i have been

sitting in the grass a lot, and filming it move. the clouds too, watching them shape-shift and drift. the other day was sunny and stormy at the same time, little pockets of ground were isolated by illumination. there was a double rainbow that day.

every night, i take a walk, parallel to the mountains. there are some very very blue birds that sit on the fence that faces the mountains, they dart towards them, a flashing blue, moving low across the sage-brush.

you can always, almost, here the sound of wind, the aspen leaves are always shuddering, twinkling. it is a big sound, the wind, it sounds like it is just coming out of some deep opening, a never stopping, perpetually moving, creating sound. sometimes it sounds like it comes down out of the mountains.

i still cannot stop thinking about summers in connecticut.swimming in the reservoir, and even before that, the quarry, swimming out to the floating dock, trying to catch frogs, looking for ripe raspberries. i remember the yard at the house where i grew up, and time, for me was marked by what was growing or blooming. and the light, and how it changed. the weeds behind the garage that were like a jungle, and the zip line, where i would swing.

i wonder, if i could, out here, reflect the stars.

well

i'm back in this beautiful landscape. i remember, so well, how amazing i thought it was that all this, was out there, west of the coast where i grew up, just sitting here, all along. mountains, on a plateau, under a sky, sometimes hidden by clouds. i remember how shocking it was that i could see a cloud moving toward me from so far away, and that these mountains, just began out of something so flat. i think it is strange to come back to place that was so shocking the first time around. it is making me worry that i have lost my sense of wonder. is that possible? yesterday, i walked for a long time in the woods. there had been an avalanche. all the trees were sideways. I sat next to the lake, on a giant boulder. the water was lapping the side of the rock, moving towards the edge. the clouds were moving fast above me. the rock and I were the still part. i cold feel some-thing's wings beating behind me. like a thumping in my ear. but the wings, and their body were invisible. some days it still snows, and a creek that has no run for twenty years, is threatening to flood the pasture. i keep setting my alarm to watch the sunrise, and sleeping past it.

i still find it amazing, that these mountains can be made to disappear, by clouds and rain.

i'm sitting in a diner in Jackson

because the internet at the ranch isn't fast enough to upload any images.because the internet at the ranch isn't fast enough to upload any images. It is still hard for me to describe Japan because the most accurate word I have to describe it is "mysterious." It was peaceful but hidden, full of light and shadow. I liked just riding the trains around Toyama. We would pass through mountains, through pine forests and the sun light inside the car would suddenly become dappled and dazzling. then it would be black again, then we would pass a river. I felt very separate, very on -the-edge-of-something, like i just grazed the lip of each opening I passed. I liked watching people work on their gardens wearing tall plastic boots, and the rice paddies reflecting the sky. The mountains and the ocean, the strange little museums along the shore, one for a buried forest, one for the strange mirages that happen on the horizon. They were going to build a road, but found these ancient tree stumps, so they stopped building the road and built tanks around the tree stumps and pumped in water from deep underground. and there that museum sits. One day I got a little off track and ended up walking from one town to another along the ocean. I walked through rice paddies and stumbled on a few that had been converted into tulip fields. I could see the blocks of color from far away. Tulip paddies next to the ocean. A women moved down the line, deadheading them all. It was a sunny and windy day. I finally made it to another train station that was deserted and desolate. Almost every place I was felt that way. quiet and still. The day I went to Yatsuo, it was the kind of day that changes from sunny to cloudy constantly. The village was full of little canals, and a great, sloped wall that you could wind up to a beautiful ancient street above the river bed. I wish I had gone back to that wall, with a little mirror, and maybe a flashlight and wandered around with my video camera. I got really lost that day too, trying to find the train station. I wandered around down the wall and over a river and finally saw train tracks and followed them until I got to the station. When i got there, it was nice golden afternoon light, that shines through things instead of on them.


the day I walked from one town to another.
the canal near Julianne's house.
Outside a window while the Sakura were in bloom.


someone's garage in Yatsuo. Little potted gardens.

The wall in Yatsuo.
Hanami (cherry blossom viewing) party in Toyama near the canal. I really like the light on the cart, and the little bento boxes waiting on the blue tarp.


Desolate (in a dreamy way, not a scary way) Yatsuo. I walked into one museum, and this sleeping museum attendant was all I found there.
The lights in Yatsuo. And a Building with tarps, and an orange arrow.


Some one else's garage in Yatsuo.

Takaoka. I sat under this cherry tree to eat my lunch.

from a train ride to the mountains. The bridge and its shadow.
Women working in a garden in Kanazawa.

The seats on the trains were brilliant, you could slide the back so you could sit forwards or backwards! we were going through a pine forest, the way the light would change was a wonderful shock.
A marker on the snow wall on Tateyama.
Intense tree support structure.
roadside tulips and marathon runners.
the buried forest museum.


fishtank on the sidewalk.
deer chasing schoolchildren in Nara.
Portable garden!

Still need to figure out what the aprons on stones mean.