Cloud Illusions

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all


joni mitchell, both sides now

inverted commas: quoting mt. timpanogos

i'll leave this to dr. rorschach

calfshead

ghost of thomas jefferson

run little rabbit!

18 May 1989, Tübingen

I move among a group of baby hippos. Their skin is wrinkled and baby-soft. Two of them nuzzle up against me, nipping and sucking pleasantly at my arms. When one of the heavy mouths pulls at my left arm it frightens me.  I call for help. I begin to panic. The dream ends.

Nine a.m.  I sit on a bench atop the Österberg, remember the erotic beauty of a quiet morning in Seal Beach, California, the summer of 1972. A week's vacation from the clanging steel and chemical mud of the drilling rig. In the VW hatchback I had just bought for $600, I drove with Steve, our derrick hand, from Arizona to California to visit his sister. Driving through Yuma we disputed the meaning of Joni Mitchell's song "Both Sides Now." I remember vividly the evening with friends in a garden where we ate vast quantities of pasta, I watched them drink what seemed like gallons of wine, and we sang “Roll me over in the clover, roll me over, lay me down, and do it again.” The song, in endless rowdy variations, aroused my desire and my inhibitions alike. I had never been intoxicated, nor had I really, thoroughly rolled in the clover. Still, shyly, I savored the evening. Up early the next morning while Steve, his sister, and her partner still slept, I sat in the kitchen and scratched the slant of the morning sunlight onto paper.

Hymn to the Coming Night

Of Local Interest

Still amazed at air that is humid + Blue and Bella (whose head scratching has the vet scratching his own head).

Fireworks + Rain(drops)

Fourth of July in Utah Valley.


First rain(drops) since sometime in May.


Following the first drops, a light, steady rain.


And the scents arising from the sage and grasses and oak brush are powerful and provocative.


I realize, during this shift from harsh, hot light to soft grey-green light, that for a month my interior has been exposed and anxiously arrayed on a brittle surface. Today, after only an hour of rain, those sensibilities have been turned inward again, entering back into the dark interior with the scents penetrating my skin.

Wildflowers #21 + Wildfires

The day dawned, the heat rose, the sun set on a new fire burning in Alpine, between Salt Lake City and our town of Woodland Hills.


In the meantime, the new flowers—curlycup gum weed, sunflower, and goldenrod—indicate that summer is really here.

Helianthus annuus

Grindelia squarrosa

Solidago ???

Smoke

south wind brings smoke into Utah Valley

FIREWATCH

Still very hot. Windy. Extremely dry.


Fires still burning, although none we can actually see at the moment.


But where there's fire there's smoke—and ash.


And where there's the threat of fire—there we are cutting back our scrub oak, Quercus gambelii, lessening the likelihood that the house will burn if there's a wildfire. 


Scrub oak is tannin-rich, so scratches and cuts heal slowly.