{my topography}

I want to tell you things. I want to capture moments and pin them down, and preserve them like the fragile wings of the butterflies we sometimes find dead along the roadside at the end of summer.

I want to tell you about the fragrance of peaches. The way they melt in my mouth, the fragrance filling every crevice of memory and consciousness with the utter sweetness of late summer. They are a thing to behold, peaches, now, when you can cut them in half, twisting so that the fruit separates easily from the pit and the skin slides off like a party dress.

I want to tell you about the way the house smelled like blueberry boy bait this afternoon. Cakey and heavenly, made with freshly ground flour and local berries.

I want to tell you about the fat green watermelon resting on my counter, its round rind a map of green and pale stripes. It will split open easily, revealing the red fruit and dark seeds. Watermelon is summer. Summer is red sticky juice running down little boy’s chins, and spitting seeds, and sitting on the front step with big slices watching the storm clouds come. In the garden our own sugar babies and moon and stars are ripening, their leaves like ruffled skirts creeping over ground to fraternize the long girlish legs of the corn.

I want to tell you how everything is always one thing and then another. How a morning can be good or bad, and so the day will go, always sort of unexpected. Always abrupt and unfolding. Every day is a small surprise.

I am struck by this again and again: that being alive sometimes feels so fickle and permeable, each day a handful of pebbled moments bumping up against each other in god’s pockets. The mountains are blue. The day ends earlier. The clouds come. They bring rain. I wake up with a headache wanting to cry; but then there is the fragrance of roses by the stoop, summer peaches, watermelon, boy bait on plates with forks and crumbs.

I want you to understand this, because I want to understand it too: that today can be anything. That it can be lost and reclaimed a hundred times.

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I also want to tell you thank you for your comments on my last post. I loved reading every single one. Loved discovering some new blogs and old favorites and all the amazing goals for August that you have. I want to come here daily, post things, share snippets, but the hours are never long enough. Never. I’m falling behind on my word count, though I’m typing frantically to keep up (just above 12k today.)

And oh, the headache that is this morning. Sigh.

What are you up to today?

Hi. Wednesday. There was sun today for the first time, literally, in weeks. Tell me this, Internets, is it sunny where you are? And if so, is it often? I’m starting to get itchy feet. Hankering to be somewhere else maybe. Some place with more sun, more… I don’t know. If I were foot loose and fancy free I’d be tempted to do this. I’ve always wanted to write a story about big rig drivers. Cool, right?

Really though: do you love where you live? Tell me about it!

Also today: lots of revising and forward progress. Writing is a crazy making profession for sure. So much terror and doubt is there, every day, waiting in the margins, in the click of the space bar. During breaks today I was inspired by her beautiful aesthetic. And also this breathtaking art.

This super cool journal also caught my eye today. I love when image and story and news and ideas collide. It’s how it’s like inside my head.

Speaking of things that get inside my head–I loved reading this story in particular because it reminded me somehow very much of The Year of Silence by Kevin Brockmeier in the Best American, which was originally published here. I wish I could find a link for you to read it online–because then you’d see what I mean about these two pieces connecting. This picture in particular, of Sao Paolo stripped of visual pollution is just what I pictured when I imagined a city stripped of sound. It’s serene and calming and yet…I like a mess, which is why I liked how Brockmeier’s little piece ends immensely.

And finally, because I adore lists and am a total sucker for good food, Travelers Lunchbox delighted me so much today. Particularly this list of all foodie lists.

My short list of to die for food off the top of my head: cherry pie, pasta from Mezzaluna, lime gelato in the Piazza della Signoria, affogato, oysters with white wine and garlic butter.

Runners up: root beer floats, hot chocolate from Quebec served in a bowl, majool dates, fresh raspberries, steak frites, unagi sushi, raspberry sorbet, licorice, dark dark chocolate, caramel apples, dry packed scallops, Oh lord, I have started something I cannot stop. What are your top five and your runners up?

Wednesday. When I type that word I think of fifth grade, of the yellow lined paper I used to practice spelling it on in loopy cursive, Wed-nes-day. I still say it that way in my head when I write it out.

Funny how certain things stick and others evaporate in a second. Just as I was writing this I thought of the premise for a perfect short story. By the time I’d pulled up a new sticky note on my desktop, it had slipped my mind and all I could remember was the fact that I need to email several friends and am very remiss in doing so. Maddening.

Memory. It’s such a loopy, lumpy thing, like an old floral couch with little spots burned in the fabric from where the sun struck it, shining through a vase on the windowsill just so.

I remember my childhood vividly and sporadically. From fifth grade I remember learning the entire Greek alphabet, all of the prepositions in alphabetical order, how to spell Wednesday, and how I kicked Zachary O’Day in the crotch with those slouchy pointy toed boots that were all the rage along with acid washed jeans in 1986.

I do not however, remember yesterday, unless I put some serious mental effort towards the task.

No. That isn’t true. I do remember the way last night we decided to go with a red metal bucket to pick raspberries down by the pond and a quarter of the way there ran into two stray dogs. One was a yellow lab with one of those pronged collars that look vaguely threatening, and the other was a black wisp of a dog with floppy ears and lanky legs and pale ghost blue eyes, part husky for sure. They weren’t from around here. Not any of the neighbor’s dogs, and when we went towards them they ran, away from us, up our hill, towards our house and our free range chickens.

Incidentally, just yesterday DH decided that our two month old chicks were old enough to go free range, without the enclosure we normally put them into. And by decided, I mean he took the path of least resistance, as they had escaped him when he was trying to transfer them from the large wooden box where they spend the night in the coop, to the enclosure on the lawn. They escaped and he decided to hell with them. So they were out under the pine all day and just fine except that now of course two feral and rather hungry looking dogs were heading right towards them.

We ran back up our hill, pushing the stroller with Sprout who indignantly began to wail and Bean, who dropped his bike and skittered up after us, his yellow helmet bobbing, his eyes on the sky where thunder had begun to rumble. “I saw lightening,” he said, his voice all quavery. “It might get us.”

Seriously, when it rains it pours around here.

And so there we were, trying to deter the dogs by yelling and throwing rocks in their general direction, and then trying to catch and re-coop the not so big and definitely not so smart chicks who would make a mad dash for the coop door and then at the very last minute would scatter frantically in all directions.

I remember this. Yes I do. But what I don’t remember—unless I stop now and really think of it—is what I read yesterday, what I learned, what media I consumed. And I’ve been thinking about that since my last post: how I am maybe suffering from information/networking overload and what to do about it.

And I came up with this: For the rest of the week I am going to try to keep notes here about my media habits and see where this gets me. Likely, I’ll be back with my first record this afternoon. You in?