The Melting World

The dusty blues and greys of the sky, of the clouds, and of the buildings slowly dissolve into each other and in a few minutes all we see will become indistinguishable, except that trees turn blacker sooner than the rest of the world, at least now, right after sundown. (P.S. I returned from the bottom of this journal to tell you that everything melts eventually into one blackness).

Night enters early up here in the hinterlands. I can now see which professors remain at work on a Friday afternoon (assuming they have their electric lights on) and which ones have snuck out early. Four windows are bright squares of white light.

If I were an owl I could see the titles of the books lining their shelves, but since I am a mere human, all I can see is an inkling of what might be going on. In one office, some students are sitting around a table: pages of books are being flipped over occasionally, a girl leans over her books so that her hair falls like a theatre curtain, a professor with wild Einstein hair (yes, it is even white) stands in the corner with his arms akimbo, his mouth is moving like a ventriloquists’s dummy, and then a glimpse of a young man’s hunched grey jacket, and then a disembodied left hand flips a silver pen in circles and it gives off sparks.

I am really spying now, but if they looked across the courtyard, they would just as easily spy on me, eyeing them, with my two thick sweaters, left hand propping up my chin, and with white cup of tea nearby, but fortunately they wouldn’t see the remains of three (they were small, honest) chocolate chip cookies next to the cup.

At this moment I must also appear to be an earnest member of the steadfast worker bees, and this journal is my final honey for the day. Soon I, too, will sneak out into the night a bit early and then take my son somewhere he can run and jump around like a puppy in a field of dandelions. Well, that is purely figurative, but let’s say to the local gym’s kiddie room.

One more thought: How do bees make honey anyway? Well, the ‘glories’ of the internet led me to this page, and my favorite line is:

“Bees actually have two stomachs, their honey stomach which they use like a nectar backpack and their regular stomach.”

After you read it, would you choose to be a worker bee or a house bee? I’d rather be a worker bee with a nectar packback because at least I could visit all the colors and tender shapes of flowers and sip nectar all day; although having the house bees stick their tube-like tongues into my honey stomach to drain it afterwards doesn’t sound like much fun.

Happy weekend!