Cognac and Fire Vents

Sitting on the back deck tonight with my boys, the light fading, sipping some VSOP Cognac that R. pulled from his stash, and I couldn't help but let my mind drift back to 1983, on my honeymoon with Mark in France. Cognac usually is the key to this memory-visit, and Calvados sends me back without hesitation.

Normandy. September. Apples everywhere on the ground, trees weighted low with them, the air overwhelmed with their fragrance.

The boys (well, men, actually) were rambling on and on about this and that while my thoughts drifted, and N. mentioned how he and his dad installed some special fire-protection vents in the soffits when we did the remodel back in 2003. He said, "you know, Dad was pretty freaked out by that fire." (He was referring to an apartment fire in 1987.)

This was the first I'd heard of this particular detail. N. does this every now and then — he comes out with some fact or other about his dad, something I'd not known, which just astonishes me, all these years later. That there are things I don't know — that's the surprise. And it's hubris to think that I know it all, because, well, obviously I don't. And what great delight it is when one of my sons tosses me the gift of a new fact about their dad — my husband.  Like someone out-of-the-blue mailed me a photo of me from years ago. Like I'm peeking through the fence boards with one eye for a view of something which I cannot possibly see full-on, because it's so far away.

There are few left who possess any of this knowledge of my boys' father, as his mother and sister — both chroniclers of history — have passed. Those who remain — his father and older brother — are remarkably taciturn individuals, quick with a laugh but eschew anything even remotely sentimental.

So anyway.

Tonight it was Cognac and fire vents — incidentally the fire vents had been pulled out to access the hornet's nest.

I can only wonder how many other secrets this house holds, and what pesty invasion will be the key to another unveiling.

Bee Gone

There are dead hornets lined up on my kitchen window sill, dozens of them, finally given up after visit #4 from George the Bee Man who wreaked his havoc with poison powders. It all makes me a little nauseous. Who gave me the right to authorize this small-scale (in the scheme of things)
hornet-ocide? More aware than ever of the delicate balance in which we reside on this planet, tipping as we all are to certain annihilation.

This was brought to mind this week, as we dumped trash at work into plastic sacks:

The journey of trash, coming soon to an ocean near you.

Remember when litter on the side of the road was a big issue?

But back to the hymenoptera who were munching away at my sheetrock, constructing their exquisite and alien-looking condominium development in my crawlspace. It came down to them vs. my house. And I won, I guess, seeing as we didn't seem to be able to co-exist without doing each other harm. And, well, I'm bigger.

Not a sting to be had, though.

I'm thinking that perhaps a hornet funeral is in the works for this weekend.

Bambi Wedding

Ah, family weddings. My niece got married yesterday, at a farm-venue, and there were doves released from the dovecote when they were pronounced legally bonded. Beyond the rose garden, a meadow with deer — deer within a fence, and children were picking apples from the beautifully espaliered apple trees and throwing them to the deer, until one of my nieces (she's 12) shouted: "You shouldn't be picking those apples!" And everyone was ooing and ahhhing over these lovely, lovely delicate creatures, the fawns very Bambiesque, some with tiny sharp prongs of baby-antlers beginning to emerge. When they startled, they'd do that upward leap-thing, all very elegant. And I recalled that my sister said that this was a working farm, not just a wedding venue, and, well, all I could think of was venison. These weren't deer, they were venison.

Sigh.
So much for the cute factor.

But here's my little sis and moi, with a backdrop of empty Rainier Beer cans.

How Do You Fly?

Been talking/thinking a lot about flight lately, about the fact that, despite our technology — despite the fact that we have complicated fighter jets that can swoop and loop in formation in the skies over my house, among other things — still humans cannot fly without the aid of an external device. We cannot loft ourselves skyward without large constructed wings and fossil fuels or a decent updraft. Oh, yes, I know: our bones are too dense, our bone structure is all wrong, we weigh too much, yadda yadda yadda. But still. I'm wonderin'.

There are wingsuits and parachutes, yes, but these allow us only to glide. I said to my friend T. tonight: "I want to fly home. [Five houses away from mine.] I want to rise up from your deck as if I'm a common sparrow, and flutter home."

So, yeah. I walked.

But in dreams, well, many of us manage it quite nicely.

I asked some of my co-workers today to describe their experiences of dream-flight, and I was awe-struck by their answers:

C. said that, in a dream, he must jump up with great force, and if he's lucky, he "sticks",  and is able to soar, Superman-style, above treetops and rooftops.

M. said that she dances with such intensity that the dance becomes flying, and to stay aloft, she only has to continue the dance. What a wonderful metaphor for life, I think: continue the dance, and you'll soar. (Wish my own dancing wasn't so lousy!)

