grey//gold

i found myself on kelly drive today, coming home from work along the schuylkill, and the wet, damp grey of the concrete was brilliantly set off by the sun-gold of the maple trees along the roadside. tucked between rocky cliffs and the road, the black bark-brown of the tree trunks are topped, for a little while longer, by the fluttery leaves that shake loose in the wind of a new storm.

grey. november. gold. the words seem to go together, somehow. i love november.
really, i love november in my city:: concrete//nature//urbanity//people//color.

**sigh** november in the city, in a place like kelly drive, is beautiful to me in the way that a violin in a minor key can knock your breath out with its understated { - - - }. do you know what i mean? it was one of those days when you ache for the beauty in the world, when your soul wants to stretch wide enough to comprehend it all, and you can't -- you know that there is a greater joy to the sound you hear and the image you see, but this side of heaven, you groan at your own incapacity to comprehend their wholeness.

do i approach God with that same longing -- deep, un-nameable yearning -- to understand His whole beauty? His whole grace? love? perfection?

ooh

The city is a discourse and this discourse is truly a language: the city speaks to its inhabitants, we speak our city, the city where we are, simply by living in it, by wandering through it, by looking at it. (Roland Barthes)

***********

i want to let that roll around in my head for a little while, but isn't there so much there?

hmmm...

aptly named

last week, i overslept (slightly) pulled on default overslept-need-something-that-won't-look-funny-and-be-comfortable outfit (fuzzily) stumbled down the stairs (groggily) and walked out the door (rotely). i could see through my morning fog enough to look forward to the train ride, which i had been missing for the past month as circumstances made it sensible to drive. passing the crowd gathered for the bus in front of my house, i turned the corner to walk to the trolley stop. ipod playing, sun shining -- i was just beginning to wake up.

two blocks into my eight-ish block walk, the toes of my perfectly-normal-default-comfortable-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly-much-less-trip-me clogs sent me straight. down. to the sidewalk -- flop -- rotating me ninety degrees until knees met concrete aggregate.

ouch.

like a seven-year-old, i looked down at my left knee and found my wool dress trousers shredded, and the skin below, too. like a twenty-six year old, i had to stand up and walk back to the house calmly, realising that i would not be taking the train that morning, and find other trousers to put on.

i got up the stairs to the apartment, walked in the door and -- to my roommate's quizzical why-are-you-back-didn't-you-just-leave look, simply pointed to the knee and silently teared up. yes, they are just trousers, but this was the latest chapter in my onogoing, bi-annual spill-for-no-particular-reason-and-ruin-whatever-skirt/trousers/various accessories-you-might-be-wearing habit. it does seem to be a habit -- **sigh**. and it was just the thing to put me over the edge to teariness that morning, which came in one of those sorts of weeks/months. ...

as i relayed this story to a co-worker yesterday, he very kindly told me of a theater choreographer he knew who claimed that dancers were the biggest klutzes, because they were used to moving gracefully through lots of (level) space. that did soothe my ego a bit -- i danced for a while, before giving it up (why??) to ride the pine as a third+-string shooting guard. so i always feel that i am dishonoring my ballet training when i fall, but now maybe not entirely...

anyway, that's my latest trip, and the latest proof of the blog name.