the ocean, the way it felt to push my hands into the hot dry sand.

Coffee, a blend of music on the stereo, and sunlight shining through the window trigger ocean memories, now. The day's heat is hidden behind a silky wall of air conditioning.

"She walks in the sun, to me..."

So, I'm thinking about being out in the lush air, under a powder blue sky. I'm thinking about how the light looks in Summertime. Looking forward (ahead of time) to the weekend.

I hope that it is a great glowing mountian of Summer hours.

"Let's go away for a while..."

Continue reading "Memory Trigger" »

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"It is astonishing just how much of what we are can be tied to the beds we wake up in in the morning, and it is astonishing how fragile that can be."
-- Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

I must have awoken in a different bed today, because I feel vaguely unlike myself. Oddly tethered. Somewhat faded, like an old photograph. It is cool in here -- outside, however, is all velvet heat and high bright detail.

My stereo is looping the Counting Crows song, "Miami".

My mind is full of elegantly machined prismatic dragonflies and colorful paper butterflies. They flutter near the ceiling of my imagination in a rainbow tumble that slowly spells out a story...or something.

Either way, it's a pretty image.

I need some sunshine and warm air. I think that I'll get loose and scrubbed and grab some outside time...with paper notebook and pen. My thoughts keep bouncing against the ceiling in here.

They need some tall sky to fly in.

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Words like, "microburst" or "tornado" -- and Edison's shine is blown away. At least for a while. Now it's all battery power and candle glow.

And the milky green of that silken-sharp fairy, in her soft curved glass.

Anise...and quiet, darker than ever. No house lights or street lamps. Just rain drizzling down -- and the pale non-blue glow of the nearly full moon.

The air is heavy and moist. Things are very still, feeling later than it is. Mag-lite and Indiglo. It's hard to write by candlelight (but don't the words seem more charged in that glow, the paper revealing deeper mysteries?)

Telephones and computers are down.

But my cellphone still works. I talked with Kelli, Grams, and Bob. The power of devices.

I am sprawled here, wearing only my underwear and watch. (Like I said, it's sticky-hot.)

Stretching out, laying down. Tree limbs cracked and fell earlier. And rain. The wind surged like a vast seething engine, spinning debris in frantic whirls and blurs. And after that: the sad colors of flower petals scattered over the mud.

Looking into the clouded depths of a glass lit from below by a pencil-thin flashlight. Absinthe with a halo.

Outside, another shower shifts through...and then it's quiet again. And the lights are still out.

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Hi there.

All day Tuesday is watercolors. Soft washes and blurs, ghost lines, shiny greens and damp browns, rain-gleamed streets. She's a dreaming day, perky but pale, top-framed by a black umbrella, her feet in puddles.

Counting Crows in the background.

A Tuesday like this probably dances when no one is looking -- or spins and sways free, regardless of an audience. Bare white feet splashing ground-fallen rain.

"American girls, all weather and noise..."

A Tuesday timeless. No ambient shift to mark her hours or age. She's always been here, stepping out now and then to look with dark eyes -- and lips that hold a smile, just verging. Always just emerging.

Her wet hair is a Rorshach; the tangles: arcane glyphs.

"Time expands and then contracts
When you are spinning in the grip of someone
Who is not an ordinary girl."

Pretty wet Tuesday, so gloomy and sweet.

Continue reading "Tuesday, Timeless" »

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Well. Feeling very cyber and fairly disconnected, I'm updating, chatting, watching and writing -- all online, all at once. While eating ice cream...

Listening to the highway. Feeling the window breeze.

There's an old Gary Numan song looping, fragmentary, inside my head. It's dark. That cool breeze is rustling.

I remember sitting on a bench, under green rustling trees, reading an Andre Norton novel about a green world. Andre Norton hyperlinks to another novel, Breed to Come, found and checked out of my grade school library. Jump-cut to me-as-a-child walking home from school in the late Spring, thinking of Summer vacation. Morph it so that I flow older, the setting shifting from sidewalk to sand. Walking on the beach, the waves thump-whispering -- almost like the sounds of cars swishing by on the highway, but --

I'm in a cottage by the sea, at night, skin warm from the set sun.

