Asakiyume mita

(With this job I'm likely to be mainly a Friday-Saturday-Sunday poster, but I'll try to be reading and commenting on people's blogs on other days.)

The crow and the dove
This morning was *warm* and although the hills are still waiting to spring alive again, there are hints of life all around--pussy willows, birdsong. On a morning run saw a magnificent crow up so close, close enough to admire his bill and exchange glances and hear the wind whistling in his wings as he flew off.

Later I heard a distant radio--but it wasn't so distant: it was on the other side of the road, and there was a woman sitting there on her stoop in her bathrobe, enjoying the sun slowly climbing above the trees on the hill across the road. I waved and she smiled and waved. Something like that is as good as sharing a whole meal with someone.

Then a little further on in the run a mourning dove flew up into a tree and the sun shone through its white tail feathers, glowing ... After the flood the dove and the crow became neighbors and told their kids stories about Noah's crazy habits.

music
And music. I have been listening to lots of cumbia and now want to learn to dance it, couples-style. Past me is looking at present me in frank amazement. There there, past self. It's all good. But what I'm sharing here are two songs that are not only nice to listen too but also have cool videos. The first I discovered through Afropop Worldwide: "Tenemos Voz"--very cool animation and a great song.

And "Zapata se Queda" is spectacular in a different way.

Gender of the Day
There's Twitter bot called @genderofthdday that comes up with different amusing combos each day. "The gender of the day is the smell of stale beer and the sound of a dial-up modem"; "The gender of the day is a dragon with a lute." (Actually, I'm realizing as I trawl the back pages that it gives several per day.)

A couple of days ago it gave "The gender of the day is a tired basilisk on a pegasus," and I thought that one needed an illustration, so:

I left the jail at exactly the moment of sunset when all the crows--ALL OF THEM--were flying from every point lower than the hill on which the jail sits to the trees above the parking lot and below the highway. They swirled in the air, so many of them, and then settled to roost. I wish I could have captured the waves of them, coming up from the river, and then how they filled the sky right above the parking lot. "A little creepy," said one woman, walking from her car toward the lobby. But no, it was thrilling, magnificent ... also made me thing about the word "jailbird."

On August 10, Em and her friend Small Bill found a cup in the shallow waters.

He picked the cup out of the net and turned it over in his hands. Every dent and bang was greeny black, and there was a tiny crab inside.

It sure looked old, but once a thing’s been asleep in salty water for a while, it gets hard to tell its true age.

“Look,” Small Bill said, showing me the bottom of the cup. There was a bird stamped in it, a bird with hunched shoulders, perching on a key—a crow.

Come away, human child, for the world is more full of leaves than you can ever know.



Come away to where the blackberries grow



Step in, step in deeper, into shadow. There are more fruits there, hidden, sweet, and black.



( Who and what were in this world? )