24 July 07
Landing Gear
I’ve been home for two days, having finished the new Harry Potter book on the way home. (I only know one other person who’s finished it and am biting my tongue.) The okra’s continuing to be devastated by pocket gophers; I’ve harvested most of it to make a bindi masala tomorrow in the solar cooker. We won’t get much more, I don’t think.
I’m acutely aware of how far away the rest of my family is. Mostly I don’t pay attention. But these kids are growing fast, and seeing them once a year, briefly, doesn’t really work. I had a lump in my throat embracing my sister, my mother, my niece…
Flying over beautiful blue Lake Tahoe (at least until the first rains of the fall turn the fireswept mountainsides into mudsloshes), and into the parched Central Valley, I was reminded how much I like to see green, yet how quickly it becomes oppressive, too much. Perhaps it’s what you’re used to. My palette is still ochre/sienna/ultramarine…
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I hear you – both on the missing family part, and on the over-dosing on green.
It’s funny – I used to think of Portland and Oregon as GREEN, as I probably would have the place we’re now, until I spent those two years in the Midwest.
Now I find myself feeling homesick when the weather turns hot and semi-humid instead of hot and steamy. Our lawn is dry brownish green right now, and thus evokes California for me, despite the alienness of all the trees and shrubbery.
I guess I grew up with undertones of yellow and rust and olives and bright blue skies – anything else is just odd – “too much” as you said.