On Fire

On Fire

Up before dawn this morning staring at this screen, which I’ve done all too often of late. I think about the legions of writers before me, also up early plying their trade. Down through the centuries they go, scribbling by fireside and candle flame and lamp light.

And then you have us modern folk. Our tablets are illuminated. Our laptops gleam. We need no lighting source save the one upon which we type.

There’s a lovely scene in the most recent film version of “Little Women” where Jo writes in the attic of her home in Concord. She has just lost her dear sister Beth, for whom she began writing tales of their girlhood, and now it has dawned on her that these stories, humble and homespun as they originally seemed, are the real thing, the stories she’s meant to tell.

She writes in soft candlelight, dipping her pen in and out of the ink. She wears her old writing jacket and scratches out the words as if in a trance. Days pass. The manuscript pages pile up, and she moves them around on the attic floor.

She writes in light and in darkness. When she strikes a match it sounds as if she’s setting the house on fire. But it’s she who’s on fire, penning the words that even after all these years I can still quote from memory: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

And here I sit, as the day lightens around me, as the screen glows.

(Saoirse Ronan as Jo in a still shot of “Little Women,” 2019, directed by Greta Gerwig, Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Midday Finish

Midday Finish

I think, I hope, that I’ve completed one of the two research papers due this weekend. This is welcome news since I have another one to go. The other one is well along but by no means finished.

The dilemma now is what to do while the first one “marinates.’ I learned long ago not to push send too quickly. It does any written work good to sit a while, to settle, much like a cake cooling on a wire rack after you take it out of the oven. Cut into that cake too soon and you’ll be sorry.

Should I plunge immediately into the next project? It takes some time to shift gears, to remember where I was when I knocked off working on the other one late Monday. There’s always lunch and the newspaper to while away an hour or so, to punctuate the time. A midday finish should mean taking a complete break, but today the break will be mini, with promises of a longer one to come.

(No picture of a cake cooling; this one will have to do. It’s making me hungry!)

Running the Reservoir

Running the Reservoir

The fog was so pleasant this morning when I walked outside to pick up the newspaper that I almost took a walk then and there. But duty calls, brain work beckons, and the walk will be postponed.

It will not always be this way, I remind myself. But these days I must harvest every bit of brainpower I can, and that harvest is best begun in the morning.

There was a time, though, when locomotion came first. For many years, I rolled out of bed right into my running gear, laced up my shoes and dashed around the reservoir in Central Park. What a way to start the day! It was bracing, it was beautiful, it was always a pinch-me-I’m-living-in-New-York moment.

When I ran the reservoir I forgot about the cramped room where I lived, the money I didn’t have, the extra work I did to make my editorial day job possible. My heart and lungs were full of the park and of the city that surrounded it. The run was only two miles, but at the end of it I could tackle anything.

December Distractions

December Distractions

The mid-month semester deadline is bearing down — two papers to submit and a final class — and I’ve barely begun Christmas shopping. Which means I’m clinging to the single-digit days of December for all they’re worth. The 9th feels comfortable, capacious even. Tomorrow, the jig will be up.

Why have we done this to December, clogged the month with so many to-dos: shopping and year-end appointments, card writing and holiday baking? Why have we taken a perfectly good, quiet month and turned it into a production?

We can blame Christmas, I suppose, and its Druidical forebears: the solstice, darkest days from which we seek solace and diversion. December is all about distractions, really. I’ll keep that in mind. It won’t help me check items off the list, but it may keep me sane.

4:47

4:47

A stiff wind roared in yesterday, accompanied by low-flying Dulles-bound jets over the house. It was unsettling enough to make me check the weather on my phone, and when I did, I noted the time of sunset: 4:47. I looked at the time on my computer: also 4:47.

With 4:47 on my mind, I did a bit of googling. It’s an early sunset, to be sure, though not as early as the 4:18 sunset in Seattle. If it’s this early now, though, what will it be next week or the week after?

