The heart of the heart of it, the height of the height of the season, and today is Market Day, so absolutely everyone is walking down and up Rokeby Avenue as UD rakes bright wet leaves. The feel is pre-industrial — a studied pre-industrialism, I guess – with almost-carless village streets and trains that trundle through town with a mild choo. Everyone’s exhilarated and madly social with the weather so pure. Clear air, sunlight, and enough wind to set going masses of leaves that catch onto our container plants. My neighbors are stirred to life… They gather in the street in front of UD‘s house, waving at her as she rakes, and their groups enlarge with dog walkers and carriers of fresh tomatoes, and everyone is as extroverted as they’re ever going to be, because the earth in this hyper-keen aspect excites them and makes them want to make sure everyone else is on board. Amazing day. Look at that dogwood. Can you believe this day?
Gabe, a young chef, interrupts my raking to walk my paths with me in search of mushrooms. I tell him I’ve seen scads, but have been pulverizing them with my rake. Don’t. Pick them up. Put them in a paper bag, and drop them at my house. He reels off all the types and I say I’m so ignorant I have to assume everything’s poisonous. He says he has a friend who will give me good money if I have some exotic ones.
I spy new neighbors moving in across the street and trot over to welcome them and congratulate them on inheriting Caroline’s wildly flourishing garden. I tell them to knock on my door with questions, problems, etc. They are warm and happy and unoffended when I tell them two minutes after introductions that I’ve already forgotten both of their names. They repeat their names, and all I remember is Rebecca.
A little later, one of my neighbors, who just turned seventy and looks forty, wants to talk. We stand in my driveway. I lean on my rake. This birthday really has me thinking. I’m in pretty good shape. Let’s say I have another fifteen twenty years. How do I want to spend it? How do I want to make it count? He’s a reflective, sensitive man, and as I look at his youthful face I think Garrett Park is a place where you can instantly enter into way non-trivial conversations in your driveway. Dig in, says UD. You’re already doing the right things – your long every-other-day hikes, your reading, thinking, traveling [he’s planning to walk the Camino de Santiago]… Your family and your friends… Just keep doing what you’re doing, no? Yes of course but there’s the restlessness all thoughtful people feel, a sort of second-guessing about what we might be overlooking… Or just a sort of emotional overflow and you don’t know what to do with it… See Adam Phillips, “On Being Too Much For Ourselves.” Or – especially on a day like today – Saul Bellow, in Paris, in the spring:
The gloss the sun puts on the surroundings – the triumph of life, so to speak, the flourishing of everything makes me despair. I’ll never be able to keep up with all the massed hours of life-triumphant.
I wouldn’t mind, says UD to her neighbor, living long enough to be tired and achy enough not to be entirely shocked and appalled when I realize I’m about to die. He says: My mother was like that. A day before her ninetieth birthday she just said I’ve had enough and died.
It’s a list of problems specific to the very rich. It made UD toddle off to her Schaeffer baby grand and race through Praeludium in C Major BWV 933. So there.
UD‘s walk today took her to the Monocacy Aqueduct, where she madly enjoyed the perfect cloudless afternoon along the C&O Canal.
The link up there shows you the aqueduct; her own image is a natural charcoal – a towpath shadow that looks like a butterfly chair seen from behind.
She’s walking ever-smiling Gus, who she’s sitting this weekend.
Photo, Natasha Vemulkonda, who will never live this down.
Foreground: Runty, reflective, pitbull mix.
Background: Purple flowers just gathered from UD‘s pollinator garden. This prolific plant had begun to cascade over her stepping stones, making walking there difficult. Particularly difficult, because the cascade sags with bees. Tried to cut it back yesterday afternoon, but there were too many bees.
Far fewer this morning, so with long sleeves, long pants, Mr UD‘s very big hat, and plenty of bug spray, I safely did the deed.
Other flowering plants. A gargoyle.
Fashion designer Nicole Miller finds UD‘s friend Wojciech Fangor inspiring. UD‘s Fangor posts are here.
Fully vaccinated, she nonetheless got it – probably on the plane she took last week to visit friends in Los Angeles. She has been isolating at super-trendy Andaz LA, and today felt well enough to sit by their pool, views of palmy West Hollywood all around her.
**************
UPDATE: She just tested negative!
UD‘s house and garden are major mantis-attractors. This one – a Chinese Mantis – is as we speak on one of our screened windows.
Look at the way it’s looking at me.
I love what it’s doing with its brown/green color scheme. The eyes are amazing.
… in my frog.
