These last days of summer always make me feel a bit bittersweet. But it's been a good one. Travis turned 12 a couple of weeks ago and still likes to hang with me and Bry.
We spent the last few days in the desert--swimming, mostly. Temperature was 120 degrees at 3 p.m., down to 95 at night. Last night at eight-something, after dinner at the Blue Coyote and a stop at Vons where a checkout woman recognized Brian--went to high school with him, actually. She said, "Brian?"--we went to the pool. Night surrounded the aqua pool with pockets of underwater light and a quarter moon burned yellow, sinking into the San Jacinto Mountains. Standing in the water, swimming around, Brian and Travis threw a ball back and forth. I lay back on a chaise longue and watched them, and watched the sky, pocked with stars.
They got out for a moment.
"There's the tail of Scorpio," said Brian. We three looked up.
I like novels and stories that take place in the desert. My friend Allison has written one and we're hoping an agent bites.
Cicadas during the day, crickets at night.
Has anyone ever seen a cicada?
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4 comments:
My father helped me catch one once for a science project. They are green and bulbous and ugly with large clear wings like a dragonfly, and when they molt, they leave papery thin brown skins clinging to tree trunks and walls, looking exactly like they do in life, only monochrome and transparent. And the little legs make the skins stick when you put them on your sister's shirt.
Oh I've gor a picture like that from summer 2004! I'm going to post it on my blog one of these days.
By the way, you have been tagged! It is about favorite books, so please, share your views with three mums who want to write! Esther can get quite poetic some times, and Nic is thinking of writing about about the mothering life, and then there is yours trully!
I've also put up a new blog, called "Kazantzaki street" where I intend to write about the writing life. You are most welcome to drop by.
Lacy, I love your description.
Jess, I wish you'd write about Sicily--on your blog or wherever.... I miss your writing....
Irene, tell me more about being tagged.....
Cicadas are the sound of my summer holiday film. Total silence at midday, the perfume of the earth, the drying shrubs and the fig trees heavy with green and purple bubbles, and the sound of hundreds of cicadas beating their wings.
We cought one this year to show the kids. He was big, quite old. We let him go of course. But catching cicadas has been a right of passage for many generationd of boys. Not anymore in the urbanised way of living and thinking. Sometimes "ecology" can be translated in such a sterile way. If you don't touch it, how are you gonna love it?
Anyway...Do you know how cicadas hatch? (clue: Paul P could write about them as he wrote about The Dhole!)
Well, I'm gonna tell you
: they actually live for seven years IN the earth, then they come out. They actually spring from the earth, like crops. A holy animal. So the cicadas that came out to the light this year, were actually born seven years ago. Parallel time!..
About your being tagged: There is a company of mostly like minded blog-writing, eco-loving, vegetarian, home-schooling mummas, Britons, Brit expats, a Greek living in Ireland, and myself, who send each other from time to time little games, to keep us playing. A couple of months ago, the question was "What's in your purse right now". Hilarious!
This time it's "What book made you laugh/cry/wouldtake on a desert island/wish was never written" etc. Occasionally new people are entering the ring, so I thought of you, because the subject is such that you may feel inclined to contribute, and of course you are a mum!
I know you are
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