The River

Sara and I (and Brian, but he doesn't come into this story) have lived by the river for nearly two months now, but until this evening we hadn't gone. So today after everyone was awake and fed and had sat around watching the cat and wasting time on the internet for a while, Sara and I changed into swimsuits and headed off down the hill. It's a very short walk--maybe half a mile--and well worth it, because the parking down there is horrendous. We walked past lines and rows of waiting and parked cars, right down to the water's edge, and then upstream along the bank until the people thinned, and we found a spot to leave our towels. The water was deliciously warm, and the rapids relatively soft, and we waded and stumbled and half-swam, laughing, halfway across through the current until suddenly deciding to make camp on a half-submerged boulder. We sat in the sun, half-in the water, and talked and people-watched and drank in this gloriously beautiful setting-sun landscape in our backyard, and after an hour or so we collected ourselves and walked back up the hill toward home.

I hung my wet skirt and sarong on the back deck to dry, and was bombarded by a wave of childhood memories and nostalgia for all the countless days I walked to the pool and walked back, or walked to the creek and walked back, and hung my wet things to dry.

I smell like the river. It is the most perfect smell there is.

The air is just so delicious tonight.

When I drive home from painting under the welcome threat of rain, I watch the cloud layers slide past one another over the bridge. Blue sky slips beneath whispery grey, which is superseded by fluffy white and then dark, smoky shadows. Rinsing the paint from my hands at the garden hose, I reflect that this may be the season's last smell of warm water and living wet dirt, so I breathe it in deeply. But though the night brings the seasonally appropriate whiff of dry autumn leaves, the next day it's eighty degrees again. Things are what they are.

Just pretend this is in a normal font and size. I reserve the right to write elsewhere and copy/paste from undisclosed locations.

Camp is over, three friends came and stayed and are now gone. My resume has been (probably poorly) updated, and I'm looking for jobs in a meandering sort of way, doing little odd jobs for people that need them, chewing on the idea of grad school.

Still doing this weird "online dating" thing, which in large part I find distasteful and dorky, but which I continue to use as a way to get myself the hell out of the house. Thus far nothing goes anywhere, but there have been some interesting emails, some decent movies, and whatever. I am pretty excellent at going on lots of first dates and never really talking to any of these guys again. Usually this is more a function of my apathy/laziness than of any strong negativity. And I mean, I guess that's alright. Still hoping to run across somebody awesome, on there or in real life. Preferably in real life, obviously.


I have a truly terrible case of poison ivy, contracted while I was running siphons out into the backyard during the hurricane in a (thankfully successful) attempt to keep the basement from flooding. Nothing I was doing was helping at all, so yesterday I broke down and went in for a cortisone shot. I think it has helped, but the stuff definitely isn't gone. Time to call in the prescription for prednizone, I guess. I'm tired of being unable to sleep through the night, and waking up scratching the skin off my forearms, fingers, ankle, face, etc. It shouldn't be able to spread once the oil has been washed off, but I swear it's still spreading, six days later. Good times.


I've been working with my neighbor Hartley, helping with storm cleanup while he fixes the roof of a house that was smashed in during the storm. So many long-established trees were blown down, and now are being cut up and loaded into trailers and hauled off for mulch. It's a sad thing. But the wood smells like fall to me, and I've been catching whiffs of fall more and more frequently in recent days. The temperature is dropping just slightly, and the leaves are beginning to fall and accumulate along the side of the road. It's time.

Greatest of the season

Smells:

honeysuckle, rain, damp dirt

and peony and gardenia

fresh cut wood and fresh cut grass

campfire (and burnt marshmallow)

pine forest

tomato plant, and warm, vine-ripened tomato fruit

watermelon and honeydew and a charcoal grill

a house with all windows open

washing brought in from the line

thunderstorm, rain and clean river water.

Sounds:

frogs of all sizes

crickets and cicadas

owls calling from tree to tree, and the almost-imperceptible rustle

and silence of their wide, graceful, dangerous glides.

Rain and river water,

ceiling and box fans

and happy birds in the trees,

distant rolling thunder and working bees

and live outdoor music from down the block,

and children laughing outside.

Why I love my nose; why I love the world.

Something in the air outside smells like Turkey in 2008. Maybe, to be a little more specific, it smells like Adana. I can't really be sure of that, though. My nose just grabs it, and rejoices, and cries "Turkey!" to the heavens. It smells like Mary Helen's apartment, where I stayed for my first week there, or maybe like a late-morning walk up to Kadifekale in Izmir, to wander the ruined walls and watch all the city but the birds and the wind become still at the afternoon call to prayer. It could be the biting night wind on the way to the covered market in Istanbul. I don't know. But it's Turkey.