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the weekend, and a book excerpt
Woke up late Sunday morning after having drunk far too much wine at a friend's birthday party the night before. B made a nice breakfast with eggs, toast and fruit, and we spent most of the afternoon puttering around the house, each doing our housecleaning chores. After a late afternoon lunch of falafel and a walk with the dogs, we decided to wile away some hours at the bookstore before returning home for supper. We picked up a great video on the way home called Smiling Fish and Goat On Fire and watched it before going to bed. There was a gorgeous Italian woman in the movie named Rosemarie Addeo. She mesmerized me each time she appeared on the screen.
When we left the bookstore earlier last evening, the fog was so thick we couldn't see to the other side of the parking lot. Apparently a baseball game in town had to be stopped in the 8th inning due to fog. My study window is wide open right now, and the fog is still heavy enough in the air that I can smell it inside here. It's a bit like dry ice or something - if I hold my hand to the window, I can feel it, like a moist air blanket draped over my arm.
On Saturday, I got up earlier and drove 180 km to a small farming community in the valley to meet up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
awesboss, Andrew, and Cee. Cee had flown up a day or so earlier from Oakland, CA, to be with us. We met at an ashram for Ramana Maharshi, a place which I hadn't known existed before this weekend. We spent a relaxed day of retreat together, split in the middle with a meditation in the temple across the road which smelled heavily of dhoop, the Indian ceremonial incense. Cee and I cooked a big lunch for everyone with vegetables, pilaf, and garlic bread, and after a lovely conversation about all things spiritual, I made the return drive home through torrents of rain so hard that I could barely see the cars in front of me. I had filled my 24-CD wallet to full capacity that morning, and I played DJ by myself during the drive home, listening to most of the music as loud as possible. I made note of a few songs that would make a good transition to a jazz interpretation. If I have time, I'll arrange one or two of them for our next gig in November.
Also finished reading an old Ayn Rand book called The Fountainhead over the weekend, and began reading While I Was Gone by Sue Miller before going to sleep last night. I've never read her before, but she's wonderful - her dialogue is so perfectly natural, and she captures certain ineffable feelings just so.
After returning to work the day after this day, the main character meets someone who pulls her back 20 years into her past. She relives the experiences of years gone by, of a different life, and different people, before meeting her present husband and raising her family. Her writing continues to be as natural as flowing water - it's like reading someone's journal here or something.
When we left the bookstore earlier last evening, the fog was so thick we couldn't see to the other side of the parking lot. Apparently a baseball game in town had to be stopped in the 8th inning due to fog. My study window is wide open right now, and the fog is still heavy enough in the air that I can smell it inside here. It's a bit like dry ice or something - if I hold my hand to the window, I can feel it, like a moist air blanket draped over my arm.
On Saturday, I got up earlier and drove 180 km to a small farming community in the valley to meet up with
awesboss, Andrew, and Cee. Cee had flown up a day or so earlier from Oakland, CA, to be with us. We met at an ashram for Ramana Maharshi, a place which I hadn't known existed before this weekend. We spent a relaxed day of retreat together, split in the middle with a meditation in the temple across the road which smelled heavily of dhoop, the Indian ceremonial incense. Cee and I cooked a big lunch for everyone with vegetables, pilaf, and garlic bread, and after a lovely conversation about all things spiritual, I made the return drive home through torrents of rain so hard that I could barely see the cars in front of me. I had filled my 24-CD wallet to full capacity that morning, and I played DJ by myself during the drive home, listening to most of the music as loud as possible. I made note of a few songs that would make a good transition to a jazz interpretation. If I have time, I'll arrange one or two of them for our next gig in November.Also finished reading an old Ayn Rand book called The Fountainhead over the weekend, and began reading While I Was Gone by Sue Miller before going to sleep last night. I've never read her before, but she's wonderful - her dialogue is so perfectly natural, and she captures certain ineffable feelings just so.
...for some long moments in the boat that day, I was suddenly aware of my state, in a way we aren't often. That is, I was abruptly and most intensely, sharply aware of all the aspects of life surrounding me, and yet of feeling neither part of it nor truly separated from it. Somehow impartial, unattached -- an observer. Yet sentient of it all. Deeply sentient, in fact. But to no apparent purpose.
If I were trying to account for this feeling, I might say that it had something to do with the way I was half lying, half sitting on several pillows in the bow, the way the curving walls of the old rowboat framed a foreground for my view as they rose away from me. I saw them, these peeling wooden inner walls, and then my husband's familiar shape. Above him there was the flat, milky-blue sky and sometimes, when we were close enough to shore, the furred, nearly black line of the spruces and pines against it. In the air above us swallows darted -- dark, quick silhouettes -- and once a cedar waxwing moved smoothly through them. Layers of life above me. Below, I could hear the lap of the deep water through the walls of the boat.
As a result, let's say, I felt suspended, waiting. Between all these worlds and part of none of them.
After returning to work the day after this day, the main character meets someone who pulls her back 20 years into her past. She relives the experiences of years gone by, of a different life, and different people, before meeting her present husband and raising her family. Her writing continues to be as natural as flowing water - it's like reading someone's journal here or something.