How to spend a glorious weekend like this one is such a challenge.
I have all sorts of nervousness exchanges to finish, poetry I want to write and format, and both my and scottm's CDs to finish. I have a number of routine chores, such as cleaning up my extra "art" room or my car, that also beckon. Yet, part of me wants to drive the couple of hours up into Oklahoma's Arbuckle Mountains.
I love the Arbuckles. They are mostly large hills, granite-filled things that are something like one imagines the hills in Middle Earth might be. I love that there is a broken cookie factory there, where you can buy bits and pieces. I love Turner Falls, a city park set in a small set of mountains, where a huge swimming pool has been carved underneath a gorgeous natural waterfall. I love that the Arbuckles are entirely magical, and yet entirely unknown. I have a melodramatic streak, I suppose. I want to be in places wholly beautiful, and yet find myself alone with self or spouse sometimes.
Appropos of something else, though, I am thinking this morning about the cool intricacy of every pastime or pursuit. Musical notation has this whole lexicon of phrases and instructions--con brio, andante, whole notes, half notes, coda, and measures.
Chess has a literature which is incredibly rich in phrase and notion--the Colle System, zwischenzug, the Fried Liver Variation of the Two Knights Defense, and stalemate. I love buying used books about indoor houseplants, and reading of myriads of out of favor and yet entirely charming plants grown in the UK thirty years ago.
The Stokes bird book has hundreds of species, many of whom cross our area, and yet my own knowledge stops at roughly 20 species or so. Fun is so incredibly complex, and that appeals to me somehow.
At the same time, though, I can hardly wait for gentle breezes to return. I have a hankering to have 1000 ft. of string and a cheap Delta kite. I know a place in Balch Springs, near where I lived during my first Dallas stay, where the weather conditions are such that a kite goes aloft and stays aloft without much need for human intervention. One needs no special codes, no special string, no special knowledge and no special kite handlers. The kite just flies. I want to be at a place in my life where the kite just flies. Flies way away. Flies way away, and the string is plentiful. The string is plentiful, and all I need do is watch in wonder--and smile.