John Burridge

It’s just after the Equinox, and I’m still able to sit outside and write. This will become less and less likely as autumn progresses. We can pretend it’s still summer (especially when the afternoon temperatures reach the mid eighties), but sometime before Halloween there will be a Great Rain which will knock all of the leaves from their stems, and plunge the valley into average temperatures in the fifties.

Probably the deluge will coincide with (and obscure) a notable astronomical event, like the two comets that are supposed to be visible in the sky at the same time as October’s new moon.

And there will be mud.


Dreams:

Image from the other night:

A blocky, clear cologne bottle with a cubic stopper. Etched onto the front of the bottle, like frost on ice, in bold san serif font, are the words “STONE MASS”

Of course, now I'm wondering what a ceremonial mass centered on stone would look like.  

I spent the weekend of the Autumn Equinox recovering from my latest COVID vaccination (not so bad, I guess, but I could do without the fever and chills).

Between naps, I quickly read two saucy man-on-man murder mysteries set in a magical Victorian England (the “Charm of Magpies” series, by K.J. Charles) and finished up a re-read of “The Mists of Avalon” (which says less about imagined British Paganisms and The Goddess than I’d recalled, and could be paraphrased “Morgaine and her certainty are the common factors in all her failed, betrayal-filled relationships.”)

So this Equinox there was no dancing in a magic circle, nor harping under moonlight, nor meditating while incense floated around me.

However, on the Equinox, Mark and I did go for a long walk along the Willamette River and to Delta Ponds. As we were walking along the gravel path between the two bridges on the south end of the Ponds, I looked out on a strip of water running between two marshy beds of river grass. It was a little after the sun was in its meridian. A dark egret stood on the eastern bank, facing a white heron on the western bank. The two birds facing each other put me in mind of the Middle Kingdom hieroglyph for the horizon 𓈌 , although I believe two animals back-to-back more commonly hint at it in Egyptian art. Still, it was a striking image — almost like a tableau from tarot card — that seemed to signify the Equinox. I stopped to pay better attention to it; fixing the curving the shining water between the green grasses, a shadowy neck, white wings, narrow beaks, and the symmetry between the birds in my mind.

And like the tarot, it was telling me something I already knew: the day was the day when the balance of the season would shift into shadow.

To misquote Oscar Wilde, summer has collapsed into autumn here in the Willamette Valley.  With the Autumnal Equinox, the unseasonably warm and bright days have been washed away, at least for now, by an atmospheric river.  The plants in the yard have gone from looking slightly withered to slightly faded but somehow more lush.  The yellow grass is poised to regain its Pacific Northwest winter verdancy.  The garden gate swings easily now that the clay in the ground has been watered and whatever shrinkage causing misaligned sidewalk and fence post has been undone.  And we've had bewilderingly dim days, as if the equinox acted like a wall-outlet timer switch that tripped and turned off the sun.

On the last day of summer, The Child went off to college. We've all been fairly laid back about it.  I asked him if we could take pictures of him moving into his dorm room for social media, complete with me, hand at my brow, clutching his knees, and wailing while the two of us were surrounded by moving boxes and laundry, but he declined.  We did have some moments on Move-In Day where I would wobbly sing "Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away," and we would both theatrically break down into fake boo-hoo-hoos. But then we'd both start snickering.  

It's not like we haven't been practicing for the last six months for this moment; he's spent a lot of time in the high school theatre rehearsing for shows or hanging out with his friends, so we really weren't seeing him much except for an hour before work and school or for a moment when he would come home for the night.   During the summer, we saw him even less, and it wasn't unusual for Mark and me to be in bed for the night before he'd come home.

Even though he was essentially only sleeping here these last few months, the first twenty-four hours after he was gone, the energy of the house shifted.  Now that he's gone his computer (and fan) are turned off, as is his air conditioner, which can account for some of the shift. But our small house isn't very sound-proof, and The Child is a dynamic person. I am pretty sure I was partially waking whenever he would come home, or get up in the middle of the night to eat the last of the pizza, or when he would thrash in his sleep and knock against whatever.  

Mark and I are not sure what the dog thinks of this.  She would trot to the front door to meet him whenever he came home. Mark thought she would be looking for him, but I haven't noticed her wandering in and out of his room or perching on the back of the davenport, forlornly sighing in a reenactment of Odysseus' faithfully waiting dog.  Although she does seem more clingy.  The cats seem to be more affected by the season's change.

