The world outside has turned monochromatic, all shades of grey.
Juliet explores in the snow.
Inside, stacks of books are piled here and there. Dried flowers, pine cones and leftover slices of Christmas oranges are tucked into bowls. The tea brews. The afternoon edges closer to evening just as it starts to snow softly once again.
I am wrapped into an old quilt watching a squirrel leap from branch to branch. The crows fly against the grey December sky by the dozens, stretching for miles, black waves echoing in the distance. Closing my eyes, the outlines of the dried oak leaves melt into my mind and right into my soul.
I had an overwhelming desire to fold his shadow into my pocket and take it home
While on a walk with Juliet, I saw a stack of books through a window. A stack of books lined up, just so and a lamp with an orange glass shade. And I wondered what the books were and why these books were stacked in this way. I wondered if this was a bedroom, or a library room, or an office. Or maybe, these books belong to a student—a young student with a lifetime of dreams before them, with a lifetime of books before them, with a lifetime before them.
The real adventure, he thought, is the flow of time; it’s as much adventure as anyone could wish.
Excerpt from The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler, 1985
we pulled the leaves from the dill plants and the night fell with its fragrance
with their humble happiness, the pumpkins beckoned
there was a bit of melancholy about the place; the distressed beauty of willful neglect but also a prescience in the way the sun fell in random slices through the thick afternoon clouds
she laughed when I ran outside to shoot the morning frost on the leaves and so I scampered, crunching the grass, taking the shots quickly, leaving an exhaled breath behind me
feel the thin space between the living and the departed today—
listen for their names on the wings of the changing winds
Leaves stick to the bottom of our boots and gather in the kitchen where the shoes are haphazardly discarded. But the leaves, in all of their brittle and scampering leafiness, travel throughout the house on the edges of a passing breeze— resurfacing on a worn blanket or in the corner by a basket of pine cones.
oh yes, you will always remain a locked door
youth, sadness and shooting stars,
rainy mornings and happy afternoons,
sometimes a broken heart and sometimes a broken promise,
anger and a small child’s laughter,
a full moon and an autumn breeze,
a late summer sun on fresh flowers,
a day at the lake, a lark, a laugh, a life
spanishwoods 