River Brown

Slice of Life #13

Late last night: It’s getting late and soon the clock will fall forward, and we’ll call March 12th the 13th and I will be another year older.  With that thought, she went to sleep.

Sunday morning:  After three snoozes on my alarm, finally the birthday girl got up to make tea, brought her egg muffin into the living room and is listening to Baroque by the Bay on kdfc radio.  Mickey realized quickly I won’t be using my writing desk in my bedroom, so he is already curled on the futon beside me, adaptable cat and opportunist that he is.

And out the window light rain mixes with a flute chamber piece.  Raindrops twitch the new leaves on the mock orange, and the silvery wet calla lily blooms peek up to the bottom of the picture window.

My living room has high cracked plaster ceilings, and a ten foot picture window which offers the view of any would be joggers or dog walkers.  Cars park on the street under large sycamores that are just beginning to show green, and bare ash trees and one immense  gingko tree.  We believe it was planted by Civil War general Naglee when he settled here after the campaigns.  General Naglee was a horticulturist and had a distillery that made white brandy.  These old homes in the neighborhood were built after Naglee’s daughters subdivided his 110 acres.  The stipulation was that, if you were going to buy a lot in 1900, you agreed to build a home worth at least $9,000.  This 1917 bungalow is about to have a centennial birthday, and it is worth twice as much as I paid for it seven years ago.

Well, that was fun to wander out the window a minute and see what the trees would tell me. The ginkgo swears it was General Naglee.  Now there’s a brassier piece playing. It has a slickness and tightly woven pattern like the water beading on the calla lilies.  What an exceptional luxury to sit here and write while the Baroque programming is on.  Other Sunday mornings, I’ll catch a bit on my way in to my hairdressers.  Drat, I’m missing my music and Miskarie doesn’t have wifi so I can’t even listen on my phone.

Other mornings, I have done errands, started laundry, and pushed into the yard for weeding.  Then I come in and hear the tail end of a beautiful chamber piece.  Missed it.

In addition to resting on my birthday privileges, I think this joyful meeting of me and my favorite radio programming may be due to Daylight Savings time.  Otherwise a challenge to think of one benefit of falling forward.  And, due to the rain.  Perhaps even due to tending to my mother, who has the nasty designer virus — all these things have arranged some me time with my music.

On St. Patty’s day I will not celebrate my Irish roots [there’s more Scot].  I celebrate my seventh year of owning my own home.  March 17 was the closing date after unbelieveably difficult doings with the Bank of America mortgage person and her assistant — things which almost cost me my life savings.  Not my fault that all the rules for banks were suddenly being enforced full on and know one there seemed to know what to do with the spotlights on them.  Shudder.

I lived in a studio in this neighborhood over 8 years, walked every evening, and attended community functions, just wishing.  I’d really like to buy a house here.

Maybe the billowing sunset clouds over San Jose State, and the massive trees lining the streets heard.  Perhaps the Craftsman front porches and the buckled sidewalks knew all along.

There is a new movement in the concerto, strings and oboe taking the melody high and soaring and winding back around, a beautifully patterned shape.  I think that composers who wrote chamber music must have spent a lot of time enjoying nature and gardens.  The yards and gardens in the rain persuade me of the same symetry I hear.

Concerti.  Call and answer.  Some poet wrote about the sky calls and something answers.  Light calls to darkness?  I see call and reply in the raindrops on the mock orange.  It plays on the curling unfurling calla lilies, each finding its space in the bunch of cream white.  Did the universe hear my call from loneliness to community?

A cello foreground responds to a viola and a soft harpsichord in the background makes my head tingle.  The morning neighborhood in the rain is lovely, but this is on beyond the gratitude I feel for my faithful cat lying here, for my lovely home I’ve renovated, and for the rain.  Love that we are finally getting rain in drought city.

Suite #2 in D Major, Jacque Robert landed, closed with perfect style and the rain just poured harder like applause.

Al la rustica now with a violinist.  Very allegretto ensemble and I don’t want to try to type to that rhythm.  Love Vivaldi. Ha! Mickey has rearranged himself slightly all the better to sleep. I pour another cup of tea out of my thermos, this one dark and rich.

Rain and cellos.  Clicks on keyboards.  A lone dog walker under a black and white gold umbrella.  Perfect birthday morning.