Eating ice cream from John's, on the Outer Banks -- and thinking how still the world is. How deep.

And connected.

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A while ago, I bought myself a snow globe. This one has a simple silver base inscribed with a poem by Basho. The glass sphere above is filled with water and bits of white confetti that swirl and settle after you shake the globe. Inside bare trees stand, naked, along the side of a snow-edged stream. There is a switch on the bottom that, if you flick it, plays the sound of wind, water...and loons.

One of the lightbulbs in this room has burned out. Ambient illumination dimmed. I'm listening to David Gray's cd, White Ladder. "Sail Away" is the song that is playing now. My snow globe is silent, the white inside settling.

I can smell lilies and hyacinth. It's two o'clock in the morning. The window is a black mirror.

I remember being at an outdoor concert once. It was in the Summer. Heat still glowed, even at night. The band played. I was in the grass with my friends...and thousands of others. At some point the sky opened up and poured down hard fat drops of rain. A torrent. A rush. I remember looking up and the rain was so hard and lush that I couldn't see through it. Just warmth and water falling in the outside air -- while music played and the crowd danced.

Things falling, or swirling, through the air (or whatever you are englobed by). For me, right now, it's music -- and these otherwise quiet hours. Maybe soon it will be dreams.

There are drifts, outside. And fragrance. Today, flecks of white swirled: great fluttering tumbles in the air. It looked just like snowflakes.

But they were flower petals.

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The sky is the color of a robin's egg.

I'm playing Peter Gabriel's cd, Up, through my computer; my stereo is sputtering too much now to enjoy music from there. Sunny daylight is shining all around outside, and my coffee is good, with a vague smokey bite. I will be exercising soon, and I have to get a haircut as well. Gotta get new -- at least a little. It's that rennovation urge, close to the blooming. At this point you can taste the new season on the air. I am ready for it.

There are whispers of some weekend snow, however; lingering ghosts of Winter. But now it is vivid, sunny-blue, and warm.

And the sky's an egg...

I think it is holding Spring inside, getting ready to hatch warmth and flowers...tall air. Eventual rains: greening the landscape. With music coming directly from the computer it is like I am typing these words into the sound. With the sky so perfect egg-shell blue, it is like Spring is pouring out of the light and color.

It's environmental. Ambient.

Like the typing.

I would like to hatch something elegant, on this pretty near-Spring day.

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Music and candlelight -- a tiny flame shivering. Lips like licorice. Cold mist falling down outside in the black. Saw a photo of Paris once, beautiful and pristine in monochrome. Stone stairs descending under streetlamps and bare trees.

Midnight.

A second hand metronomes the hour.

Friday-to-Saturday: fluid present. January-to-February. Cold water; inside, outside...melting into icy puddles on the inky ground.

Loose in the neck. Relaxed and still.

Thinking of the sea at night. Black under black, liquid under air...churning. The salty hiss of water over sand. Nighttime surf heartbeat. Stars. The curl and curves of luminous foam.

Like snow.

Like here.

White ghosts tumbled together on the ground, thining down to memories under vague rain. Seconds, minutes...hours, washing.

And blue candlelight, flickering slow.

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Pale. Joe Henry, Fuse. Snow crystals in suspension; earth gone ghostly. A sky the skim of ice over milk. Inside: clear light and music, pianos and trumpets. Brushed drums.

Guitars and bass. The smell of laundry.

Folding. Time.

A pale week of washed-thin hours jump-cut together. Single degree moments. Glitter in the air. Ambient light in white, snow blue and spectral lavender. Minutes that fade in and out like ghosts -- or frosted breath in Winter air.

It is 5:13, now. It doesn't feel like it.

And now it is not.

Henry sings the phrase, "incubating diamonds". The visual is vivid. The moment is still pale. Twenty-four into January and the mercury is deep in its well. Friday, and I'm folding slowly into the weekend.

Stay warm.

