Thursday, September 20, 2012

Buzzards and Monkeys, Oh My!

August 30th

I lay on my back at the end of my yoga this morning and stared at the sky. It was a dreamy morning blue, with the faintest suggestion of wispy clouds if you imagined hard enough, clear and bright but still easy on the eyes. I watched the buzzards soaring and wandering aimlessly on the thermals, first a few, then a dozen, then breaking off in groups and pairs, circling over and over yet moving slightly each time to the right or the left, appearing at the edge of my vision and gliding across until I couldn't see them anymore, then turning and crossing again, hardly a waver or a flap of a wing, breathtaking in their size and ragged grace. They're beautiful in their own way up there, much different from the startling WHUMP scrabble scrabble when they land on my thin tin roof – no matter how often they do it, I still startle every time.

I was cleaning out the junk side of my second shelf, the one that has come to accumulate letters, papers, games, cards, nail polish, a sewing kit, and who knows what else – I even found a Koosh ball! Remember those? When did that show up in my house? I also cleaned out my luggage canteen (a big metal storage trunk). Somehow it's the only one that has escaped taking on a funny smell, I'm trying to clean and air out all the rest. At one point I went outside to throw some trash down my latrine, and right as I was getting to the door I heard a little tapping on my roof, the way it sometimes creaks in the heat. But as I went outside I realized it was raining. Not hard, but a steady drizzle, the sun shining away bright as anything. It made me laugh, I had been completely caught off guard! A monkey's wedding, as my mom would say. It kept raining for a few minutes, then the sun came back out, a nice little pause to the day.

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