Gratitude

Today wasn't so great, but it was. Not able to do anything of worth (a.k.a. writing) and not having to do anything of work (a.k.a. piano), I spent my time "wasting" it. There was a Mountain Dew involved. A healthy dose of chick flicks. And a good book (it was The Good Earth ) in the twilight. As the last of the day faded off, I played my piano looking out on the distant sleepy sea bordered by twinkles from the nearby seaside town and covered with a night-cloud blanket. Talk about inspiration. I'm still in a minor (I hope) rut of uncreativity and crabbiness, but looking out on the beautiful wet world while smelling sweet marsala chicken cooking on the stove made life just a little better. There are so many things I take for granted. Days without sickness, for instance. And music and books and peace and love. The twilight of every day. The option of coffee or tea. Winding roads. The ocean. Family. A good church. Imagination. A blog where I can ramble unhindered. I have more than I deserve or ever will.

We were even blessed with a bit of rain this weekend...

The Color of a Raincloud

If only the world were always the color of a raincloud, and the wet light slept on the cold ground instead of glaring in our eyes...

Melancholic as it might be, I find myself rejoicing in rainy mornings. The harshness of the tropic sun is dampened with the moisture. The green and gold world out my window is not quite so gaudy, and I feel more at home.

Yesterday had such a morning. It wasn't torrential or completely gloomy, but I'll take what I can get. In between showers, the sun shone bright on the spectacular sea.

A thousand miles beyond this sun-steeped wall

Somewhere the waves creep cool along the sand...

~Sara Teasdale

Evolution of a Sunset

Fall Feelings

It's that time of year again... the leaves are changing to tints of gold and vermillion, cider is pressed and poured, the wind is chilly and changing, and sweaters new and old are seeing the auburn light of autumn... Or so I'm told.

I've been looking at my Yankee Magazine, the September/October edition. I do believe I may be the only one in Hawaii who subscribes to Yankee. Pages upon pages of brilliant foliage and colorage. There's even an article on hard cider which is making my mouth water. Yes, I miss the Pennsylvania falls of my childhood: trips to the apple orchard, collecting the fallen maple leaves, carving pumpkins. Those were good times.

Now I'm in Hawaii, and I know I am supposed to be here right now. But something inside of me tells me it won't be forever, that I don't belong here and my roots are stuck in the ground of Somewhere Else. Maybe someday I'll be back home. Until then, I'll be harvesting the guava and making guava juice (is there such a thing as hard guava cider?).  

Fighting the Beast

Yesterday morning we did battle with a dragon. He was purply black, with hundreds of sprawly legs. Hiding camouflaged inside a basket, he crawled out at me (all of his hundred legs squirming like fire) when I was cleaning out his temporary shelter. Screaming I dropped the basket, as the knight in the other room came out in too much of a hurry to put on his armor. With a magic potion made especially for the demons of the earth, the knight slayed the beast and brought him to his hundreds of knees.

PS ~ I've seen dragons twice as long as this one!

Relaxing...

What would you do if you had a broken down recliner ...

I'm Back!

Hello again, lovely blog followers! Though there are few of you, you make my ramblings seem almost worthwhile. So I'll be around a bit longer if that's okay with you.

Summer has been quite an adventure, but it has come to a definite close despite the everlasting sunshine out my window. For I think of summer as more than just weather: it is freedom and watermelons and camping and cute shoes (the two latter, I'm afraid, don't work together very well). My summer also included twice-lost luggage, red ant bites, and food poisoning, but all of it is over and the chains are tightened once again. (Please read this last as an exaggeration. I live on a tropical island with an ocean out my window; the chains are merely metaphorical.) What I mean to say is, I must readjust my life, open up my calendar, and get back to work. But part of that work is rambling on a blog, so it can't all be bad.

My first morning back, I woke up (in a fit of airplane lag) unnecessarily early. The good part was I got to see an amazing sunrise:

So with a new dawn comes a new day.