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Everything is frosted, powdered in white. The contours and curves of the ground are softened, altered. When the wind blows it puffs clumps of tumbling snow from tree branches and powerlines. Steady snowflake specks swirl from the featureless, ice-colored sky.

The roads are wet black lines.

January's first Monday is one step away from monochrome. What colors there are are pale and filtered thin by snow light.

It is quiet.

If you could capture the color of blue-white Winter moonlight and pour it over the world in daytime, it might look like this.

Such soft cold beauty.

And I suspect that things will be going even more luminous as the light sinks down behind the hills.

This, I think, would be a good night for reading...with a glass of deep red wine. Maybe the tick of a clock the only sound in the background. Stopping now and then to think about lacy flakes swimming slowly down, unseen, from a pitch-black sky.

2003, in her early hours, is a soft pale princess with a gown of frost and snowflakes, sweeping low...

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12:30 AM

Happy Birthday to me baby, yeah! It's dark and glimmery outside, a night/early morning of cold rain and mist. Melting snow sinking into inky black shadows. I'm sleepy and am just going to update a few things online before hitting the hay. I'll be back for more Tangerine interludes during the day...

2:00 PM

Well, I realized that I could just upload this, bit-by-bit, as I write it. So that's what I'm going to do, now.

It's kind of a pale afternoon; a day the color of melting snow (of which there is quite a lot around here). I'm having a cup a coffee and getting ready to do a little cleaning up. At some point during this afternoon I want to finish up my restaurant write-ups (for the last few months I've been doing dining and event write-ups for AOL/Digital City). I hope to visit the last of my venues for this month over the weekend and then have everything done by Monday.

So that's my plan for this afternoon.

3:35 PM

Hmm, things are dragging a bit. Regarding the extremely exciting account of my cleaning excursion: that journey is halfway done. Only the forbidding realm of the bathroom awaits...

And as for the writing...well, none of that is done yet. I really should get at least part of that out of the way, today. Here's hoping!

As for the day, well it is almost exactly as it has been. Pale and melty, though the light now has a bit more clarity. I need a glass of cold water.

And a time machine...

5:26 PM

The skies are a blue so deep and vague that it is almost black, nearly vanishing into starlight. Patches of snow shine brighter now, in contrast. And Christmas lights glimmer, spots of color on the ground.

It is, relatively, quiet. And the spaghetti is cooking.

Time for a glass of wine...

12:47 AM

Snowflakes can meander, but they move by fast all the same. A year is a crystal construct like that, prone to melting away. Too. So are these hours, starting in darkness and sweeping back around to another. Still.

It was a nice day.

And now it is a new one.

Thank you.

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The first snow flutters down in lavender twilight. Whitening ground glistens with moisture, Autumn's leaves still scattered...but slowly being erased. And the light perceptibly deepens, turning smokey purple.

It is not that cold, just enough to bring a flush to cheeks after re-entering the house. Melting flakes glimmering away to water on coat and cap. And on the parkway, traffic slows. And groans.

Grass, trees, and earth take to snow-white easier than concrete and asphalt. The streets shine: wet but not frozen. Yet.

Thanksgiving hovers in the air, a few circular sweeps away. Candles glow electrically from windows...as it gets darker. Dusk falling down in random flecks. A sky drawing close. In the twilight, the snow is luminescent, defining earthy curves and hollows.

It is Tuesday and Winter is brushing by -- just a visit: a crystalline smile over a pale shoulder as she moves past.

And turns the world to quiet white.

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Quiet.

Quiet. A sky the color of obsidian, pushing cool air over hills. Through trees. Rustling leaves that are shadows, now -- but in the daylight: green, yellow, and red-orange.

Cool. A rumor of snow on the air. Guttering candlelight still flickering from the jack-o-lanterns...casting light-shadow faces over dark ground.

Earth that is still damp from previous night-rains. Stones grown frigid. Breath mists on the air, now. Vaporous.

Inside, a clock sweeps through moments and warm air whispers from floor vents. Summer’s heat-shimmer is a dream, at this tick of the seasonal clock.