At odd moments the last few days I've been struck by the weirdness of the shift.  I'm reminded of the time long ago when I had returned to Oregon and was crashing at my folks' house.  My mom said to me, "John, when you were in Minnesota and Arizona, I really didn't worry about you.  But now that you're here, I want you to know that I really don't get to sleep until I hear you pull into the driveway." Mark and I are going through something similar, but for us it's in reverse and it's a freeing up of cognitive focus.

We—or rather Mark—scoured out his room, which revealed the accumulated wear of the last fifteen years.  Most of the furnishings have stayed, and the plan is to turn The Child's room into a guest room / office.  We'll see how this works out.  Considering that Fall Term only lasts eleven weeks and he'll be back for about four weeks over the Winter Solstice, the changes we're making feel a little temporary.  

I expect on that December day when she first sees him, the dog will charge at him, barking and growling as if he were an Evil Trespasser bent on perfidy, but a split second before she's about to eat him and save us from Certain Peril and Property Damage, she'll recognize him and beg for belly rubs.

November is over a third of the way through and the dark season is upon us.  For real this time, although the ten days in early September when the smoke from the forest fires blotted out the sun were bad enough.  At least we can be outside without too much fear of breathing unhealthy particles... oh, wait, COVID-19.  Oh well.   

The damper, colder weather has driven the cats into a grudging acceptance that a dog lives here.  Some days are more grudging than others.  The other day, Cicero was sleeping on Mark while Aoife rested next to him; Mark slowly shifted his body until Cicero was resting, if not on, then at least next to, Aofie.  We think at this point Cicero realized how much body heat Aoife puts out.  I've noticed he's less likely to retreat to the bedroom window when Aoife enters since; and recently, Cicero ventured into the back yard -- something that hasn't happened since the Spring Equinox.

Mark and I notice how early the sun sets these days because all of the acres of the dog park we take Aoife are in shadow by 4, and the sun slides behind the hills by 4:15, and you can see Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn by 4:40, and by 5:00 it's too dark to see the Chuck-It Balls we fling.  If Aoife didn't have a mostly white head, we wouldn't be able to see her, either.   We used to be able to stay until 8:30.

The dog park hasn't turned into a total mud pit yet, but I expect the Big Storm that's supposed to hit us Friday the 13th will change all of that.  (The fist-sized gravel the city used to fill in some of the larger foxholes the dogs dug last spring is already dispersing into new geologic depressions.)

Smokey is more grudging than Cicero.  At least he has the next-door neighbors to run to (and they love him, so it's a win-win situation).  He's still likely to make a dash for the window when Aoife enters the bedroom, but there have been a few times where he's (noisily) tolerated being sniffed by the dog.   Aoife understands that the cats are part of our family, and unless she's previously wound up, she'll slowly creep forward to sniff them (instead of lunging at them) in an earnest attempt to initiate play.  

Smokey and Cicero had been sleeping in the garage over the Summer, but they've worked up enough courage to begin sleeping in our bedroom (and waking us up at 4 AM to be let out).  Sometimes Aofie sleeps in our bed -- when I'm feeling like indulging her -- but I find I sleep better when she's on the couch.  

 Today is a grey day, overcast with sprinkles and threatening heavier rain.

Mark and I went on a hike around Spencer Butte.  The leaves are turning red, yellow, and orange--and a some are beginning to degrade to brown.  The mushrooms of a few weeks ago have become large, dark growths, which have toppled over into the mud.

We ended up at the Raptor Center.  I've never been to the Raptor Center, but, alas, it is closed until November 2, 2019.  I imagine they have owls and various hawks.

Yesterday (10/19) were the Eugene Coffin Races.  Think soap-box derby with a Halloween theme.  Mark and The Child declined to go; there's a lot of standing around waiting for things to happen, and the various vendors' and Typical Eugene Activity tents don't appeal to them.

I enjoy seeing some of the artistry in the various carts.  I think the most creative entrant was the Eugene Skinner Grave:  that team went to the Pioneer Cemetery and recreated the large slab covering Eugene's founding father.

The most technical entrant was a re-created ladder truck, from the Eugene-Springfield Fire Department (it had two steering wheels).

The funniest entrant (for me anyway) was "Coffin' and Sneezing", which was a giant tissue box driven by a nose and pollinating flower ... although the "Roller Toaster" (a bathtub body surrounded by electrical appliances) from "Dead Bath and Beyond," was pretty funny, too.

Other entrants were more Horror Film oriented.

