Asakiyume mita

We went to a lookout above the Quabbin Reservoir to face east for the first day of the new year. The first light, many minutes before sunrise, lit up a crack in the baleful sky.



As it grew lighter, the waning gibbous moon glowed brighter.



Wakanomori turned his back on the colors to admire the moon.



The sun was as discreet as a Heian lady, just the hems of her brightness peeking from beneath the clouds' screens.



There was evidence fairies had been at the lookout earlier, enjoying takeout.



I posted that picture on Instagram, and amaebi said she had her doubts about whether the L&Ms were part of the takeout. wakanomori agreed: he thinks fairies probably roll their own. amaebi suggested sweet clover and Corsican mint, which I told her was a combination I could be induced to try.

Come find me
smoking sweet clover and mint
at the lookout point

There's a weathervane perched on the tip of the steeple of the Congregational Church in town--I thought at first it was a skeletal fish, but maybe it's just a decorative arrow.... but maybe it is a fish, swimming in the sky ocean.

The birds are not sea birds. Maybe they perch on the fish-arrow the way savannah birds perch on elephants. Maybe they just like the view. So high. Now that I know they cluster there, I look for them every time I pass the church.



And here's a photo of a reflection of the setting sun. It's actually a reflection of a reflection. If you look at this blog post through a mirror, you'll have added some extra layers.



I had some actual words-y content-y sorts of things to share, but pictures are good too. The other stuff comes and goes, and there's always something new. Oh, hey, but one other thing: at the laundromat the other day, I saw a woman, helped by her little son, empty the dollar changer of dollars and put in a whole tubful of quarters--presumably ones taken out of the washers and driers. What a happy closed system. There was a dollar jammed up, which they couldn't get out, and the mom said, "leave it for the spirits of the change machine." A cool thing for her to say. The boy was bumming about it, a little, but a torn dollar bill is no good, in any case.

Phone photos

The sky was like this, this morning:





I had to drive the healing angel to school and as we were driving, the sun was rising. First just the bright curve of its back, glowing intensely, not quite blindingly pink-gold. Then more of it, almost all of it, and something about the cold day, maybe, but I thought I could see the swimming surface of it, the ebb and flow of the flaming waves on the surface of it, those incredible convectional currents. It was so BIG and so BRIGHT and appearing in our sky, and I felt my chest swell, like

That's my star, you guys! That one right there, coming up into the sky, blooming like a molten rose in a foundry, that's my star!

It's a bragging right I share with everyone on Planet Earth and, indeed, the solar system, though by the time you get to the Oort cloud I guess the proto-comets are like, yeah, whatever; it's just another bright dot to me. (They think that until they pull in close, but then, with their hair streaming back in the solar wind, they change their minds, I bet.)

Seriously, though. It was the feeling you have when your parent/sibling/child/partner does something awesome, and you feel all bright inside because you're connected to that person.

Yesterday at dusk, two wood thrushes were competing to see who could claim to have the best voice in the darkening trees:



After listening, I closed my eyes a while, then opened them, and the sun was rising.



That's life in the land of hours and days!