This weekend: a friend had been scheduled to drive up Friday evening to spend a couple of nights. They were concerned about driving in heavy weather, sent an email Friday a.m. canceling out. Rained a couple of hours Friday evening, during the night overcast gave way to a classically beautiful August weekend, not a drop of unfriendly precipitation in sight.
So. Instead of conversation and cavorting around the countryside, I've done errands, work and gotten quiet.
Went into Montpelier yesterday (gym, bank, blahblahblah). A Harley-Davidson gathering of some kind was underway, the town center overrun with relentlessly flatulent motorcycles, machines apparently bred on steroids and drastically undercooked pinto beans.
Began digging into a library book, "As She Climbed Across The Table" by Jonathan Lethem. Sample paragraph:
"Days passed. Classes were taught, seminars held. Papers
were handed in, graded, and returned. The team won something,
and the trees filled with garlands of toilet paper. It rained,
and the toilet paper dripped to the pathways, and into the wiper
blades of parked cars. A group of students seized the Frank J.
Bellhope Memorial Aquarium to protest the treatment of Roberta,
the manatee savant. The protest was a failure. I called a
symposium on the history of student seizure of campus buildings.
The symposium was a success. In the larger world, the team invaded
something, some hapless island or isthmus. A letter of protest by
the faculty was drafted, revised, and scrapped. Bins of swollen
pumpkins appeared in the produce sections of Fastway and Look 'n'
Like." (copyright © 1997 by Jonathan Lethem)
Inside the house, me on the sofa reading, legs extended out to rest on the coffee table, occasionally letting the book drop to my chest to stare out the window at green mountains, broad sky. A clock quietly ticks. Outside, the late summer music continues, insect choraleers of all kinds going at it 24 hours a day, birds providing counterpoint. Stepping out the kitchen door means a transition from quiet to sudden, gently swelling noise. Northern Vermont's late summer soundtrack.
The second wave of visitors -- theoretically scheduled to arrive, er, later today or perhaps tomorrow, certainly sometime before the apocalypse -- were to have telephoned yesterday to discuss details. No call. Hmmmm.
Ah, well.
Mid-August, partway through an unexpectedly peaceful weekend.
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At the risk of flogging yesterday's morning/evening sky thing to death -- today, this morning, right outside the house:
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 9:28 AM [+]
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