𓅯｡𖦹° 09.03.26 Last night I didn't want the lights on, I laid in the dark in my room and looked at the leaves lit up yellow and green by the streetlamps against the black ash of night. The tree crickets sung in one great chorus, no break in their humming, bright and clicking through the closed window. One long undulating trill, a call and response supplied at once like a memory of the future. When we moved here, both my partner and I were amazed at how we could hear crickets again in the summers, how night was more than the rumbles of trains and exulting and crooning voices of strangers ambling through the city. I wanted to lay on our deck and look at the stars I know are there under the smog of light pollution and listen to the crickets until I was one of them, my silence added to their song. I thought of the safest place, as I do when I feel small or sodden with sadness, and instantly I thought of my mother, my grandparent's home, the lake we used to visit. I closed my eyes into the room I shared with my sister a few summers at my grandparent's cabin, with the wood paneled walls and the orange and green crisscross wool comforter and the window that opened up horizontally and latched onto a hook painted white in the ceiling. Outside the room, it was morning, and someone was making a pot of coffee. My grandma padded across the linoleum floor. I heard my grandpa shuffling the paper at the table. Without opening my eyes or door to see, I saw the light streaming through the windows into the kitchen and dining nook, saw how the particular quality of light in the morning came off the spray of lake water and carried the rush of lacustrine dawn. Perhaps it was Monday, still early enough in our week at the lake that we could pretend this coming and going from cabin to cabin was real life, not the respite. My mother would be by shortly I knew, opening and closing the door quietly so as to not wake still sleeping adults. With her would be one of my brothers, perhaps Sam. She'd ask to borrow an egg from my grandma or she'd sit at the table with us for breakfast, steal a sausage from the pink plastic plate wreathed in paper towels. I saw her back to the window and her hair curled from the humid air, the loose blonde strands piled atop her head and haloed in sun. If I kept my eyes closed, I could live there a moment longer. If I kept my eyes closed, there was no beginning or ending, only the present past. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ 09.02.26 Late morning and long walk in the humid air; each breath felt watery and thick. Every other street was blocked off for construction and I passed men in hardhats deep in enormous pits of craggy earth where the entrances to roads once were. Their heads were level with my feet. When I dropped off my library books, there were two women standing outside near the drop-off slot, one a tall and slender woman looking at her phone while holding her bike, the other an older woman with grey hair who was on the phone with someone and saying "the library is closed, I meant to go today but it doesn't open until noon." On the way home I took photos of the native flowers near the monarch butterfly house to make sure I'd identified them properly, then got a ham and cheese croissant for J and an iced oat latte that was lukewarm by the time I got home. I'd like to declare today the true first day of September, away from the harried and lurching energy of August at last. 𖥔 I have photos to edit and proofs to send and messages to respond to but there's something about a morning in the open air that makes the rest of the day feel possible, regardless of time and deadlines. I hope I can find a few contract gigs or some illustration work in the coming months—some of my regular clients have a shorter business year so I'm again looking for new projects. I refuse to let worry eat me alive! The only gnawing I will do is on an apple core. 𖥔 the respite in a beautiful watermelon, sweet and cold, my mouth full of dark seeds. ﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏ say hello ⋰⋰⋰ yourworldoftext.com/~rhizomehaunt/ I archive these logs monthly ⋰⋰⋰ are.na/han-olliver/channels