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On moonless nights the trees all but vanish. They can be discerned primarily as the parts of the darkness containing no stars. Only toward the west are the outlines of their shapes visible, and only on nights when there is sufficient moisture in the air to catch the lights from the shopping center three quarters of a mile away. When the air is dry, it reflects so little that their light is barely a faint paleness, and when the moon is bright, as well, its light overwhelms them. But tonight, I see that light like a false dawn beyond the trees. In all other directions, there is nothing, as though the world had mostly vanished, and my small remaining patch would soon follow it into oblivion.
Aug. 5th, 2002
The sun has returned, and the air is full of crane flies. I see a group of them over the dying lawn in the back yard of the vacant house next door. These insects are among my favorites. Neither their narrow, translucent wings nor their improbably long, almost hair-thin legs seem as though they would be able to support the weight of their stick-like bodies. I enjoy the whirring sound of their flight, and the way that, when trapped in the house, they always manage to find their way to a window screen to try to escape. I often open the screen for them, and watch them fly away. I wonder if they feel something like frustration when they are trapped, and something like delight when they are freed?
If bugs are capable of delight, those flying about today must be filled with it. If the feeling is alien to them, at least they are capable of producing it for me. So, too, does the scene of which they are a part. The grass is a pale golden brown, with a few small dabs of green where the hardier drought-tolerant weeds have sprung up. There are a few tattered bushes, some with long-dead flowers still clinging to them. There is the weathered fence, leaning a bit, its boards a dark reddish-brown streaked with grey, and, beyond the sunlit yard, a patch of woods, pines and oaks dappling one another with shade. Over it all, there is the empty blue sky of summer. I think I'll open the screen and let myself out.
If bugs are capable of delight, those flying about today must be filled with it. If the feeling is alien to them, at least they are capable of producing it for me. So, too, does the scene of which they are a part. The grass is a pale golden brown, with a few small dabs of green where the hardier drought-tolerant weeds have sprung up. There are a few tattered bushes, some with long-dead flowers still clinging to them. There is the weathered fence, leaning a bit, its boards a dark reddish-brown streaked with grey, and, beyond the sunlit yard, a patch of woods, pines and oaks dappling one another with shade. Over it all, there is the empty blue sky of summer. I think I'll open the screen and let myself out.