My own in-flight dreams begin with great concentrated thought, a kind of be-all in the moment, and if I'm successful, my body floats up. Controlling the flight can be tricky, as I'm often distracted by the sights below, and sometimes I gain too much elevation too quickly and I wander a bit too far from earth. (Hmm. Beginning to sound a lot like my awake-life here on the ground.) I must sustain the concentration, and it's exhausting and difficult to maneuver a smooth landing. (Again, life imitates dream-flight!) Focus!

Consider, for a moment, if we could switch our awake-time with our dream-time; if our day-to-day routines were indeed dreams, and the dreams were "reality". Maybe it's all a lucid dream. Maybe some of us do indeed fly, in sketchy, gauzy landscapes where the unreal and wildly imaginative narratives we define as "dreams" are quite the contrary.

Consider it. And do tell me how it is you fly, if you do.

And although the following brief film has the power to make me believe in the possibilities of dream-flight-come-true, it comes with a disclaimer. Alas.

Dutch filmmaker admits faking viral 'human bird wing' video....
(Read the bad news here.)

Extermination, of Sorts.

George the bee-man looked at my $1.99 can of Wasp & Hornet Death and said, "You know what this is good for? Put it in a drawer at your bedside. If your house gets broken-into, grab it and fire it up. Shoots 25 feet. "

And here I was, thinking about my house getting broken-into, as it were, by hornets; and lo and behold, already we'd stepped it up a notch.

"And what happens next? If you hit the intruder in the face with the stuff?" I asked

He paused. Looked at me. "Well, let's just say that it will incapacitate your intruder."

He noticed a four-foot wooden rolling pin I have leaning up against the doorjamb in my kitchen. He picked it up and waved it in the air.

I said, "hit 'em with that?"

"Yup," he said. "But don't quote me on any of this."

Well, bust my buttons.
Not what I expected.

Saturation/Mortification

As they decline, their color intensifies. Perhaps the life force, the energy draws itself in to let loose a final rush of color. Something. All I know is that this bouquet of dahlias was on my bedroom dresser for two weeks, and day by day I took close note of its progress, if you will, towards decay. For a while I kept telling myself to ditch the wilted bunch, and then suddenly, when they seemed verging on total done-ness, their color became richly concentrated, while all the water in the vase evaporated.

Joseph Campbell talks of all things having consciousness, and I am without doubt that the consciousness of these spectacular colors continues to inhabit my living space. But are they still flowers, or purely, now, color and fibrous tissue? It matters not.

They are exquisite in what we would call death.

The Heat, The Garden, The Work

Barely able to compose more than a simple sentence these days. I come home after nine hours of work and collapse in a limp heap on my mattress, the fan on HIGH. Yesterday was an uncharacteristic 90-something degrees and I thought my face was going to melt off. Honestly. I live in Seattle because it doesn't get this hot.

What I wanted more than anything tonight was for someone to bring me dinner.

Okay, well, that didn't happen. So instead I plucked up one of the beautiful onions from my parking-strip garden, as well as a few zucchini and a bowlful of cherry tomatoes, and sauteed the whole pile of them in some olive oil, then tossed them with some chiffonaded basil and sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. A glass of Sauvignon blanc, the NYTimes Sunday business section, outside at a table on my deck, and life was good.

We've endured a massive (for us!) turnover at work in the past six weeks, losing four staff and now, happily, stable with two new people. Young (relatively) and energetic, these two infuse the workspace with a youthful, intelligent chatter, and we're a better place for their presence. If I had the energy, I'd try to reproduce some of the conversations of late. I know that today, as I packed up some champagne glasses, there was something about ethnomusicology, and yesterday we were deeply into the subject of cultural appropriations in the Native American community. Last week we learned how to roast an entire pig, and there were generous samples of the aforementioned porcine. Yum!!

New employees so often shine lights of an alternate spectrum into our workspace. Because of the nature of the work, there are often several-hour blocks of time when we all sit at the big table and attend to various tasks. Times there are when I prefer to sit quietly and soak up the conversation, thankful when a loquacious workmate fills the airspace with narrative. Yes, yes, I do love to spin my own yarns, and have begun to not only tell tales but to affect the speaking-style of whoever happens to be the subject of the current tale. I suspect a latent thespian lurks within.

I am in constant wonderment at the silence and calm that has sifted down upon my days, so huge a contrast to the many years prior. Decades. And in this slowing down, I find much to take in, so much more than ever, which often seems impossible, in that I've always felt a limitless reservoir within, an infinite capacity to take it all in. (So much that I've often had to turn away, tune it out.)

Just yesterday evening, grumbling because I had to drive to the bank after a very long day to deposit my paycheck, I was struck speechless by the canopy of trees beneath which I traveled. Had these trees grown considerably since I last noticed them? Was the light different? Why was I just now dropping my jaw in awe at a landscape I've traveled through hundreds — possibly thousands — of times?

Honestly, I nearly wept.
I thought, I live in paradise.

And I can't seem to get enough of it.
 
Nor can I get enough of these, snipped
from a neighbor's yard. What are they?