September, 2010 archive
Windy Self Portrait Series 1
After three days of still heat, a once-or-twice-a-year heat spell in SF, the wind rushes over the hills this evening, tearing into treetops and bringing cool ocean air to my nostrils. I sit outside reading a colleague’s paper for class, trying to concentrate on organizational theory and school district reform. Instead, the wind whips my hair and I am inspired to take pictures. It’s strange how self conscious I feel doing self portraits.Do I really look like that when I’m alone? But like blogging, I find creativity in it, possibility in seeing these angles of myself, unfiltered, risky.
Earlier, I did the last of the laundry from the weekend, turning socks inside out and looking wistfully at the Grand Canyon dirt still crushed in their threads, already missing the trails, the sudden views of the canyon, the happiness I feel in nature. I hope they stain, that spots of red dirt remain ground in their fibers, a reminder to go outside, hike more often.
Now the sun has fallen behind the peaks and the night air sets in. I come inside, cold now, my skin tingling and alive from the wind and cool fall air.
Morning Sun Notes 0
A second day working at my desk in our new house. The windows look out on a small garden of rocks and moss, awash with sun until lunchtime. We are below street level on this side of the house, so there’s a retaining wall covered with a tangle of jasmine vines. Did you know jasmine leaves turned yellow in fall?
There is also a whispy tree covered in fronds which join the balcony to frame the morning sky.
At the root of the tree, shadows gather as the morning wears on. I sit and work on a dissertation year fellowship application (I’m doing 4 this fall), struggling with how to make it different from last year’s application.
This takes me through documents of random writing from last fall, which surprisingly or not, are about many of the same things still on my mind a year later: wanting children, dreaming about writing children’s books, and struggling to find creativity in my dissertation project.
A large, black, neighborhood cat poked its head through the open window as I read, startling me with its wide green eyes and plaintive meow.
It is all making me wonder, how much do we really change in one year?
Contrasting days 0
We live on the fog line now. The towering hills hold back the billows of gray some days, other days they weigh too much and pour across the peaks, wet and dripping. Today, a clear fall sky, a dry wind whipping the neighbor’s palm when I step out on the back porch.
