passing the time

camping

It’s still hitting mid-70s during the day in AZ. come on down!

Dog and I enjoy camping and taking pictures of dead trees…  and my pretty room.  and lizards in my room.

Too much of a good thing

or why unemployment is slowly  making me crazy…

It rarely rains in the desert, obviously. Today is the first cloudy day for the last month. Desert rain is miraculous and special, like a meteor shower or rainbow, something to stop and observe, contemplate, appreciate. When it rains you can literally hear the ground and plants drinking. I’m not sure if this is botanically/biologically accurate or just my imagination, but it seems plants open up their leaves, branches and roots to be able to rapidly take in scarce water. There’s one bush in particular, creosote, that releases this glorious smell in the rain. So it is a time when I feel I can see plants moving, drinking, rejoicing.

It’s also just nice to see your surroundings in a fundamentally different way. The clouds change the quality light, and the moisture makes rocks, plants, sand appear to have different colors and characteristics. Normally I can see the desert stretching away from me in all directions, the endless openness and chains of mountains beyond. In Arizona there is nothing obstructing the view of continuous rolling desert, dramatic cliffs and mountains. Today the mountain I’m sitting on and the distant mountains are obscured, darkened, made dramatic by banks of storm clouds. I can see places miles away where the clouds have begun to empty their humidity onto the eager and thirsty landscape.

Unending and beautiful sunshine it seems, is made all the more glorious by occasional interruptions of dark, wet, cold, rain. I hike in the rain every chance I get (my Pacific Northwest friends and family would scoff), but I enjoy the change and the contrast. Too much of a good thing isn’t so good after all.

Petty Theft

This is a short story work in progress. Yes, it is mostly unskillfully veiled truth which i’m clumsily calling fiction, but, well… If any of you reader/writer types have comments or edits, i’d be much obliged!

Everyday hundreds of thousands of people launch themselves towards undetermined destinations. If they glowed somehow and the trajectories of these adventurous souls could be tracked on a giant light-up map of the world like the Pentagon always has in the movies, the continents and oceans would sparkle like a summer night full of fireflies.

Biosphere for Dogs

I start talking to the dog. That’s when I decide I better start writing again.

I’m in Oracle, Arizona, house sitting and dog sitting. Sitting with the dog, walking with the dog, walking in the desert. In the desert again. High desert here, less saguaro, more gnarly oaks and mesquite, grass and coyotes. Lizards run up the house walls and hummingbirds haunt the sugar feeder a few feet from my hammock. Such delicate creatures. Such delightful evenings, sinking sun washing the dry yard golden.

the dog

I have landed here after a long spring and summer and fall traveling and working and am desperate to have all the uncertainties resolved as soon as possible. But… the prospect of employment continues to allude me. I feel restless and listless and clueless, disoriented but ever vigilant, ready to perceive and dash towards opportunity the minute it presents itself. Does opportunity knock on a door, or is it that opportunity is an open window after a door has closed? Whenever I try to visualize, I mean really think about opportunity arriving, I get mixed up between metaphors of windows and doors.

arranging and rearranging

oracle, az.  starting again.