Time for another virtual vacation, this one to the banks of the Mekong River in Kampong Cham, Cambodia.
River of commerce and transportation, of fertility and growth.
For me, though, it was a river of light — of sunrise and moon glow.
The thermometer said 12 this morning, but I already knew it was frigid from the near non-stop furnace activity I’d heard since waking.
The birds have no such heat source. They must keep moving, keep eating, or perish. So I watch cardinals and jays and sparrows and grackles flit out and back, up and down. They cluster around the feeder, drain it in hours. In between, they fluff their feathers and bury themselves deep in the azalea bush.
Downy woodpeckers nibble at the suet block. Sometimes a pileated woodpecker joins them. The squirrels want in on the action, too. Why they don’t partake of the large pile of seed on the ground below the feeder I’ll never know. I think they just like to mess with us.
The prism is back, rescued from a dusty retreat on top of my dressing table, where it sat cupped and safe in an ornate candlestick since I moved it home at the start of the pandemic.
That’s no place for a prism to be, I told myself, so I brought it into this room I’m making my own and hung it from the shade roller so it dances in the window.
I’d almost forgotten about it when I walked into the room this morning, tea mug in hand. But there they were again, those welcome rainbows brightening my wall.
It was just above freezing yesterday when I set off through the woods down a path that leads to our sister neighborhood on Westwood Hills Drive. I had walked there a couple weeks ago and admired the forest views, the courts and cul-de-sacs, the feeling of being on the other side of the looking glass. But I’d driven to that walk. This one was solely by shank’s mare.
Finding new ways to escape the neighborhood on foot is becoming a minor obsession. I enjoy the great suburban irony — driving to walk — but still like to subvert it whenever possible.
Yesterday’s walk was a pleasing mix of sedate street and woodland trail. The ground was thawing in the latter and mud was a factor (my shoes were banished to the garage after the stroll). But I plunged on, making a large loop through the still, spare, monochromatic landscape.
This weekend, a hint of spring: Not from the temperature, which was frigid, or the daylight hours, which were paltry — but from the robins, who swarmed in to feast on the holly berry. I heard them before I saw them — the beats of their wings and the tenor of their calls, which bring to mind an April morning.
In January robins are not harbingers of spring. They winter here and flock together to forage and roost. But their twittering sounds like spring, so I pretended.
Watching them, taking closeups of them amid the shiny green leaves, made me think about symbiosis. The robins were just doing what they need to stay alive. But their presence was driving me out into the cold sunshine, where, at least that moment, I needed to be.
It was a frozen world I walked through yesterday. Bundled up in my warmest coat, hooded and thick-socked, I made my way along the Franklin Farm trails, which were understandably empty. You know it’s cold when even the dog-walkers stay inside.
The paths were mostly clear, but any pooled water was frozen solid. I stopped and examined the ice, snapped photos, wondered why some ice is milky white and other is clear, thought perhaps I should have learned that in high school but did not. Mostly, I moved quickly. A winter walk is bracing, as long as it’s short.
My new piano is a joy. Most every day I sit on its comfy bench and touch its lustrous keys and think to myself … what did I do to deserve this instrument? Not only have I continued to play old pieces, but I’m even attempting to learn new ones — a sure sign of devotion.
But the piano has developed one interesting habit. It’s thirsty — very, very thirsty. It has a humidifier, you see, with a light that comes on when the water drops below a certain level. When that happens, you fill it through a tube to avoid removing the front of the instrument. Doing this keeps the piano in tune, and is good for it in general.
When the tuner showed me how this works, I imagined we’d be filling it up once or twice a winter. But it’s been a cold January, and the piano lights up about once a week. So now I water the ferns, I water the spider plants … and I water the piano.
(*Apologies to the late Eric Carle for riffing on his title)
I’m in a transitional generation, one that has both real and virtual clean-up duties. Not only do I need to tidy up my computer desktop, to create file folders and organize documents and photos within them, I must also deal with the hundreds of real file folders in cabinets in my basement. And those are much heavier.
They are also filled with gems: Long-ago memos, tattered and worn. Assignment letters from editors who were my mentors and also my friends. Reams of research. Pink “While You Were Away” phone message slips. Studies gathered the old-fashioned way, by going into a brick-and-mortar library, finding the journal and photocopying the pages.
And then there are the interview notes, all in my near-impossible-to-read scribble. I’ve tossed pounds and pounds of them, saving only the ones where I’ve spoken with dear friends or eminent experts.
As I winnow my way through each folder, I remember how hard I worked to assemble that information, conduct those interviews, take and process those notes. Which baby was I holding at the time? Which child was hanging on my leg? A part of me thinks I should leave these folders alone; they are too precious to process. But another part of me is greedy for space, for empty file drawers. And these days, that part is winning out.
Like many people these days I find myself relying on streaming entertainment more heavily than I would like. This has become a winter-time occupation, slowly supplanting my race to watch Oscar-bound films in theaters since so many of them are available online.
As we enter our third year of pandemic-enforced staying-put, I’m gravitating toward films that feature faraway climes. Films like “Under the Tuscan Sun.” I read this book years ago, even own a copy of it. I happened upon the movie a couple days ago, looking for something to watch while exercising in the basement.
What a vision! I don’t mean the sexy Italian guys … I mean the gorgeous Tuscan countryside. There is the walled city of Cortona, the Amalfi Coast marvel of Positano. There are the tall, skinny Italian Cyprus trees, the olive groves, fountains and love of life that flourish in this sunny land.
Oh, I know there are gray days in Italy, too. It’s not the garden of eden. But right now it looks like it to me.
Photos: courtesy Wikipedia, alas I have no recent Italy photos of my own
On Friday, ahead of what I’d heard would be a snow-stormy weekend, I took a brisk walk around Lake Audubon. Well, not exactly around, but as far as I could go.
The wind had already picked up, and it was moving across the lake, creating patches of sunlight on the water that glimmered and moved with the wind.
I was wearing my warm black parka with the faux-fur-lined hood, which kept me warm but hampered movement, so I wasn’t skittering ahead as quickly as I usually do. But I was comfortable and meditative and feeling energized by the wind in my face.
These are the moments that gladden the lives of walkers everywhere — or at least this one.
