Unexpected Joys
I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately. We've been exceedingly busy.
Deepest thanks and appreciation to all who noted the completion of another year's journey around this common G-type star in the unfashionable end of our ordinary spiral galaxy. This is the last time I will able to geek out with hexadecimal notation for a while: I am 39.
Also, bonne fête to La Rainette, who chose a singularly good day for a birthday. À ta santé!
It is a gorgeous day on Cape Cod. The canopies of taller trees are thinning, revealing scrubby pines. My favorite black oak that overhangs our place still shades from the morning sun, but not for much longer. At night, there's a knocking on our roof of acorns falling. The nocturnal cricket chorus has all but faded away.
This morning, we're making ready for my sister, the first of what will hopefully be many friends and family stopping by. There's a mint on the pillow in the guest room and all looks reasonably well so long as she doesn't open the closet. I'm going to make one last pass with the vacuum, and relax.
We haven't been able to do this in the ruinous Undisclosed Location. It's always been too big for us to handle, and too full of crap, both our own and inherited. I won't say we'll be featured on the next episode of Hoarders, but…
We've been coming down here nearly every weekend since we closed. A few weeks ago, the Unindicted Co-Conspirator had a three-day online class, so she took it here and I commuted to Boston. It's not the most fun drive in the world - a good two hours each way - but it's do-able in the short term.
And the reward is being here. I recently went down to Skaket Beach, on the bay side, to watch the sun go down. As I walked on the shore while the shadows grew longer and listened to the gulls protesting the unfairness of a "Do Not Feed the Seagulls" sign, I experienced a moment of perfect beauty and peace. It was no one thing, it was everything: the feel of the cool sand underfoot, the lap of gentle waves, the breeze that contained just a hint of winter coldness coming, the sun slanting low across the water and setting the clouds on fire, the solitude… I could die content, having experienced that.
When I turned from the water's edge and headed back towards the high tide mark, I discovered about forty other people standing or sitting along the beach, their uplifted faces illuminated by the fading light from the western sky. English doesn't have very good words to express the sense of the numinous without invoking the traps and trappings of religion. The numinous cannot be contained. You cannot build a church on shifting tidal sands.
Deepest thanks and appreciation to all who noted the completion of another year's journey around this common G-type star in the unfashionable end of our ordinary spiral galaxy. This is the last time I will able to geek out with hexadecimal notation for a while: I am 39.
Also, bonne fête to La Rainette, who chose a singularly good day for a birthday. À ta santé!
It is a gorgeous day on Cape Cod. The canopies of taller trees are thinning, revealing scrubby pines. My favorite black oak that overhangs our place still shades from the morning sun, but not for much longer. At night, there's a knocking on our roof of acorns falling. The nocturnal cricket chorus has all but faded away.
This morning, we're making ready for my sister, the first of what will hopefully be many friends and family stopping by. There's a mint on the pillow in the guest room and all looks reasonably well so long as she doesn't open the closet. I'm going to make one last pass with the vacuum, and relax.
We haven't been able to do this in the ruinous Undisclosed Location. It's always been too big for us to handle, and too full of crap, both our own and inherited. I won't say we'll be featured on the next episode of Hoarders, but…
We've been coming down here nearly every weekend since we closed. A few weeks ago, the Unindicted Co-Conspirator had a three-day online class, so she took it here and I commuted to Boston. It's not the most fun drive in the world - a good two hours each way - but it's do-able in the short term.
And the reward is being here. I recently went down to Skaket Beach, on the bay side, to watch the sun go down. As I walked on the shore while the shadows grew longer and listened to the gulls protesting the unfairness of a "Do Not Feed the Seagulls" sign, I experienced a moment of perfect beauty and peace. It was no one thing, it was everything: the feel of the cool sand underfoot, the lap of gentle waves, the breeze that contained just a hint of winter coldness coming, the sun slanting low across the water and setting the clouds on fire, the solitude… I could die content, having experienced that.
When I turned from the water's edge and headed back towards the high tide mark, I discovered about forty other people standing or sitting along the beach, their uplifted faces illuminated by the fading light from the western sky. English doesn't have very good words to express the sense of the numinous without invoking the traps and trappings of religion. The numinous cannot be contained. You cannot build a church on shifting tidal sands.