Turns out, it will be later, steadily later every evening, back to 4:57 by the end of the month. In fact, 4:47 seems to be the earliest sunset we will have this year. It’s all up from here. The total minutes of daylight will continue to shrink as we approach solstice, but only because sunrises will be later.

I don’t know why this made me feel so much better, but it did.

Caged Bird

Caged Bird

For the last two days we’ve been in a battle of sorts with our remaining parakeet, Cleo. Having just lost her companion, Toby, we’re in no mood to lose her, too. But she seems determined to escape, even if it means killing herself in the process.

On Tuesday we found her flying around the living room and kitchen, banging into the glass patio doors, bouncing off the ceiling and finally, after 10 harrowing minutes, coming to rest on the outside of her cage. From there, she was quickly dispatched to the inside with the use of a towel.

Yesterday’s near escape was almost more terrifying. I found her halfway through the bars of a cage which I now realize is a little too open for her (.6 rather than .5 inches between bars). Who knew? None of our other parakeets have been such escape artists. But Cleo is female — and feisty.

She’s about to move into tighter quarters, slightly more snug inside with less space between the cage bars. We’re hoping these new digs will discourage escape attempts.

Ultimately, of course, she needs more freedom and a new friend, both of which take time to make happen. So for now, and until her new accommodations are readied, I’m working beside her, keeping an eye on this beautiful blue parakeet, making sure this caged bird sings … but does not stray.

(Cleo behind bars, where we hope she stays.)

Sleep Aid

Sleep Aid

I may have discovered a no-fail sleep aid. It’s not melatonin, Lunesta or Benadryl. Not a hot bath or a cup of warm milk, though these homespun remedies have their place.

My secret, if you’d like to call it that, is taking a red-eye flight the night before. Yes, good old-fashioned sleep deprivation can work wonders for insomnia. It may require a day of disorientation before it clicks in, but perhaps such deep, sumptuous sleep is worth it.

The thing is, a red eye from the West Coast makes sense. In addition to being affordable it provides more visiting time on departure day. And leaving at 11 in the evening (2 a.m. back home) means you’re landing by dawn’s early light. The only problem is how to grab 40 or even 20 winks in the air. But if this doesn’t happen, you have the promise of a nap followed by sublime catch-up sleep to come.

A bit unorthodox? Yes, but not without merit.

Marine Layer

Marine Layer

I awoke yesterday to dense fog and quarter-mile visibility. No problem for a walker in the suburbs (or the city), but not the best for motorists and pilots and others who must see far to be safe.

I bundled up and took a walk, wanting to explore an area I’d seen from the window of my Airbnb but couldn’t pinpoint its locale. Was it across Rainier? Yes it was. But mostly it was up, as so much of this neighborhood seems to be.

Seattle is a city of vistas, and when the fog swirls around them, the views are even more magical. Yesterday’s marine layer had burnt away before I took off for home. But on Sunday I captured a sliver of fog posed fetchingly at the foot of Mount Rainier — a marine layer disappearing even as I snapped this shot.

Her Place

Her Place

When I was Celia’s age, I lived in a city, too. I woke every morning groggy but happy. Never enough time, never enough sleep. New York was an engine that revved me and fed me. I had found my rhythm, my métier. I was in love with a place.

When I see Celia here, 3,000 miles west of where I made my home, I understand the contours of her affinity but not its particulars. That’s why I visit, to pick up the vibe, if only for a few days.

But inevitably what I feel is not just the pull of a place; it’s the pull of possibility. It’s the memory of being that age, with so much of life ahead of me. And I think, wherever she roams in the future, she will always have this place, this feeling of freedom, this city she’s made her own.

(Seattle’s Kubota Gardens)

Seattle Sunrise

Seattle Sunrise

Sun is not something one associates with Seattle, but today it’s pouring in the window of this place I’ve rented for a few days. It’s Celia’s birthday and I surprised her yesterday, appearing at her doorstep when she had just talked with me hours earlier to say happy Thanksgiving.

The surprise has been on me, though, as it always is when I travel from one coast to another. First, that the trip happens so quickly, five and a half hours! Second, that I feel so at home here.

And third … as always … that I don’t want to leave.