Japanse New-Girl Monkey Network
Bring on the Hurt
Oh, those crazy Canadians! In a surprisingly masochistic way, I'm tempted: the International Three-Day Novel Contest. Maybe I should wait for the ya-yas to try NaNoWriMo. I certainly need something to kick start my writing, though I've never considered myself an aspiring novelist.
{ link me }Summer Fruit
The nights here are getting bitterly cold. I didn't think much about whether or not a house had central heating when it was 28°C outside and langorous, but now it's all-consuming. I come home from work and huddle under a blanket in the living room, where my body stays comfortable but my nose is a tiny angular icicle. There's a space heater but it draws too much electricity for its size to be worth the trouble-- instead I have a red rubber hot water bottle.
Two weeks ago I got on a plane, travelled through time and landed in the middle of summer. The perfect summer. I don't know why Washington didn't have summers like that when I lived there. A plague of brilliant blue sky every day, except for the morning after the fourth, which quickly cleared by midday. The perfect breeze kept the heat from overwhelming. It was all perfectly perfect. My parents' garden spread itself under the feast of warm clear light, bloated with late flowers and foliage. I sat one afternoon on the newly built deck, drinking cold fruit juice, and that night I saw a line of brown and pink below the hem of my shorts.
The trip was primarily to use up a return ticket I had to the US, to visit and clear out some of the things I'd stored at my parents' house. But it was also a respite: from the newly re-entered work force, from the city, commuting, crowds. From the cold.
Usually my parents' cherry trees get picked clean by the birds before the cherries get ripe. They are Rainier cherries, a variety that I've only ever seen in Washington, a different flavour from the voluptuously red Bing, and a soft yellowy peach or pink. This year the smaller tree was covered in unviolated small pink globes. I spent one late morning with a ladder and a bucket, carefully reaching up and plucking, trying not to overbalance myself as I stretched from the second rung from the top. Every now and then a cherry would find its way into my mouth, maybe a hint of underripe tartness, the way I prefer fruit. I picked half a bucketful of cherries.
My parents didn't have all the visit they wanted. Since I don't have paid vacation, I couldn't stay long. But it did me good to see them even for a week, to celebrate Independence day and eat chili dogs with friends from college and shoot off fireworks from the Upper Skagit Reservation. (I always relish the irony of being able to buy the best Fourth of July fireworks from Native American reservations.) It did me good to just spend quiet days walking around, over the dam, through the motionless main street, being in the sunshine. Concrete is a stifling place to live, but a good place to visit for a girl still getting used to living in a big city.
My mom had made a batch of my favorite cookies. I took some for the trip back. I took some cherries, too. In the dried out, recycled air of the airplane, at an ungodly early hour of the morning, I took out a plastic bag full of those small pink and peach globes. I ate little juicy pieces of summer, flying over the Pacific, in winter.
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