Fiery Chili

The ground is clear of snow, and the nights are crisp, so we ventured down the yard (dressed in anticipation), to enjoy our chili meal at the fireside to experience both the sunset and the moonlight that came later. 

33° F didn't feel all that bad around the fire, with chili and cornbread warming our insides. The fire was hotter than the chili ...

When I turned back to my chair, it was glowing with reflected light, like a throne. It looked quite beautiful for a lawn chair!

Thigmotaxis

Never mind thingamajig being a funny word, what about

T h i g m o t a x i s

It's not an ordinary, everyday word, that's for sure, and doesn't feature often in everyday talk. It's a new one for me.

It describes 

- the tendency of an animal to 'hug' the perimeter of an otherwise open, exposed field, or

- the tendency of cats to lean in to the pressure of contact

Merriam Webster defines it as a movement "in which contact especially with a solid body is the directive factor"

ask a naturalist adds that this response usually benefits the organism by providing "greater safety, easier access to food supplies, [and helping] finding mates, etc."

Clouded Beauty

What a magnificent sky we were greeted with after a wind storm - quite spectacular!

Cotton candy clouds

Textured wads of rippling sky

Reflected below.

Ruptured Expectations

I was intrigued by the depth to which Kathryn Schulz went to explore the concept of loss in her memoir "Lost and Found." It was intensely academic and personal all at the same time, at times seeming a little too intense to make it a pleasure to read - her writing talent and skill are superlative; it's just not a relaxing and easy read.

I was struck by how she presented loss in the context of scale. She described it as rupturing our expectations and revealing reality to us, shocking us into resizing ourselves to our surroundings. It is one of the ways in which we are reminded of how inconsequential and miniscule we are in the grand scheme of things. Losing something, she says, is humbling; it renders us powerless, no matter if it be through losing our glasses, losing a jet on the radar, or losing a loved one. We have no control over getting these back, or of orchestrating an undoing of the loss. My paraphrasing of her argument is nowhere near as eloquent as hers, and I hope I've conveyed it correctly. 

Fractured Illusion

She had an interesting take on how love stories are portrayed on paper and film that appealed to my understanding, too. They all end at the beginning, she reminds us, when the couple weds or commits! That is not the end of the story; it's the start of a journey that will have ripples of tears and joy - that is the real story, and unfortunately most depictions of love stories give us the wrong idea of what to expect, and how to weather the ups and downs.

I really enjoyed her in-depth analysis of things we regularly glance over, and of being exposed to her unique view of the world. A stunning, and smart writer!