reality is not an echo

fur air
A couple of posts ago I wrote about the flames we saw on the ridgetop forty miles away. We haven't seen them again (although the fire has spread to almost 140,000 acres). Pilots reported that the flames that night reached 300-500 feet! Not seeing flames, however, doesn't let us off the hook. It's hot here! high 80s, dense smokey air. At an elevation of 7000 feet, the slightest increase in humidity and the addition of smoke makes the air feel as heavy as a fur coat. Official air monitoring systems report the air as "good" and I wonder what nerd came up with that particular category. Most of us are feeling tired, heavy, thinking of  rain dances and falling snow (what a concept!), escape. Phyllis and I had lunch at Stella's today and she invited me to go to Chicago with her. Her daughter lives there and said "it's really nice so far this summer" (another amazing concept). I encouraged her to go. If I could, I'd go with her. Meanwhile, in my workroom downstairs, with the ceiling fan and lack of direct sun after 8 in the morning, it's comfortable. I finished a pair of handwarmers at my desk today (largely ignoring the work I'm supposed to be doing - all I'm capable of until this weather/fire crisis passes).

cool hand dreams

This project was 95% finished when I put it aside a couple of months ago due to boredom? spring? dissatisfaction? It's Lorna's Laces Sport Limited Edition: Zombie BBQ (don't ask). When I unearthed it, I liked it again, so finished it in record time. Then started another in another color that came with it last fall called Goblin (I don't know why!).

more loss?

Our rugosa bush isn't doing well and there are lots of dead spots in what has become, over a decade, a huge lush bush - usually fully resplendent with small pink roses until October. But we're aware of the drought and reluctant to use too much well water for plants and trees and there's a price to be paid for that decision. Like Scarlet, I'll think about it tomorrow. Or in September. I think I'm suffering from a "survival of the fittest" mentality this summer and not sure if I'm fit to survive.

For now I'll try to chill out, work on the new handwarmer, check out Facebook (which I joined yesterday) and figure out if it's really for me. It seems that people are on their computers constantly sending messages about not much of anything. Anyone have any feelings or advice about this?

I am the poet of reality
I say the earth is not an echo
Nor man an apparition;
But that all the things seen are real,
The witness and albic dawn of things equally real
I have split the earth and the hard coal and rocks and the solid bed
     of the sea
And went down to reconnoitre there a long time,
And bring back a report,
And I understand that those are positive and dense every one
And that what they seem to the child they are
[And that the world is not joke,
Nor any part of it a sham].
                                                Walt Whitman