Time. Minutes and hours, days and moments, pouring into holidays and year ends. In the near past, the day before was bright. Sun still shining down vivid on mostly emerald. But with golden accents. The sly smile of frost.

Tomorrow.

Today...

November.

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Coffee warmth flows out through the walls of a black and white mug. Decorated with lighthouses. Music as rich as those chocolate-colored depths swirls around the room. Drink it down, past my lips. And my lips.

Are dry.

Rumaging around, up in the attic, where it is dry and cool, now. A vague line of pale bluish light glimmering down from the ridge vent. The first light blub is loose and on the floor. It pops when screwed into the socket. A second fares better. Scatterings of saw dust from the roof work.

Up there, you can feel the outside.

And it feels like Autumn.

The sun pulls light through the sky: bright, weightless beams. Some of the trees around here are wavering on the edge of an Autumn color change. Yellows are rising. The air tastes, just a bit, like Halloween.

Squeeze is playing on the stereo, now. "Annie Get Your Gun." And here is a pile of wintery clothes for the laundry.

The water is cool and clear -- like the day. Smooth, going down.

I'm feeling peppy and mentally jazzed: thinking fast, singing along, and eating a banana.

Groovy!

Pre-heating baby, yeah.

And typing, while David Bowie's Heathen plays in the background.

I'm having a veggie pocket and a bowl of tomato soup for supper. Now, the light has gone horizontal (or nearly) but the air is still bright.

Time ticks and flows.

Smooth.

Sliding in the twilight. The skies are deep cobalt: the evening, young. I'm feeling fresh and mellow.

I remember floating on my back in the ocean, at dusk. The water was warm and calm, rising and falling gently. The clouds were painted in neon shades of orange, pink and aqua. I moved only enough to keep myself afloat -- and oriented so that I could see both the setting sun and the rising moon in the same sky. Around me, the water turned golden.

I feel, just a bit, like that now.

And now...now it is night. I am writing and rising to stretch my back. Sipping some cool water. I'm thinking of a snack (and maybe a little TV) while winding down to bed. This is a moment.

But, really, the seventh is the one in which you are reading this.

Posted by The Allurium at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Violet breathes, full of knowing secrets. White opens. Wide. Black goes deep and folds around -- covering and shading. Color is a palette of impressions, personalized and projected.

Scent is similar, perhaps stronger. The perfume of that rose will always "pop" in my mind. The ocean's spectrum of aromas inhabit their own mental country. And what does the smell of Merlot say to you?

Sound, I would say, calls attention. Presents information. Whispers and roars: it turns the head and focuses...eyes, oddly enough.

So back to color.

I like the green of a cat's eye, the blue of cobalt glass, the orange of embers. Lemon yellows, coffee browns. The copper of new pennies. And indigo and tangerine. Sand and seashells. The slow, smokey kiss of burgundy.

And today?

Azure, with an overwash of translucent gold -- all lit from behind by hours, thought and the distant motions of the sky.

Posted by The Allurium at 3:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Silence. Cicadas. Keyboard clicking. Darkness. Calm. Garbage night. Reading. Indigo -- but not mine. Quiet, quiet. Night. The highway: muffled. Calm. Tired. Calm.

Wednesday's "Author's Note". Prologue-ing the middle-of-the-week day, still in night.

Slow. Relaxing. But not, too. Empty. Earlier. A hazy warmth surprising: outside. Air-conditioned, here, to Autumn. Tired.

Sad. But.

Vaguely.

Typing. Feeling sleep at the edges. Wednesday, and the cicadas are whispering in the darkness beneath a murky sky that barely lets the stars glimmer through. And me typing in the over-all quiet, my eyes tired and wary of an early rising.

Quiet. Calm. Silent.

Mostly.

Posted by The Allurium at 1:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is very very quiet.

The menu music from The Sixth Sense dvd is looping. The fan in the computer is whispering, to itself.

It's dark.

From this angle, the windows show nothing but flat, empty black...and dim reflections of the room. There, is a translucent super-imposition of a person, typing at a desk. On a screen: words leading up to a cursor that blinks like an unset clock.

