Tues Nov 1: Dark and stormy
Looking out over the rooftops, and down between the buildings onto flashes of asphalt, you can see a dull sheen that means it rained sometime last night. James said as much yesterday, addressing a customer wondering why he had already tarped over half of his outdoor wares. “Rain tonight.” As he stumped back up into the house, he passed JR and I deep in the high shelves of milk crates in the driveway, hunting for something like wine glasses in advance of our first Thanksgiving hosting a few weeks from now. I asked him his source, and he replied, “The big man, y’know, the one upstairs. Holler if you need anything.”
We kept rummaging and found six matching punch glasses, squat round ones with curlicue handles and crystal cut. I also found three pieces of “Harmony Blue” Ridgways earthenware, two small plates and a small bowl. There was a teacup and saucer that was gorgeous, but I knew I would never use it. The pieces are a pure powder blue. I was partly inspired by the bone china on which NB feeds her cats.
It has started to rain. It’s coming down fabulously for a California shower. JR just left on his bike for Berkeley, and I’m glad he took my raincoat. The cat trills, and I open the window above the low bench she likes for her to investigate, listen, smell.
I pull the Knight of Cups reversed this morning: slow down; restore yourself. The last two days (and the last three weeks, in a different way) were packed with excitement and activity. I’m relieved it’s raining. It lets the world slow down. This has been hard to come by lately, and it feels like we might scoot out of fire season without any serious blazes this year. I have taken time ‘off’ from my dissertation work since October 7, when I had my qualifying exam; immediately after, we hosted friends from Vienna for a week and toured them around the Bay; then a few days after that, we hosted friends from Zurich and spent four days together. Then, of course, this weekend, a baby came. And not just any baby! “A most strange and unusual baby,” as Sally Bowles says, lounging in the grass on the outskirts of Berlin in Cabaret.
On this day in 2017 I tagged along with an old English ex-pat, my erstwhile landlord, and a few of his friends to visit his wife’s grave in the Zentralfriedhof in Vienna. All Souls’ Day has this tradition there, of visiting when the veil is thinnest, to share messages and pay respects. We drove, but there is a tram that goes there, and there is an accompanying saying to euphemize death: you can say that someone “took the 71” to the end of the line. Er nahm die einundsiebzig. Martin brought a spade and some shears and spent a while caring for the English lavender he had planted. He had long since moved out of their apartment together on the Alser Straße and moved into a larger one with another woman, and had rented out the first place to two Americans, an actress and set designer named Laura and me. I slept in their bed, the largest bed I have ever slept in, and wrote at his ancient rolltop desk, and stashed my few coats and boots in their great mahogany wardrobe. Dorothy was his first wife’s name.
Which reminds me! James also put two walnut dining chairs in the free pile he leaves on the curb, and JR and I absconded with them, also for Thanksgiving. That brings our number of chairs in the studio up to five. We are still one short, but there is a little bedside table that would do in a pinch. I bought cinnamon sticks and cloves last night for Glühwein. Star anise still to come.
