Crickets, contrails

Isle sur La Sorgue, Provence, France.
Sept. 2012

In the back yard tonight, shady and cool, crickets kept up their diminishing chorus and above, planes, so far away, streamed silent across the blue, playing out slender threads of dissolving moisture behind.
I like fall. The light slants long and the leaves changing from green to gold and red bounce that ephemeral glow into the dusk.
Winter follows, with the sun's beams short and brief. That slanting light returns around February,  more blue than gold. You have to wait awhile for the crickets to come back, but I will settle for the sound of melting icicles on a bright March day.
I wish I wish that I could feel as renewed as the seasons every few months.

*

Tonight I watched "The Shawshank Redemption" for the umpteen millionth time. The scenes toward the end, when Red travels to the cornfield in Buxton and finds the long rock wall under the spreading oak, are some of the most beautiful ever put to film. The music, the cinematography, the light and the ambient symphony of locusts and birds, all capture so perfectly what it is to treasure a shimmering, drowsy, late summer day.

Cool toes

Lunch time walks these days, since the company has crossed the Allegheny and planted itself on the North Shore, mean lots of proximity to water. The path along the river is truly nice and very walkable. You could be strolling along the waterfront for hours, if you weren't paying attention.

You can boat, too. I haven't been kayaking yet but hope to before September ends. Venture Outdoors has a livery right below the Roberto Clemente bridg. Lots of boats for cheap.

What I have been enjoying is/are the water steps outside PNC Park. There are very specific warning signs (Slippery! Danger!) but they are universally disregarded in the summer months. Kids, teens, tweens, grownups, passersby with their dogs, everyone wades in and splashes about. But now that the days are waning, not too many people. Only water.


I wander over and slip off my shoes and cool my feet under the slanting September sun.

Writing, plus Sid

A long time ago, I wrote letters, long, silly, thoughtful to so many people. My grandmother Izzy, my parents, my sisters and girlfriends. Remembering that habit now makes me jealous of the uninhibited blabby person I was then. Oh, I could go on and on. Often about nothing, but usually about something important, that mattered to me. I loved looping words and ideas around in circles, tying them up in neat bundles with a "Love, Kate" at the end.

Somehow I didn't have to think much about how the words tumbled out onto paper. They just did. It was exhilarating. As exhilarating were the responses: stamped, inky envelopes with my name on them, front and center, waiting for me in my mailbox.

I guess, on some weird level, it makes sense that I went into journalism. Just not to write. To edit, to design. Did my share of reporting but never liked talking to strangers. So that level of sense is, um, yes, weird? (If I could have a do-over, I would have studied French.)

Friends drifted away over the years; the good ones are still with me, though, and there are new ones as well. The writing habit drifted away as well, too, replaced by texting and email. There are never any bursting envelopes with my name on them in my mailbox anymore.

Still, I like to write. Sometimes I blather on. Sometimes I make sense. Sometimes I just erase everything and start over.

When I do finally sit down to it, I still love to feel the words tumbling out, making sense or not, looping around into circle, tied into a bundle that somehow makes some kind of story.

When I first came to Pittsburgh, to be a reporter for the Associated Press, I worked in the Clark Building on Liberty Avenue, Downtown. It was kind of down at the heels but there was a nice little concession stand in the lobby where you could pick up coffee, plus the morning Post-Gazette, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, etc.

I can't remember what floor AP's office was on, but there was a theatrical agent next door. Sid Markowitz? Markovitz? I think? Anyway, I never saw anyone go in there. The door to the office had a frosted glass panel with his name and title on it. Once in a while, he came out: short, dark suit and a fedora, smoking a cigar. He reminded me of this guy. Who illustrated Ray Bradbury.

There were gold and diamond merchants in the building; still are, I think. But now it's mostly luxury apartments.

Wonder what ever happened to Sid?

Hello again (Not you, Russians)

What do do with a mind that gets lazy and distracted?
How about, what to do when a certain age arrives, as does the clear recognition that the mind has not changed, fundamentally, since birth.

Lessons have been learned yes. Maybe some patience. But it is a frustrating, distressing thing to become very well acquainted with your DNA over the course of a lifetime and to know that maybe it can be massaged, but never changed. Except with the strictest management.
How is even strict management possible, when it cannot wholly overcome a restless, wandering character?
Shouldn't a certain age bring a modicum of contentment and self-confidence? I suppose in my case it does, or has, but that restless wandering character still drives the buggy.
Hence a life that's been all over the map and yet still has managed to move in circles.
Giddy up.