Tonight and tomorrow if it’s clear where you are, go outside. The moon is near perigee, and it’ll be the biggest and brightest you’ll see this year. I’m disappointed that solar activity has been low, although I shouldn’t be, because technically solar max should have been over months ago. But they think that every so many hundred years we get a double cycle, and that this year was one of them. It must be finally winding down.

Earthquake activity, too, has been unusually low. We had a couple of measly 1s and 2s around here over the last week, the standard 2s and 3s everywhere else, but aside from the 5 way down near Calexico, it’s been quiet. No floods. No eruptions. No wildfires. No supernatural phenomena. No meteor showers or auroras. Not even a good wild horse stampede.

Wake up, Earth.

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I’ve never smoked, but if I were a smoker I’d have taken one single solitary cigarette up on top ofred mountain near the Desert Research Institute, where the all-night lab lights drift through those big windows across the street and illuminate the rocks just enough for me to see where the dirt goes. I’d drive out there and park and hang that cigarette out the window with my left hand, keep my right on the shift, lean my head back, close my eyes… and exhale.

It eventually goes out, probably before I even smoked any of it. Then I’d sit and watch how the lights in the foothills undulate, ebb and flow with the curve of the earth. How you can see the geography of the landscape in the dark just by following the pattern of porch lights.

I wish I could see farther. Dig deeper. Peel away the sheathing and expose what’s underneath.

I’d like to have had more time. I’d like to have known more. Stayed longer. Left sooner. Tried harder. Let go easier. Moved on faster. Lingered just enough. Recognized more. Dismissed more. Understood.

I wish I didn’t have friends who insisted on being mysteries instead of friends. And I wonder how many people wish the same thing about me, sometimes.

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Tonight, maybe I just needed to be stretched across that bed again in Seattle for a little while. Just for a few minutes. At 2:14 am, with one arm dangling off the side, sliding my fingers across those smooth maple hardwoods all shiny with the moon streaming in through the windows that were never closed, not even in winter when that northwesterly wind would whip the sheer white curtains around in the big, almost empty room and keep me just awake enough to be balancing so delicately on the verge.

Illusion or not, I remember that.

Posted by tee in de la vida, sense of place
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