Occasional Scribblings

27th May 2012

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Lampposts

I went outside for a few minutes.

It’s 4 AM right now. There are no cars coming down the road, so I stood in the middle of the lane, peering up at the moon. The Cheshire Cat’s smiling down at us, you know, if only figuratively, calling us to mischief. There’s something about the sliver of a moon that sends shivers down your spine and makes you want to shed away the layers of personae and just run down the street laughing.

Instead the lamplight caught my eye.

Everything’s still. Nobody’s out on the streets. The only motion is the slight waving of the leaves in the wind. The streetlights look brilliant white against the black sky, and you can’t see any stars either. So you’re standing in a pool of shadow, peering up at something that looks impossibly bright and pure where almost everything else is a flat, leached shade of grey.

Almost everything. The leaves through which the light filters are a vivid, lively green. The green of rolling-around-in-the-wet-grass-because-you-can and mint lemonade on a hot day. The kind of green you’d like to breathe in to repair the rents and stitches, torn ligaments, and scarred thoughts.

Which is of course the only thing that you can do, should do, under the circunstances, sitting in a patch of uncut grass, feeling the cold breeze on your skin, because it doesn’t solve your problems, but it makes tackling them far easier because the bright vivid green is the color of hope in a grey world, and the vivid sliver of moonlight is hope as well, because you don’t have to leave behind the sense of wonder and mischief you try to keep buried behind cool professionalism.

When a car passes and the driver motions wildly at you, you walk back to the house, but you can’t quite help but smile.

27th May 2012

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Kayaking

Today was a beautiful day.

My friends and I went kayaking, and it started thunderstorming 15 minutes in. That by itself gave everything an air of adventure already when we took refuge under a bridge, but it was even better then the rain stopped.

Once the sun started to peek out from the clouds, there was a gauzy mist covering the surface of the water. Passing through it looked like walking through a dream, especially with the waterweed getting caught on our paddles.

I had a ‘Lord of the Rings’ moment then. The greenery’s really started to grow again, so the banks of the river were completely covered in verdant growth. The water was absolutely still, and when the rain stopped, it was quiet for a whole minute.

We drifted past some rock formations over the course of a few hours. Somebody had taken rough river stones and piled them one on the top of the other so they balanced precariously but still stood on their own. It was like being in a Miyazaki movie, surrounded by Kodama.

The quiet gives you time to think as you’re paddling along. Even though you’re surrounded by geese and ducks, and pausing to make some superficial remark to your friends, there’s still something incredible to be said for the power of being in the water when it comes to thinking.

Watching the ripples spreading out from the kayak, drifting along lazily, or else fighting yourself free of a bramble patch you wandered in to, the river’s still calming.

Even though the air’s cold, when you dip a hand in, it’s like bathwater. And when you see three or four blue herons  flying over you on the way back to the rental station, the day turns magical.

Not exactly the magic of childish wonder you feel at a well-performed magic trick, or the feeling you get when you remember a strong emotion, but just a soothing, calm sort of respect for the fact that there’s something that can completely clear your mind like that.

Next time, though, I think I’ll take advantage of the ease of the trip and either go alone or with a single friend.

Everyone needs a moment to remember who they are every once in a while.

18th May 2012

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Howl’s Moving Castle

Rewatched this movie tonight, and I picked up on a lot of things I missed out on the first time I saw it. 

“A heart is a heavy burden.”

Also, The Witch of the Waste’s greed, Madam Suliman’s willingness to sacrifice others for her own goals, Sophie’s balance of tenderness and strength, and Howl’s immature power. 

More on these later.