Unexpected Fit of Memory

The gray light of morning sneaks up on me, but a bit later than it did a couple of weeks ago. Summer's dry scent remains intense, permeating day and night. That may have had something to do with the long forgotten image which found its way to my mind's surface last night. I suddenly recalled something about the first time I went to one of the carnivals held annually on the grounds of my middle school. Among the booths run by various local organizations, there was a game which involved a bunch of wooden fish with eyelets screwed into them, all floating in a tank of water. The object of the game was to catch a fish with a hook at the end of a string hanging from a short pole. If you caught a fish, there was a prize, such as a Chinese finger puzzle or some such simple toy. This particular game was the easiest at the carnival, and was there primarily for the very young kids, because just about anybody could catch one of the wooden fish, and even the kids who couldn't would get a prize.

The odd thing about this image popping into my head is that while I have thought about the carnivals many times over the years, I don't think I've recalled that particular game since I was eleven or twelve years old. Then, for no apparent reason, I had this vision of it, exactly as it was, and even remembered the elderly couple who were operating the booth. It was a stout woman of late middle age, and an older man who was almost bald, and they both wore aprons with pockets for coins across the front of them. In my head, I even heard the money jingling in the aprons, and the sound of carnival music in the background, and I smelled the cotton candy and the dust stirred up from the dirt playground by hundreds of feet. Memory is a surpassingly strange thing sometimes. I wonder what else is stuck in my head, and when it might be jarred lose to drag me out of the moment so inexplicably?

Decor

The base of the front porch hasn't been swept in a long while. This afternoon, I noticed many strands of spider silk extending from the bottom step to the walk below. They billowed slightly in the soft breeze, and caught the sunlight so that the whole area they occupied glinted and flickered with thin, bright streaks. There were various things caught in them, too. I noticed a bird's pinfeather, a couple of dandelion seeds, some bits of dry leaf, and much dust, but no prey, and no spiders. In the past, when there have been brush fires near town, I have seen spider webs filled with bits of ash. Almost anything light enough to be caught is apt to end up clinging to spider silk. I thought I really ought to sweep the porch and the walk, but after watching for a while as the light played over the strands, and the bits of detritus bobbed and swayed with each breath of air, I decided not to. Maybe there will be a summer shower, and I'll see glittering beads of water caught in the silk, making it look like a bejeweled shawl carelessly dropped there by some passing dryad.