Time passes

Summer soon burns into fall.
The leaves of ochre and crimson await.

Sweater and scarves to keep out the edge of the incoming cold,

but the sun continues - warm and soft on my face.
It used to be my favorite season.

But now that I'm getting older, I hesitate to welcome autumn too soon;

Winter follows it.
I cling to the last few weeks of summer.

Try to get out more. That's my goal. Watch the sun set. See it rise.

Breath the air and work and tan and let myself sweat,

before it's too late.

These are photos from this summer.

They capture the summer I'm trying to hold on to.

Summer when family came home.
L home from Iraq. Perhaps the nightmares will stop.
A, K, and J from Italy, the little ones squealing and glowing
and calling "mushroom!" to D.
Perhaps he is another dad now while L is gone.
E & K4 before they leave to Singapore.
Always going somewhere far away.
When I see K2 will she be grown - solemn and shy and dangerously conscientious?
Will K3 still sparkle while she rebels in her unique way? And K4 - she's so little now. Will she be a stranger one day as new children come?










Time passes. Painfully it passes.
I have D to love. To journey with.
Whimsical. Lyrical. Curious.
Where will we be then? Will we also go over the ocean?
Will we still be at war? Hated by many nations?

I miss the America I used to know.
I look but all I see is the top of heads bent over, texting.
I see billboards and cars and exhaust,
I see new subdivisions of huge houses - erected, but no children in the street, playing kick-the-can and freeze tag.
Who are we - as a nation?
It was harder to celebrate the 4th of July this year.

Yesterday I wanted to throw my phone out the window
to declare my independence. I didn't, though.
Would it have been wrong? impractical? illogical? immature?
Or would I have felt lightened? enlightened?

I love to keep my windows down when I'm driving.
Sometimes I can't now: The sound on the convenient, never-high-enough-speed, freeway is deafening.
In India traffic is slower so you can hear those in the car with you.
A few blocks away and it's like there is no road at all.
D and I live further from the freeway than I did in India,
but here it's like I live under it. The constant hum.

In a valley in a canyon, enroute to Logan,
I turned off my headlights, and drove by the light of the stars and the full moon. It was bright, and clear, and safer than it sounds.
Then we got a new car, with built-in light system intelligence.
And I can't override the system. That little joy has passed.
If everything is open 24 hours, when do we rest?

I am mourning the summer passing. And childhood. And the simple pleasures that are being crowded out by this ultra convenient lifestyle. Yesterday I told D I wanted to be a hippy. Really, I just want to feel in tune with nature, and with myself, and with those I love.