SNOW IN SUMMER

There's something about the light that I cannot forget. Long twilights, when rain threatens. No, you cannot experience that here, you have to be in Northern Europe; nightfall lingers longer there.
Sitting under the corrugated with a cup of tea and a pipe while admiring swirls of apple blossoms from the tree that dominates the far end of the courtyard.
The cats chasing petals.
Bright gloom.


The closest one can come is savouring the end of day in San Francisco. From the front steps of the building the upslopes are showing fog; trees at one end disappearing in grey, the apartment building at the other end of the street barely visible. The fog is layered above this low area, and it is quiet here. Our universe is isolated, its edges limned with plumbum.


An early duck dinner, then a long stroll through C'town. When I came home the apartment was silent. I looked over my row of tobacco jars and the open tins, and in the end decided not to have another smoke.
Without cats or another human about, being silent is not as intense.
No, the San Francisco sidewalk weirdoes don't count.
Their presence does not comfort.


I used to feel in danger of being left out. It was a sense of personal disconnectedness, and not being able to communicate the same way everyone else did, and did so obviously well.
In these past few years I have realized that in-depth communication is better non-verbal. Why take great efforts to say something which need not be so clearly said? Meaning can go missing in overmuch detail.
There is greater lonesomeness in a crowd than when one is alone.

The temptation to seek conversation has diminished.

I'll just have to imagine the cats.
And an apple tree.

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