I managed to get some photographs of the qualifying safety-check races before the actual race (a majority were foiled by the auto-focus deciding I really wanted a shot of a stray twig or guy-wire).  There was one crash that I saw, but it didn't seem too catastrophic (unlike last year, which featured at least two high-speed crashes--one involving an obelisk impaling a hay bale-- and one wipe-out).

If I were going to make an entry into the Coffin Races, I'd want to do a riff off of the Strettweg Cult-wagon.

On the Gym Front:  Went to the gym Friday (10/18) and did the regular routine.

On the Writing Front:  One of my flash stories has been short-listed; there's a something-to-fifty percent chance (according to the market) it will be actually published.  I've only been trying to break into this market for almost a decade, and this is the first piece I've submitted to actually make it past the first hurdle, so it would be nice if this flash was accepted.

Looking at this month's submission history, I should get more stories into the mail; August currently holds the record for most stories submitted in a calendar month.

On the gym front, I skipped the gym on Monday, but I resumed Wednesday with a slightly reduced routine (no cable twists, Roman Chair curls, and a reduced number of lat pull-downs) in the interests of only spending an hour in the gym instead of 75 minutes.

While I was there, I ran into a Wordo I haven't seen in over a year. Seen out of context (although, now that I think on it, the last time I saw him probably was in the gym), I struggled to recognize him; he now has a very full beard and he was clean-shaven last I saw him. He's also bulked out in his upper-arms (John wonders if he should start lifting heavier weights and if his arms would respond in a similar fashion).

The season has officially changed: Mark and I took apart the pavilion and folded it up for storage until next Spring. The structure seems to have held up fairly well; there was only a little bit of rusting in one strut which leaked bright orange ichor onto the deck. The fabric had some interesting sun-faded patterns along the Velcro ties keeping it rolled up against the corner posts, but otherwise seems robust enough for a season or two.

Mark insured that all the struts remained labeled so we can follow the instructions for assembly. While the whole things weighs a lot, in little parts it's much more manageable.

Now the deck is open, and the table is protected by only a single umbrella. It's nice to be able to see the sky from the breakfast nook again, and the extra light will be welcome during the winter-tide months -- especially on those clear days when the December sun managed to get about half-way into the house. But I think I'll miss being able to get out into the shaded deck to write.

The leaves are turning.  I took my camera and went looking for good candidates.  I'd noticed a few red edges on some leaves around the corner, and waited until the afternoon when the sun would shine through them.

I unpacked the tripod and took a lot of shots with the camera on full manual.  This resulted in a lot of bad shots -- either under- or over-exposed, but I managed to get a few photographs that approached the glowing colors above my head.

Of course, there was one really over-exposed photo because the camera remembered the manual settings when I had been taking some pictures of the moon and stars.  I laughed when I saw this one, but I kept it because it seemed as if the shape of the leaves had been burned into the image -- which I struck me as "artsy" and brought out the fiery nature of the leaves.

And it was a moral imperative to take a photo of the miniature rose on our deck.

Yesterday it got up to eighty degrees.  A little too warm for me, but mostly nice.

Today was a deep-cleaning day.

Actually, it's been a deep-cleaning few days.

Domesticity began Thursday night, when Mark and I planted a magnolia tree. Okay, Mark did about 90% of the digging and I helped move the tree from the back of his truck and into the back yard. We're pretty pleased with the tree, which is evergreen, and which should provide some extra privacy between our breakfast nook and the backdoor neighbor's house.

When I haven't been gardening (or writing), I've been cleaning up my office. My office is a closet. Literally. I moved my grandfathers old oak desk out of the closet, and it made a big difference. I suppose when I get around to replacing the ancient Windows98 desktop and its mondo CTR, I'll have even more space. I suppose that I should retire the machine, but I have a ton of old Illustrator files on it that wont run on any of my other machines. Oh well, it's there and available, and I am looking forward to more writing sessions actually in my office.

Sunday was cleaning day. We cleaned the kitchen, the bathroom, and the living room. Well, okay; Mark did most of the work while I moved things around. And did dishes. And vacuume out the fireplace (we only light candles in it, so I don't know how it got so dirty).

And then it was time to cook. I started the rice. Just as I'd turned the burner on, I got a phone call from a friend. We were discussing the logistics of next our next visit. As I gazed across our clean living room, I became aware of a layer of haze floating about four feet off the ground. It was like the fog was trying to come into the house. I excused myself from the phone conversation for a moment, walked into the smoke-filled kitchen. A white plume rose from the cast iron pan filled with boiling bacon grease on the front burner (note to self, RR and RF mean two different thing).


I picked up the pan. It was still smoldering, so I naively blew on it to try to stop the smoke.

