Moisty

A few hours of starlight gave way to gathering clouds which soon let fall a fine mist. The drops drifted in silence, filling the cool air, dampening the trees, until the moisture-laden pines began to drip, and the night was filled with their sound. Still, there is no rain, but only the mist and this steady dripping, and the trickle of swelling rivulets. The smell of it is irresistible, and I went out to walk and listen and breathe, and returned to the house a while later surprisingly wet. I might go out again before I sleep. Mist is almost as good as fog.

Short

For the last few days, I've been waking rather late again, as a result of waking rather early. After five or six hours of sleep, I wake but don't get up. There is a particular melancholy which arrives with spring, and it settles on my mind in those first moments after sleep, inducing a sense of ennui at the prospect of yet another day much like the day before. I suppose it might be pollen, which both disturbs my breathing and makes me feel as though my brain weighs too much. Something gets into my head, at any rate, and the only thing for me to do is go back to sleep. The I invariably sleep too long, and wake in the yellow hour when the sunlight (if the day has any) is washing my western window.

So, I had only a couple of hours of day remaining once I dragged myself into the waking world about four o'clock this afternoon. That's barely time to adjust to consciousness before night descends. All my memory retains of the truncated day is the moment when sunset turned the clouds in the west exactly the same shade of pink as the peach blossoms.