What Works

I've been spending time this week with this little squirt.


I took this photo during his afternoon walk. We went out around 5:00 and it was still too hot for him. He actually led me home after a turn around the park. (Don't worry, we went out again after dark.)

I'm a little obsessed with the eyes that a bad clip job has left on many trees in the neighborhood.


Creepy, right? No wonder I always feel like I'm being watched while I'm walking Crunch.


Creepy.

While I was sorting through photos on the phone, I found this, a photo I took a few weeks ago during the height of the Arizona fires. The air was thick and the sun was a brilliant red (that I couldn't quite capture with my camera phone) in the middle of the afternoon.



You know that poem, right? The Robert Frost one, "Fire and Ice"?

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Every summer, when the southwest burns, I think of this poem.

And speaking of poetry, we met for our second book club meeting last night. We had read Kurt Vonnegut's novel The Sirens of Titan. I love Kurt Vonnegut, even though I dislike science fiction. We--well, me, mostly--talked in part about why science fiction is so problematic. (In short: It's misogynistic. It's written largely by white people, white men for the most part. The writing is simplistic.) Sigh. I'm afraid that I called the bulk of the science fiction genre "garbage" and thereby insulted those in attendance who love science fiction (including one woman, a retired middle school librarian, who designed her own graduate degree centered around science fiction and who thinks that it is the best way to relate to middle-school aged boys). It might've gotten a little loud. That is probably why I've stayed out of book clubs; I think coming to verbal blows is a perfectly reasonable response to a disagreement over literature.

Our next book is The Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavic, Dave's suggestion. Pavic has been in my life for a long time. (I think it was recommended to me in a college freshman lit course.) Dave likes his work a lot more than I do (I find that my usual bag of reader's tricks don't work with Pavic and it frustrates me), but I'm willing to give it another chance now that I'm older and a bit more patient with books. We'll see anyway.

It's early in the morning now, 5:15. I've been up since about 3:45 and I'll take Crunch out for his longer early morning walk around 6:30, when it is still cool but there's some life in the neighborhood. (I hate walking when there's no one around. Despite this being a somewhat ridiculously ritzy neighborhood there is an unsafe element, as evidenced by some recent crime statistics.) I'll be the first to admit that I'm relatively paranoid, but it works for me.