The Ink-Pot and the Palette

Yesterday it was so nasty out that I abandoned my bike ride and took the train instead--it just wasn't worth arriving at my appointment chilled, soaked, and windblown.

Today it was spring.

( Suddenly spring )

It's spring. The neighborhood is full of daphne-scented breezes. Tulip spears are poking up everywhere. I picked up my cashmere pullover at the drycleaner yesterday and didn't even bother to un-paper it--it's going into storage for the next eight months. I slept with the bedroom window wide open last night.

( I hate spring. )

I just had a lovely dinner of sautéed chanterelle mushrooms, a bratwurst, and a honeycrisp apple. Fall is here. \o/

My Sunday morning rounds to the grocery stores and my Sunday afternoon cooking-for-the-week extravaganza have netted me a large pot of bœuf bourguignon, a dish of kedgeree made to kis' recipe, a crock of carrot salad, a big jar of thinly sliced cucumber in rice vinegar, two quarts of plain whole milk yogurt (being strained and Greekified into a single quart), dried blueberries, the above-mentioned sausages and apples, and now a lovely pot of tea.

Happy sigh.

I did not bring home any chocolate, any nuts, any butter, or any rice cakes. I just can't seem to have that stuff in the house right now without eating all of it. Cheese is a little iffy, too. And bacon. Bacon's right out.

My weight loss has flatlined for two months, and this time it's no mystery: I've been eating too much to keep losing. I'd like to get it back on the downward slope. So in a moment of renewed discipline at Trader Joe's, I walked past the Aisles of Temptation, squared off against my fear of bored starvation or starved boredom, and came home with the makings of dessert-less meals for the whole week.

We'll see. I feel back-to-schoolish and structured this time of year, and it's a good moment for me to set things to rights.

Cross posted from shutterspeed, where prompts and challenges are posted every couple of weeks and you go out and take pictures to fit the prompts. It's a fun and friendly small community, and I would love to see more people joining, so if you like to take pictures, come on by!

The current prompt, just ending, is "Signs."

( Signs of spring )

O lumière! C'est le cri de tous les personnages placés, dans le drame antique, devant leur destin. Ce recours dernier était aussi le nôtre et je le savais maintenant. Au milieu de l'hiver, j'apprenais enfin qu'il y avait en moi un été invincible.*
--Albert Camus, Noces à Tipasa

(*O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.)

Or maybe a fairly hard to beat one. Or, you know, one that might, just maybe, survive another week of this endless PNW cloud cover and rain.

Sheesh. And to think I was worried about bike-commuting in the heat.

Every time something goes wrong with my bike, and every time I drive my car, or even walk in a busy area--especially downtown--I start to think how hard and scary it is to get on that bike and proceed into traffic. I wonder how I do it, and think I might not have the nerve next time.

I was thinking that as I was walking Clyde the eight or ten blocks to my new best friend, Bike Gallery's downtown store, an hour ago.

They fixed the flat for me in a few minutes (during which I resisted the strong urge to buy a new helmet, a front basket and a floor pump with stern self-talk about waiting for my tax refund), and when I emerged onto SW 10th Avenue, I was still a little hesitant. I thought, maybe I'll just walk him back on down to work.

Yeah, right.

It's 57 degrees out there today (14C), all buds and shoots and blue sky, and ten BAZILLION people were out grinning and squinting at the sun. I hopped on Clyde and oh my God, it was glorious. For a ten block ride I didn't even bother with my helmet. Hair, meet breeze. Retinas, meet Vitamin D. Mouth, meet idiotic grin.

I haven't ridden on a spring day before. There is NOTHING that's gonna keep me from doing it every day from now on.

I love this day! It's 4:45 p.m. and I'm looking out the window of the World's Tallest Basement and it's still light out there! A little bit! There's hope for spring again.

Somehow that always feels amazing, every single year.

It's been sunny all day. I rode my bike to my dentist this morning (he has a bike-rack!), and thence to work. This journey took me on routes I'd not ridden before, through cool old neighborhoods and past one of the city's most spectacular parks (Laurelhurst, for those keeping score).

I saw some great examples of mid-century modern house architecture that I'd forgotten Portland has--long, low, windowy places made of skinny bricks and perched on hillsides (I like that style)--and experienced the pinnacle of Portland bike-riding, through the funky and nearly carless streets of Southeast.

On my way to work after dentistry, I stopped at a café that had, in addition to coffee, WiFi, and enormous windows, a bike corral where two on-street car parking spaces used to be. There were at least ten bikes in it, and the joint was jumpin'. It was so nice out that people were sitting at the sidewalk tables. I felt very Euro.

All of this went a long way toward making the my dentist's verdict more tolerable. Next week, I'll find out what it's like to ride my bike to a root canal.

Whether gray is my favorite color because I live in the Pacific Northwest, or I live in the Pacific Northwest because gray is my favorite color is up for grabs. Suffice it to say that gray began this week, and I feel good.

It's not really raining. Just overcast, with some pale sunshine in between little showers. It's not cold yet, just cool. The world seems filled with crows. There's a wild, sort of north-south-east-west wind blowing around. When you open the doors and windows, it cleans the whole house. When you go out in it, it gets in your hair, and your ears, and your mouth, and cleans you, too.

I think I like the fall weather here for the same reason I like black and white photographs: in a world stripped of color, you can see structures more clearly. Against the backdrop of all the shades of gray that this place is capable of, what is vivid becomes more important--someone smiling at you, the bright vine maple leaves on the sidewalk outside Jeff's house, the raucous sound of crows, the smell of coffee, the heavy feel of a big green apple in your hand.

Some gray things I like:
Sidewalk, silverware, weathered cedar shingles, driftwood, whales, my hair, my bedlinens, sand, storms, the ocean, foam on the ocean, clouds, my hair, that one jacket Dean Winchester wears, brushed nickel bathroom fixtures, the moon, my surround sound speakers, Icelandic lopi wool, galvanized buckets, my first car, streets, dolphins, puddles, ice cubes, the charcoal sketch of the goddess Diana that my brother did for me years ago, my brushed steel water bottle, the huge English walnut tree in my yard, Monsoon (in memory), my laptop, my current LJ theme, quarters, knives, my phone, twilight...

A fleeting moment of Pacific Northwest summer this year was surrounded on the mid-June and mid-August sides by cool, cloudy, rainy days, and now it seems that fall is here. It was 57 degrees in my bedroom when I woke up this morning. Already time to start closing the windows.

From four seeds that a friend of my mother's brought from New Zealand a couple of months ago, a single heirloom nasturtium has managed to bloom at last.

( I took a picture of it last night. )

It's Sunday night. I'm sitting out on my porch. The whole world smells like flowers. The last three people who have walked or cycled by in the dark have been singing.

Singing.

Spring, when it comes at last (at long, long last), is a wonderful thing.