Change of Season

Always there's a September dawn that isn't a summer dawn, and its clouds are like this: purplish, like bruises, but with holes for powdery light. Not chilly cirrus clouds, they're still cumulus--but different. They don't drift or sail. They part and ponder, commanding attention and my silence. We are facing something. I keep the windows shut at night now. The air dries out and the linoleum on the floor turns cold. Often when this day comes I feel sad: The summer left without me. But it's better to say it this way: I left and moved on, without summer. Took this photo down the road at the horse farm.

On Having Things Nice

Live alone and you've got to have some items or rituals that quietly and secretly give you reliable pleasure. I like tea first thing in the morning, and I like coffee cups/teacups of thick old restaurant china to be the first things I handle and see. They are comforting and fortifying. (To me, "mugs" even sound barbaric.) While living in Syracuse, NY, I visited the factory store of Syracuse China Company and bought for .50 each eight random restaurant coffee cups from a "seconds" bin, and 20 years later, while the factory is no more, I still cherish the surviving five and the three replacements from eBay, such as the one above, known to be a pattern from 1967. It's in a random saucer because while a restaurant coffee cup is comfort, a cup with a saucer is life.

It's not about "having nice things." Things don't have to be fragile or expensive to be nice. Don't deny yourself just because you aren't wealthy or because no one sees or cares but you. If you've always wanted a jackknife with a fishing scene carved on its handle, or a thermos with the Scotch-plaid pattern on it, a rosemary bush, a gingham tablecloth, if it will gladden you every time you see it, get it. Love it. Any love is good love.