Sunday is sort of a not-real day to me anymore, at least when I don't go to Safeway, which is what I usually got to do in Paradise, but not here. Here there isn't much of anything going on, though when I went to Grocery Outlet I noticed that there were a lot of cars in the parking lot on this side of the Plaza, which is usually empty on Sunday. The crowd of cars must have been from the Joker movie that opened in the multiplex a few days ago. From what I've heard it's a very grim and humorless movie, and I hope its success doesn't presage a whole slew of such, though it probably will. The current world seems grim enough to me, without a bunch of Joker fans filling it.
We are supposed to get two hot days now, then drop back into the seventies for most of the next couple of weeks. I'm a bit worried about Wednesday and Thursday, which are expected to be quite windy. Even after last year's widespread devastation there is still plenty of stuff to burn out there, and fires and wind are not a good combination. I'd feel better if there were some rain in the forecast, but there's none in sight.
Once again the best part of the day was sitting in the back yard listening to the mockingbird. It was busy singing most of the afternoon, every time I went out. It's nice to have the bird back, and nice to have the yard back, too, since it was intolerable for more than a few minutes at a time during the hot weeks. Whatever comes up next, at least it's unlikely I'll have to go through such miserable heat again until next year. Thanks, October.
Sunday Verse
The Green Plant
by Wallace Stevens
Silence is a shape that has passed.
Otu-bre's lion-roses have turned to paper
And the shadows of the trees
Are like wrecked umbrellas.
The effete vocabulary of summer
No longer says anything.
The brown at the bottom of red
The orange far down in yellow,
Are falsifications from a sun
In a mirror, without heat,
In a constant secondariness,
A turning down toward finality--
Except that a green plant glares, as you look
At the legend of the maroon and olive forest,
Glares, outside of the legend, with the barbarous green
Or the harsh reality of which it is part.
