Friday, July 9, 2010

Summer

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It's gross.
My house only has two windows, both in the bedrooms. All the rest of the light (and there is lots of it) comes from skylights all through the house. While this is wonderful and fanciful, it also means that sun shines straight into my house ALL day. It gets very very hot in here when the weather is being unreasonable. I'm not sure how hot my house actually is (35? maybe 40?), but I do know that it is just wrong to be in weather this hot.
I have all the windows open and all the doors. The ceiling fan is on high. The sun room door is wide open to prevent a sauna from forming inside my house. The big fan has been rescued from it's basement storage imprisonment to blow hot air around the apartment.
The last two nights I have sworn, on several occasions, that I could hear running water in the kitchen. I have gone out to look, but could not find the source of the sound. It sounds like a distant small fountain somewhere in the house. I was perplexed and curious, and it reminded me of the ping that regularly issued from the kitchen for over a year before I discovered it was a pickle jar in the fridge. Last night I just happened to be walking by the big fan when it whooshed its way past all the cards that are hanging off one of the many banisters in the house. I heard the light tinkle of water as all the tiny metal clips randomly bounced off the wood of the banister. Aha!! That is where the sound is coming from. Now I hear it all the time. Little tinkly metal water.

My garden is loving/hating this weather, depending on the world origin of the species. The tomatillos LOVE it. The bush beans seem unreasonably unhappy about it. The hops refuse to be outside (for some strange reason) and so have been given a nice spot in the sun room. I swear they grow at least a foot a day. By the end of summer I am sure my sun room is going to be crawling with hops vines. I am pretty sure that my scented geranium has been flowering for 3 months straight with no sign of stopping. The first batch of peas is almost ready. My garden is awesome this year. I even have tomatoes!! (an unsuccessful venture in past years).

Me and the sun are not such good friends. We maybe get together occasionally, go out for coffee, catch up. But we are not really into spending lots of time together. As hot as it is in the house, I really don't want to venture outside. Some years I do fine in the heat and sun. Other years not so much. This summer I seem to be sorta in the middle. I can sit in the sun for awhile, but doing anything other than sitting tires me out almost instantly. Especially when it is this hot.
I was saying to someone the other day that I am pretty sure I am the balance to all those people who hate winter and rain. I love winter and rain. You know how when it is sunny outside you want to go outside and soak up the sunshine? I much prefer when I rains because it means I can curl up with something warm. I think people who love the sun and heat are the kind of people who have trouble getting warm, they are cold all the time. I am the opposite. I have trouble staying cold. That is why I love winter, because I actually get to experience being cold.

Hopefully it will pass soon, and we can have a reasonable summer. Not so hot.

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Ma

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~ma~

Oxford English Dictionary ~ informal term for mother

Sanskrit ~ many things, but...
  • do not
  • let it not be
  • unto me
  • without
  • me

"millions of years ago"

Japan ~ negative space or pause (aesthetic concept in Japanese art and philosophy)
Pots are formed from clay,
but the empty space between it
is the essence of the pot
(Laozi, 6th century)

Sumerian ~ Land, usually primeval

In my own words ~
the absence of
space
the negative
without
self...

Therefore ~ Brie Ma