Monday, October 11, 2010

Back home, it's still 80 degrees.

It will go down to 66, and everyone will be opening their windows, and piling on quilts with great gusto.

It's getting to be chili season in Texas, and I would miss that, but my man makes kickass chili, like an adopted Texas son should.
Tomorrow it will be up to 90F, and that may continue through winter, except for cool fronts.

Here, it might top out at 79, and that's a hot day, this time of year. After the storms blow through, we will be at 45 overnight, probably wanting to fire up the wood stove again.
Highs will be in the 60s, lows in the 40s, for the rest of the week. That's what I signed up for. I don't mind being cold so much (the logistics are kinda annoying) but I do mind too much of any one kind of weather.

Last year we had a lot of snow here, but I had seen more, in Germany (though Germany had the wherewithal to deal with it). We had a lot of heat, but I grew up under way, way worse than that.

Somehow, coming from all the extremes of my experience, this place tried me, and I found it amusing. Coming from the extremes of my experience, I find most of life amusing.

Back home, the cicadas and other buzzy beasties will still be fizzing and whizzing their way through the night, but the crickets will keep up their steady chirp through the slowly cooling nights.

When the temps finally do dip to 65F or so, the crickets will swell to a pulsing, orchestral velvet chirp. The summer wall of sound, so oppressive, if you didn't grow up falling asleep to it, transitions to a kind of violin concerto of cricket sound. Not the faint, rhythmic random "cricks" of the Northeast, but a real tidal wave of tiny cricket wings, rocking natives to sleep on tremendous swells of sound.

Once upon a time, I couldn't imagine my feet outside the Texas state line.
Truth was, from my first step outside, I couldn't stay in, any more.

Frank Bedicek used to say, that once a Texan slept under a blanket in August, it was over.
One freezing evening in Yellowstone, and more in the effortless high cool of Glacier National Park, and this Texas girl was a fugitive from the relentless, stinging, pollen poison cauldron of the Texas climate. It turns out that three scorpion stings (attained in bed or otherwise innocently occupied) and chronic bronchitis from cedar allergies leading to chronic asthma, on top of a catastrophic allergy to poison ivy, was enough to dislodge the hometown girl.

My love of my friendsandrelations there, brings me back, as often as my health will stand it.

We all strike out, seeking our way, given the opportunity.
I am still on that journey, seeking a place I can follow my practice, help others follow their practice, and create a place for clear vision and innovation in my own life, continues.

Our recent time in Japan, the deep clarity and focus with which some of the those people live their lives, affected me so deeply.

I go back to the song by Nickel Creek, which I have listened to since the beginning of my time of transition.

"Others have excuses, I have my reasons Why."

I am striving to live a rational, grounded, yet inspired life.
Somewhere between the ground and the sky, is the path to heaven.

In Texas, the sweetest sound, is the crickets between 60 and 50F. The other bugs and frogs have gone back to sleep, and the crickets have the stage.
Their rhythm is slow and melodic, with room for individual improvisation. We get it earlier here in Maryland, we keep it longer, and the crickets probably make sweaters or something, to keep going.

I have a hard time killing crickets.. like many influenced by Eastern thought, they are too lucky and too blessed.  I tend to "relocate" them instead. I like to pick them up, I find them rather cute and fat and "pettable" and love their habit of cleaning their antennae, in difficult situations.

Tiny motions, in a beautiful melodic universe, lull my Southern mind to center, to peace, to sleep.

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