Friday. Dark. Breeze.

Things I wish I could record:

- Geese flying and honking
- The hawk--guess I could listen to reruns of "Northern Exposure"
- Daisy, the pitbull next door, who howls inconsolably every time the ice cream man drives by
- Tomcat's sleepy meow--seductive, high-pitched, vulnerable

All animal sounds. Hm.

Not compelling enough for an iPod. Yet.

Wish I could record smells.

While I'm on the fanciful wish-list subject, I wish I that the smell recording device could also erase certain food smells from my memory. For instance, I'm currently on a Burger King Veggie Burger (hold the mayo) jag, fueled, in part, by the fact that I recently ate one in the Wonder Wagon, and the scent continues to linger. It repulsed me when I could smell the onions on my hands for hours the night I ate the BKVB (htm), the first in months...but then I began to crave another. If I could just have a little ScentBGone handy, I could employ it every time I get out of my car, like smelling salts, and I wouldn't spend the morning hours at my computer thinking of fast food crap.

Oh, and the skunky smell vaguely clinging to Rex could be eliminated as well...

*****

Slashdot: from the finally! dept.
blamanj writes "[1]Aardman Studios have release the [2]first peek
(Quicktime) at the new Wallace & Gromit film, [3]Curse of the
Wererabbit. Currently scheduled for an October release, the
slightly-less-than dynamic duo will be putting their talents to work
chasing a were-rabbit that threatens the town's vegetables.

References

1. http://www.aardman.co.uk/html/news.asp?type=html
2. http://www.apple.com/trailers/dreamworks/wallace_and_gromit/featurette/
3. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312004/

*****

Left work a little early this Friday evening, long week a-coming', took Rex for a walk from the field up through the new housing development to the hills behind where the oaks keep company. Hot again today. I squatted in the grass while Rex wandered, dug. Another indescribable day, and I wondered why, until I realized why--usually this lazy heat comes after a dry month or so or more, when the tall grass has faded to brown. (Golden, maybe, to some.) But here I was, sweating, knee deep in juicy grass, wild sweet peas, larkspur, overlooking intense green velvet fields, a valley full of homes, cars, dreams which ended in the hills the Sonoma County artists love to paint, layered in shades of gray and purple. And that was it. The world seemed to end at the ridgetop, and I was reminded of those sci-fi stories I read and loved in high school (though I am not a geek like Rebecca), particularly the one where a child runs the town, a child with special powers who has taken it off to its own place and rules cruelly. There is no way to escape, nothing but an edge, and to anger the child is to risk your life or something more horrible.

I stayed long enough to ramble in my mind about the valley and surrounding ridge, thinking of days when this would've been a kingdom, and a princess would have been mooning out of a parapet window, waiting for her knight from a distant land to whisk her away, from one emerald prison to another. Again, to a place where there is only an edge, and nothing beyond.

This read a little pessimistically, doesn't it? But it was an incredible moment on that hillside, and I wanted it to last. But the sun kept slipping down and down.

I felt a tickling and looked down to spy the largest tick ever unattached crawling on my arm. I blew him away and looked up to see a large bird flapping towards me. Vultures don't usually move their wings...could it be...closer, closer...it turned to the sunset, breast suddenly illuminated, luminous, not ten yards above me. The most beautiful hawk soared above me, silent even with her wings oaring the air. She slid into the a small patch of oak forest that reminds me of the LOTR. Just a few acres, but the darkness and absence of new growth frightens me.

Rex and I left the hillside, descending into cool shadow--not a relief, but a passage. The walk had a view of the construction on the field above our home, hillside like brain surgery, shorn of trees, numbed with development. I had to look away. We cut across to the road, crunching back to the car through the gravel of a place cleared for a home, knowing dirt would soon be replaced by high-quality laminate flooring, a family, a sky-high mortgage.

*****

Walking back along the newly tarred street, Rex panting by my side, I thought of Julia's recent post about whither the blog. Just to riff on that: In addition to what Julia writes, blogging makes me also think of things I want to remember more deeply, and things I want to share. I observe the world more closely thanks to my blog, forcing me, in a good way, to try to bring more to my world and words...