And those tidal silences -- moving here, pulling back to there.

There are the vertical blinds, swaying in the currents from the air-conditioning. Here is a pale white sea shell, placed on a keyboard. Each are silent...differently. This night could roar, but it would be a roar under hours of velvet, and distant as doves.

Quiet is flavored, nuanced, like the rumors of a hundred names for snow.

Posted by The Allurium at 1:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought I saw a star, in azure. Deep green tree-tops framed the sky. I was watching air and distant planes. In the center of it all, was a tiny fleck of light. Blue-white.

A cool soothing evening. The whir of the air-conditioning unit. Birds flicking by. I thought the star flickered, but that might have been the floaters in my eyes. Maybe it was a satellite, though it didn't seem to move.

So then I guessed a planet, and named it, Venus.

In that endless baby-blue, whispy clouds drifted by. They were tinted pinkish-orange by the setting sun. A breeze moved over me. I looked away, to other places. Tree-tops going gold, a Rose of Sharon peeking out of the woods.

When I looked back, the sky-centered speck of light was gone.

Funny, that. It had seemed so steady.

Perhaps high altitude clouds were screening it from my view. Or maybe it had been a satellite, or plane: perspective granting it seeming stillness in that pale perfect blue.

The sky was deepening, now. Cerulean. The air a bit more cool. A bird fluttered by, way up, diagonal light shining on him brightly. I could smell someone cooking hamburger on an unseen grill.

I stood up, said "thanks", and came in off the deck.

Posted by The Allurium at 9:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ice water in my mouth, and a cooling shadow sinking down my throat...

The sound of the fountain outside my window. Sweat, in the small of my back...trickling. Earlier, the shower spray exploded against me in a streaming rush, driving heat out my skin. At least until things were reluctantly shut down and quietly dripping. The humid weight of the air sinking back in.

June twenty-fourth is a liquid day.

My drink (in an old Guinness glass) is frosted, sweating. The ice: soft crystal clicking as it shifts. A slow melt. The lights are off (cutting down the illusion of heat). But the bluish shadows are dense. Thick. The air outside is filmed with a vague haze. Birds are brightly tweeting, seemingly uneffected by the temperature.

And there is that sound of the fountain in the pond. The watery, trickling splash.

The sound blends with the melting of the ice in my glass, the feel of sweat beading on my body, of coolness sinking inside from another deep swallow of water and, behind it all, the distant whispering of the highway.

I'm dreaming, awake, of the beach.

And breathing slow in the shade.

Posted by The Allurium at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So, a pearl.

The sky is breathing heavy, shifting green trees, birds, and a siren in the distance. The daylight is diffused.

Pearlescent.

...And now quiet, like a pale sphere under clean water.

I remember painting wet-on-wet with watercolors, how the shades would blend and blur as I brushed them onto the moist canvas. It was silky, chaotic. Pretty. With enough water, the color would be just a sheen.

Like a pearl.

Today is.

Posted by The Allurium at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hot bright sound, pouring up. This blue sky mood: skylighting.

I’m Thursday’s child, today. Working, typing, music in the background. I like being back to this. It’s easy to forget (surprisingly so) the pleasure you can get from certain things.

The weekend is stepping up closer. I hope it will be bright. Joel is (or will be) in the Ozarks on a 60 mile bike ride. Kelli is at the Sewickley Spa today -- I hope she is having a great and relaxing time -- and has been hitting the gym. I have to start getting a bit more physical, myself. Get a bit more fit for the Summer. I’ve been doing 50 crunches every morning but that’s about the extent of it so far. If I exercised as much as I think about exercising I’d be one buffed dude.

I think Thursday is cerulean and breezy, her hair tangling around her face as the sunlight pours down. She moves like the newly-greened trees: a fragrant swaying half-dance. And evening is her promising smile. Thursday’s night will hold a clarity of stars.

Maybe it’s the coffee, or the abundance of light, but I’m feeling...vivid, today. It’s good. And I’m groovin’.

--- John

Posted by The Allurium at 5:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)