The cricket is chirping slowly tonight, on the last night of summer. It is chilly outside, and I decided to inaugurate the sweater I bought during the clearance sale at Kmart a couple of months ago. There are two sweaters, actually, and I wore the pullover tonight. I don't like either of them as well as I liked the sweaters that burned up in my house, but those I collected over more than a decade, so I can't expect a single year's sweaters to be that good. Maybe I'll get a better one at next year's clearance. Or maybe I'll just get extravagant and buy something I want at full price for a change. We'll see what they get in stock this winter.
We're about to get four hot days in a row, and the chances of rain on the subsequent cooler days are being reduced with each forecast. I'll be disappointed if we don't get any rain, though I suppose it's more convenient if there are no days when I can't get out of the apartment without getting soaked. And I just realized that I no longer have a rain slicker. The one I had for ages was handy, though I rarely needed it, but I haven't seen one like it in any of the stores here. It was transparent, though dark, plastic, and had a hoodie, and came with a small bag to carry it in. I just looked on the Internet and almost all of those available there are yellow, and quite a few in other vivid colors. Probably a safety feature, so you'll be visible to motorists. Whether that makes you less likely to get hit or more likely to get hit I couldn't say. I guess it depends on how malevolent, or how stones, your local motorists are.
My brain is feeling fuzzy. I should probably eat something that's not a snack. I keep forgetting to do that. Snacks keep getting in the way, like the wasabi and soy sauce flavored almonds I'm munching on right now. Why do snacks keep insisting on being eaten? Don't they know they are not good for me?
Tasty, though.
Sunday Verse
Sailor's Tale
by Tomas Tranströmer
There are stark winter days when the sea has links
to the mountain areas, hunched over in feathery grayness,
blue for a moment, then the waves for hours are like pale
lynxes, trying to get a grip on the gravelly shore.
On a day like that the wrecks leave the sea and go looking for
their owners, surrounded by noise in the city, and drowned
crews blow toward land, more delicate than pipe-smoke.
(In the Far North, the real lynx walks, with sharpened claws
and dream eyes. In the Far North where the day
lives in a pit night and day.
There the sole survivor sits by the furnace
of the Northern Lights, and listens to the music
coming from the men frozen to death.)