This part of Vermont's been doing the late-summer schizo thing lately, the days veering between classic, golden late August fare and gray, cold autumn. Rainfall coming and going, countryside green and moist, sky clearing long enough to dry everything out before the next bout of showers. Allowing me to drag out an the extension ladder from the garage and scrape paint, caulk seams, etc. Homeowner stuff, me in work mode, ready to do things that need to be done. And just in time, 'cause there's a pile of stuff waiting to be done.
When not flailing about around the outside of the house, I'm inside flailing away at the piano, attempting to get enough of a handle on J.S. Bach that he can stop spinning wildly about in his grave. Or at the computer, pretending to be a writer. Or attempting to organize my little life so that I can head back to Madrid in six or seven weeks without my material existence on this side of the Atlantic falling apart.
Every couple of days I drive to Montpelier, stop in at the gym and pump up my manly self, drop wads of cash at the grocery and hardware stores, maybe stop somewhere to toss down an iced coffee. Today brought one of those excursions, getting me up and out of the house at far too reasonable, far too grown-up an hour.
For some reason, self-talkers were sprinkled all over the town's diminutive downtown, taking advantage of beautiful weather -- a multi-ethnic array of individuals carrying on loud conversations with themselves, one of them an Asian woman who had the look of a high-functioning adult until I heard her spewing a slightly surreal, fairly paranoid narrative about, well, something she didn't care for. Down the street from there, a college-age busker had taken over a stretch of sidewalk, whanging away at an acoustic guitar in accompaniment to the angriest, thrashingest street singing I've heard in quite a while. I passed, aiming a smile his way, he briefly paused the angst to give a courtly nod in return.
Seen/heard today at the gym:
-- A mid- to late-60's woman, completely rigged out in sweat gear and leg warmers, doing a long, elaborate, disciplined workout, clean and jerk style. Preparing for a competition, it turns out.
-- A small, serious, glasses-festooned 70-something woman quietly doing floor exercises, one renegade foot practically stomping in time to a Ten Years After song playing on the in-house stereo. (The music at the gym during the week tends toward hits from the 60's-70's-80's, and while I've heard enough classic rock to last me several lifetimes and then some, I'll take that over the generic big-hair/heavy metal stuff they crank up on the weekends.)
-- A baseball discussion in the locker room between two 40ish males morphing into a heated exchange, one saying he'd heard the 50's Dodgers referred to as Murderer's Row, the other claiming (in the outraged tone of a true believer) that only the Yanks had been called that, only the Yanks deserved to be called that. Which got me remembering my father telling me he'd seen Jackie Robinson play at Ebbets Field, the pleasure in the parental unit's voice offsetting the scary realization on my part of how old that memory made him. Fine, the 'rents had me late in their lives and the old man was a young goofball in the Ebbets Field years. Even so. Goddamn.
But I blabber. And there's work waiting to be done.
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Unlike other years, leaves around here have not yet started the autumn color thing despite September closing steadily in. Today, however, brought the season's first pumpkin sighting:
Madrid, te echo de menos.
rws 3:16 PM [+]
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