Saturday in CinCity. The "Is It Hot Enough For You?" Edition.




The cicadas are back. Now we can call it summer. Although we live in the midst of a city, frequently there are moments when sitting on the porch we hear only the sounds of birds or wind and, lately, the rise and the falling chorus of cicadas. That is summer.

Our home is cooled off only in certain rooms, so the majority of the house is hot, and baking, now that its brick exterior is holding in the heat. Chores get done little by little or not at all. HoneyHaired and I are both slowly gearing up for school to begin. She still has summer reading and is still plowing through Crime and Punishment. I am a bit farther behind and simply trying to plug in my school ID in order to recieve all the graduate school email and instructions waiting to be seen. I can't even get past USER NAME. This could easily take all weekend.

Hubby's at work. HoneyHaired will go in for a few hours at the hardware store. CollegeGrrrl tells us she's coming home tomorrow for her birthday. And I'm having lunch today with a high-school friend, a best friend. Somehow we drifted apart towards the end of school and after graduation for no good reason, other than the strength of the currents that steer you away from home and into your future. That time is so rapid, you can't realize how far it carries you and for how long.

We walked up to the movie theater yesterday afternoon to see Winter's Bones. Good movie. Not for the faint of heart, but a really good movie. We were still talking about it this morning.

I see it's clouded up for a bit this morning. I'd best walk this dog sitting in front of me before it gets much hotter.



The Heron

by Wendell Berry

While the summer's growth kept me
anxious in planted rows, I forgot the river
where it flowed, faithful to its way,
beneath the slope where my household
has taken its laborious stand.
I could not reach it even in dreams.
But one morning at the summer’s end
I remember it again, as though its being
lifts into mind in undeniable flood,
and I carry my boat down through the fog,
over the rocks, and set out.
I go easy and silent, and the warblers
appear among the leaves of the willows,
their flight like gold thread
quick in the live tapestry of the leaves.
And I go on until I see crouched
on a dead branch sticking out of the water
a heron—so still that I believe
he is a bit of drift hung dead above the water.
And then I see the articulation of a feather
and living eye, a brilliance I receive
beyond my power to make, as he
receives in his great patience
the river's providence. And then I see
that I am seen. Still, as I keep,
I might be a tree for all the fear he shows.
Suddenly I know I have passed across
to a shore where I do not live.

Comments

  1. Enjoy that lunch! I recently heard from a high school "best friend" (there were five of us, thick as thieves) who shared via email that she was relocating. It had been 2 years since I'd seen her. Stay cool, best of luck with the returning to school process, and especially thank you for Mr. Berry. He is an island of calm in the whitewater.

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  2. Stay cool, my friend.

    Enjoy these last days of study freedom.

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  3. Just wanted to say how much I love your writing. The poems you choose are excellent but your occasional personal voice is what keeps me coming back. Take care and stay cool!

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  4. I love the ice statues; so cooling to see. The movie trailer looks scary; almost all movies with the word ice or winter in them are dark, have you noticed?

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  5. Graduate school! I was not aware that was your plan and the next course. Guess I'll page through some old posts to see if you mentioned more...but in what discipline will you be studying?

    This is wonderful (and describes a best friendship of mine from HS...she lives 40 minutes away and I must call):
    Somehow we drifted apart towards the end of school and after graduation for no good reason, other than the strength of the currents that steer you away from home and into your future. That time is so rapid, you can't realize how far it carries you and for how long.
    I love those lines!

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  6. Ah-ha! I found the post where you learned you'd been accepted to grad school in Public Health Nursing. That is wonderful!!! Made me go forth and extract a few links for you.

    A friend of mine has been Dean of Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing after many years teaching at Columbia. She was our nation's first AIDS Czar (I worked for her here in Oregon prior to her appointment to Washington and subsequent career in NYC, and sort of idolize her!) You can read bios here and Wikipedia and
    here. :)

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  7. Your new blog design is incredible. I often wondered about brick houses holding in the heat. The Rock is horridly hot for days and days when we get this unrelenting heat in June and September, so I feel for you. Up in NEO we've been unrelentingly hot and humid; where I live, we're not near enought to the lakeshore to get a reprieve, so it's been horrid.

    Good luck with the computer stuff. Remember: they were sent to Make Our Lives Easier. Sigh.

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Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

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