With a foom and a whoosh, the bacon grease burst into flame.

 I laughed, because it was kind of funny, and took the flaming pan outside.

Eventually, I did get back to my phone call.

October has come, and with it have come the heavy rains. Today is an exceptioin, so I'm outside at Cafe John enjoying one last moment of sunshine. Then I'll roll up the indoor/outdoor carpet for another season of Very Grey Days.

I stumbled across this photo of Mark and myself in Seattle on Oct 3, 2009. I don't have too many photos of the two of us because I'm usually the one behind the camera. Something about this picture captures our respective attitudes toward posing for pictures, and provides a glimpse into our characters.

Imagining what we might be thinking made me smile.

Last night I had a dream... it was a spy dream, with lots of intrigue, romance, and flying. It wasn't the pleasantest of dreams, sort of a mix of being on the run from killers and being stuck at Arcosanti.

We join the dream in progress, near the end:

In the course of the dream a flying assassin, sent from my boss, managed to kill me (this is the second time last night someone in my dreams had murderous intent). I'm not sure how, I think I was shot from the air. In some ways it was a refreshing change from when I've been some Mongol Lord's Concubine killed by assassins because someone thinks I know too much (I hate it when that happens).

What was different about being dead this time was I wasn't simply lying there in a suspended, timeless blackness -- this time I had a vision and the assassin taunted me. The vision started out with blackness. Then a narrow orange track unrolled upwards at the middle bottom of my sight and cut the black in half. I recognized it as a Hotwheels track. I was looking at it from above; then there was a perspective change, and I was looking back along it as it disappeared to the vanishing point.

From the vanishing point I heard the accented voice of my assassin. He sounded vaguely Russian, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. "So, you're finally dead." he said. "Can you feel that?"

I had a vague sensation of pressure, more like my spine was expanding or compressing because bones in my feet were being crushed together and everything was connected.

"Eh, you're disconnected, then," he said. Somewhere along the way the Hotwheels tracks disappeared and I was floating in darkness.

Surprisingly, the dream went on. I'd crawled into an old half-abandoned hotel lobby. I managed to prop myself up in a hallway niche and look across the hall at a mirror in an opposite niche. I was in a kind of three-piece suit: dark jacket, white shirt, pocket hankie in a breast pocket. The suit was slashed with all sorts of horizontal two inch slashes. As I rose, (and as I inhaled, too) green iris swords grew out of the slashes. I couldn't see my legs, but I had a very strong impression that my torso was attached to my lower body by a very large thick iris sword. I hunched down a little and the plants -- which I'm pretty sure were growing out of me -- contracted.


I'm not sure what this dream is trying to tell me. Somewhere along the lines it's telling me not to weed iris beds and not playing Second Life just before bed. But I think that's not the main message.

I should add that while there are some elements in this that remind me of some dream elements that I've managed to turn into a short story, I'm not quite sure how any of this could be part of any fiction I write ... unless...

Happy Equinox a little bit early. This year the Equinox is Wednesday evening, September 22 2010 at 08:09 PM PDT.

This photo was taken at the coast a while back. Stone circles with driftwood gnomons are the kinds of beach sculptures I like to create. Since this stick really isn't straight up and down and the ground isn't level, this sculpture really doesn't tell time per se -- although it could be used to guestimate how long we'd been at the beach (15 degrees is one hour). If we had stayed long enough, I would have continued the path shown by the three stones into a much longer eliptical path.

For me personally, the autumnal equinox is the time of ending projects and distribution. Hmm. I think I have a few loose ends that need ending.

This weekend I spent a lot of time sitting in front of a gas fire with a giant clock over the mantle piece. Between napping, trying to write and thinking a little about Jung's Red Book, I had a vision. If decades are like hours on a clock, my life's at 4:30 PM (assuming we start at Noon), and if I live to be 100 years old, that would be like going to bed at 10:00 PM. There's something sobering about compressing one's life that way. But there's also something nice about knowing that I still have five and a half "hours" left (and about four and a half of those will be productive assuming I inherit my maternal grandmother's longevity genes).

Last night was the Wordos Halloween Short Story Party. After a quick round of business, we sit back, eat snack food, and read each other 1000 word stories. The theme this year was "parties" (I modified mine to include "gatherings"). Stories ranged from pretty funny, to macabre, to downright creepy.

