Storm clouds advance on Oban Bay

Though the storm had started I took Ginger for a walk. It was raining harder than you can imagine, and the frogs were going nuts — like a scene from the bible announcing something auspicious, or maybe they just wanted to mate.

The rain brought all the leaves down like that, like the drawstring on a lamp clicked off. The leaves did faceplants on the pavement, the Japanese Maples, their stems like umbrella sticks turned up, five-fingered hands, some of them curling inwards, some you’d be inclined to save.

But Ginger is unbothered by the rain, sniffs and squats, it’s how dogs interact with the world, through their nose, and reminds me of us and our blogs, sniffing vague territories, squatting: what’s unique about each of us and readily identified, what’s inside.

There’s no one at the lake, no surprise. They hauled off the felled cedars and left the dust like a murder mystery scene, the outline fading in the rain, taped off. I think about work, how I can do it from home, my two laptops and three aliases, my BlueTooth enabled high-end speaker from Bristol and my mobile phone, a ‘4.’ How nothing’s ever as simple as you expect it to be with work.

It’s Paul Simon’s birthday today and he’s 75; I thank him as one of the people who inspired me to write, and remember the day I wrote his lyrics in my journal, age 16, this time of year – how the hillsides looked different for the first time, the wonder of something simple made marvelous, just because.

Dawn asked if I could test the generator and like everyone else, I’m going to the store now.

Categories: musings, writing

Tags: autumn poetry, blogging, blogosphere, creative nonfiction, frogs, Memoir, pacific northwest, Paul Simon, poetry, prose, Seattle, William Pearse writer