Blackout

I got home last night and the suburb was dark.
No street lights, no shops lit up, no house lights, spotties on driveways or music or blurred blue from TVs. No moon either. Dark.

It was beautiful. It was quiet. And I was very glad I had a lot of candles in the house. Apart from not being able to listen to the radio it was pretty nice. I ate an icecream out of the freezer - I had to you understand, to test if the food was spoiling - and discovered that 5 candles lit up the room beautifully and two close-by were fine for reading to.

After about a half an hour there were some sirens and shouting and general rowdiness. I wondered if this might happen more often and should I get some gas lanterns. I made a cup of tea because gas ovens rule the world and soon enough the radio and fridge came back to life.

With all the discussion about carbon trading and emissions it can still be all too easy to think about it all in the abstract, until you're in a blackout. Tonight would be more thematically fitting for a blackout, so we'll see what happens.
Happy Halloween!

ps. Tomorrow is the begining of November - you know what that means!! http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Tunnel Vision

Riley and I were walking down the street this morning and it seemed like we'd been walking down the one street for a long time. Over and over again. There was the slightest sensation for a moment of being in a tunnel that has it's other end now joined to the entrance. Looping now and passing signs for turnoffs you'll never get to.

But actually I know that this morning is different to yesterday morning in a myriad of tiny ways and even though when we walk out the door we can only turn left or turn right - and that often feels very limited - well that's the same at every corner we come to on our walks and we end up seeing different things. This tree is blooming, that bird is odd, how weird are the clouds, the path has been brushed. LIttle things, but different enough.

It's at times like this when there is so little to take in, that I realise all over again how much I do take in. How much of this morning's walk I can remember (not reconstruct) and how much I am constantly learning about my neighbourhood just by walking around it. Then, being me, I turn this observation into a worry "I'm not stimulating my brain enough and I'll get wobbly and dim. Look how much it's noticing - my brain could be filling up on pointless information about yards and bins and cars!!"

What a drongo.

So I'm going to read more SciFi and fill my brain up with imaginary things instead!
A much better idea than watching the news I think!

Outside in the Morning

The air this morning was deliciously sweet. I wanted to drink swimming pools of it. The sky seemed as deep as the ocean and blue like a bird's heart all the way through.
All the crows flew to one big tree and spent 5 minutes loudly cawing over each other - scrabbling to prove their points before dispersing in gossiping gangs.

Flopping around on the couch like a pale moonworm

I had this fleeting idea for a good post the other day, and I didn't write it down, so guess what? Yeah, I totally forgot it.
So I've been sick. Let's not talk about it. It's very boring to to talk about being ill, particularly when it's not a new or exotic thing - just the same round of stuff.

I've read a few books lately - the two Vampire Academy books (Vampire Academy and Frostbite) and two "Mortal Instruments" (City of Bones & City of Ashes by Clare) these are good fun. Particularly if you like stories about vampires. If you don't like stories about vampires, well you won't really like these, and you've got other issues anyway. I'm currently reading the new Monthly and a dodgy e-book called "Palace of Paradise" or something. It sounds like it might be a saucy romance, but actually it's really an edited listserv doc for a type of therapy called Emotional Freedom Therapy. As you can tell by the name, there's not a lot of science to this therapy! It's only 140 pages but it's taking me ages to read it. I got recommended it, so I'm staying the distance... In more exciting reading news I've have started the new Neal Stephenson (Anathem) and have only got about 50 pages in and decided to draw it out, so have put it down until the weekend. ooooohhh - delicious fiction! It's way clever, and I expect it will get quite complicated. I've just ordered 'Babylon Babies' by Maurice Dantec (a French author, so it's in translation) as Sister and I went to the movies last weekend to see the movie that's been loosely based on it - Babylon AD and we enjoyed it. I'm not necessarily recommending it mind you, just saying that as huge Riddick fans, we were fanging for some butch-camp sci-fi, and this was just the ticket! I was very upset this week to realise that the new Riddick "film" I thought I saw listing on IMDB was actually just a video game. D'oH!!

While I was ill, all of my seedlings died. The backyard is so overgrown that I will only walk on the concrete paths because I am afraid of snakes. This is hurting the fig and lemon trees, as they're not currently getting the laundry water on the weekends. It feels terribly wasteful to let all of that water just go down the drain, but even if I could walk to the trees, I wasn't in a fit state to carry the buckets. That's ok, we'll start again next weekend. Maybe.