Awake on a March Night

After the moon set, scattered clouds caught its light and drifted like diaphanous paper lanterns on the dark lake of sky. Later, they vanished, drifting east to shroud the distant peaks of the mountains, but the air here remained heavy with moisture, and the night was redolent of dewy grass. Those who neither stay up late, nor wake before dawn, miss some of the most delightful scents. Perhaps darkness, in depriving the eye of details, brings us to engage the other senses more strongly. Thus, in these hours, scent has greater presence, and smallest sounds awake the ear, and skin feels the slightest stir of air that glides over it. In a mild season, be out in the hours before dawn, if you would know the full range of your senses.

Strange Days

The details of the day are a blur of fragments. The clouds have retreated to their spot above the mountains where they hover, big and white and puffy and looking not quite real, like the clouds in a Krazy Kat cartoon. A popular ground cover plant whose name I don't know has suddenly produced hundreds of little purple flowers along the verges of the roads. A tree, also unidentified, has burst forth with immense pink blossoms in the yard of a house with a dusky red tile roof. I've never noticed before what a nice combination those colors make. Birds are chattering all over the place, probably impatient for the trees to leaf out so that there might be protected nesting places. The weather says spring, but most of the trees are lagging behind, cautiously putting out a few small buds, testing the prematurely warm air. If I were a bird, I'd be impatient, too. If I were a tree, I'd be cautious, too. The season, like the day, has a cubist quality about it. Nothing is quite where one would expect it to be, but the composition is nice, if rather unsettling.