My science fiction story surprised me. I'd originally thought I'd write a sarcastic send up of the recent Sedona Sweat Lodge Tragedy - something snarky about plastic shamans and prosperity theology. Partway through creating the manuscript I realized I was writing a diatribe and switched gears. The deadline loomed and I wrote snatches of the story between preparing for the Shrew's memorial and other family obligations. I forced myself to stop re-writing the beginning and get to the end, which I think I wrote very late at night in bed. Tuesday morning before the reading, I ruthlessly (sort of) chopped out 500 words to make the story fit the reading format.

Tuesday night. My turn at the podium came. I hauled my laptop with me and began the story. As I got to the end, and I started to choke up. I'm loosing voice control and tears are threatening. "Great," I'm thinking as I'm trying to read the ending. "People are going to not understand what I'm saying, and I'm going to look like one of those writers who is overcome with the brilliance of their own artistry. How professional."

Sometimes, a writer will put personal truth into a story. In this case, I drifted into a story resonance through a kind of word association game induced by focusing on the writing-under-deadline process. I hadn't had a chance to read it aloud in its entirety. I don't read my stories so much as perform them, which triggered a catharsis.

In some ways this seems worse - writing as self-therapy. I want my stories to get into the heads of other people, not be a vehicle for me to work through my own issues. But on the other hand, stories are supposed to have heart, an "ah ha!" moment, a place where they speak to a listener's truth. After some reflection, I'm afraid I wrote a typical John story: someone muddles into danger, but mystical music somehow (we're not quite sure how, but it was also a religious experience with dense and obscure philosophical meaning) saves the day by calling them back. But I hope I wrote a story about searching, a story about being lost, a story about family, a story about being found.

Sigh. I guess I have to go watch The Wizard of Oz and Moulin Rouge now....

We went to a local farm with some friends to run around in a corn maze. Afterward we visited the pumpkin patch. It's a local tradition we've been doing for about a decade.











Last year we discovered that the pumpkins in the field were put there by farm hands. I suppose this makes some sense given that the nights usually drop below freezing and the pumpkins would get mushy. But the transport of the pumpkins from the fields to a warehouse and back into the fields doesn't have the same romantic appeal.













In the past we've gone later in the month. This year we went earlier and had better weather. There's lots of farm animals there, too. I like to photograph the horses (and carts) and this year we had to be a little more careful not to spook them (we were in a place the horses weren't expecting us).

Happy new moon ◯

I found my green Lava Lamp up in the attic. I plugged it in last night, and I guess it needs some cooking (or something) because it's not quite flowing the way it should be. Last night it seemed like the stuff at the bottom was a giant convecting blob at the bottom with no larger blobs reaching up to what looked like a floating brain at the top. Occasionally an oily drop would condense off of the brain. I'm not sure if the solution is too hot or too cold, and the web sites I've read suggest gentle heating and cooling to fix things -- if fixing is indeed possible. Resisting the urge to slowly turn the lamp upside down.

In shoulder news... man, my shoulders hurt. I think I woke up about five time last night because my left arm was in an uncomfortable position. Half of my scapular, trapezoid, and biceps want to stretch and the other half really don't. Which reminds me, I need to do my stretches...

Today will probably be one of the nicer days of Autumn; the rains and very cold weather are in the next days' forecast.

Off to the Corn Maze!

Second PT visit for my shoulder. The good news is that the exercises I've been doing have restored some mobility in my shoulder. The bad news is that I probably haven't been doing them enough. I'm still managing pain with ice -- this morning my arm kind of felt like electrical current was running through it. If the pain becomes too bad, I've got some acupuncturists recommendations.

Autumn is here. In the morning the rising sun burnishes a maple on the other side of the fence. And the acorns are falling out of the oaks. No frost yet, but we've taken in the cherry tomatoes, and just yesterday I found three strawberries ripe for the picking.

This morning, despite not being a morning person, I got up at 4:30 AM PST to watch the L-CROSS crash into the Moon. For some reason I thought I'd be able to see a flash or a dust plume or something. My eyes weren't through cleaning themselves or something because looking up at the sky that early was like looking at a movie with dirty contact lenses. I did see a shooting star in Taurus, though.

In other developments, I've been playing with UFT-8 characters, like ♬ ✈ ❂ ❊. I'm looking forward to being able to write (☉♑ Happy Winter) or (☥ Back from the MET) or include the moon phases: ☽ ◯ ☾ Or it's a Mercury Retrograde Day: ☿ʶ Or start singing old Sound Garden songs: ☀ I wish that Egyptian Hieroglyphs were part of the UTF-8.... but it looks like I'd have to include a character set somehow. But if I'm really clever, I can figure out a way to use ❧ in bullet lists.