Bright Moon

Tonight must have been the full moon. When it rose, it seemed a bit flat on one side, but as the night passed, it came to look fully round. Now it is settling into the pines whose shadows fall across the lawn, obscuring the pale green in deep black. I am reminded of this poem from the T'ang dynasty:


The Candle Casts Dark Shadows

by Li Shang Yin


The candle casts dark shadows
On the mother of pearl screen.
Slowly, slowly, the Milky Way
Goes down the sky. The stars go out.
Girl in the moon, are you sorry
You stole the herb of immortality,
And night after night have to
Watch over the distant, emerald
Sea and the boundless jeweled sky?

Sweating it out

It isn't unusual for October to be warm here, but 93 degrees? I've had to turn the air conditioner on. Looks as though autumn is trying to make up for summer's comparative mildness. I hope that this does not presage one of those dry winters. I like mild winters, but a dry winter is very bad here. It usually leads to a very bad fire season the next summer. The fires we've had for the last two summers were bad enough. I know that, sooner or later, this place is likely to go the way of the Oakland hills, but I'd rather that it happen after I leave. Even now, the pines along the last ridge on the eastern edge of town have so many brown needles that, in the sunset, they flush like a wall of burnished copper. It is a beautiful sight, but one that is very disturbing to anyone who understands the potential for disaster which lies in dried-out conifers.