prime.

there was a thunderstorm on tuesday night. the first of the summer. my family always gathers in the living room to watch the lightning out the big picture window and the big trees in the field outside rush back and forth...always an event in this household.

but right now its clear out and i can hear the sprinkler outside my open window, slowly and comfortingly ticking around. mom's cooking dinner in the kitchen: wild rice soup with fresh baked bread to be exact. it's sort of twilight out...still a blue sky, but creeping with pink and a darker color stretching toward the far corner of my window. i can see a few stars. i'm perfectly comfortable, under my duvet and propped up with two white pillows. i have a jar of tea next to me and the fan is whirring loudly. its warm. i think i could fall asleep in four seconds if i let myself.

the last five days have been solely filled with:

reading
(i think i've been to the library about four times now, i just can't get enough).
running around colby lake with jojo and amy.
working on the quilt that grandma and i started last summer.
exploring linden hills and the little bread shop with my mom.
naps on the couch in the addition with the sun in patches on the carpet.
hikes in afton state park (one of mom's belated mother's day presents). 
work at gap and the alpha center (those hours are indispensable).
the grand ole creamery and walks down summit ave. with the fam.
lolling around in the sun
(accompanied by the current/classical MPR and spf 15 of course).
 lots and lots of unpacking. but it's been good...i like sorting myself out in that way, both metaphorically and physically.

yesterday, ames and i went to trader joes and picked up some dried apricots, chevre with honey fresh goat cheese, and iced mint green tea: we could not have been happier. also, i found a little sock monkey key chain for my keys at a little shop down by lake of the isles, and he is named clive (this is monumental because i've been searching for one of these for quite a while now).

it's been the best of summer days, really.

1.

the shingles are flying off the roof
in one line like a road you have to walk.
please don’t scratch your hair
until that section of your mind underneath disappears.
stop pouring your tea into air vents
and the potholes in the street.
you have a jar of cold water
and a bag full of cranberries, exactly twenty-one.
i’ve tied names like Astrid and Ingrid
with twine to my steering wheel;
and really, there’s only a year and a thousand miles
between all our wooden chairs and yours.
i wouldn’t worry.

finally rest.

As soon as we set up camp on Friday night, it rained. It was so peaceful, lying amidst fifteen blankets and pillows while listening to the rain. It only lasted about an hour, and then we all took off for the riverbank. We may or may not have ran through the mud and rapelled the cliff faces while the after-rain fog rolled in. You'll have to decide. But if we didn't, that would be a pretty glorious thing to do. 

corner of lincoln.

Before my grandpa died, he used to always tell my mom, in great detail, about his mall walks. It's actually quite a spectacle if you go on a Saturday morning. Elderly men and women of all speeds and sizes cruise around the outer perimeter of the mall as a source of exercise and often do so simply to escape the feelings of loneliness that can commonly plague them.  My grandpa would explain to my mother how, as he walked, people would hardly look at him. Especially the younger people. He explained how he felt invisible. Like he had passed through time, and now no one cared. Only the mannequins in the store windows really saw him. He was just a shadow moving along the inner walls.

On the corner of Lincoln and Lydia, adjacent to our dorm building, is a retirement home for the elderly. Every now and then, I see one particular older man haltingly push his walker toward that corner and take a seat on the small shelf hooked to the front of his apparatus. I've seen him sitting there for hours at a time before. I'll drive to class and then drive back after, and he'll still be there. He sits kind of crouched down, elbows resting on the arms of his walker and his wrinkled hands clasped in front. His beige golf cap is always a bit tipped down over an incredibly creased face, and his neck seems to be sinking into the rest of his body.

I wonder what he thinks about - watching the traffic zoom by and observing a barrage of college students tromp across the crosswalk everyday. I wonder if it makes him remember when he was young. I wonder if he's lonely. Or if he has a family who visits him. Or if he went to war when he was twenty-three or fell in love at a gas station. I wonder if he is forgotten. Maybe he counts his cheerios out everyday, exactly nineteen. Maybe he lives for TV dinners and the six o'clock news and his walks to the corner. I wonder if he feels like a shadow.

As I pulled up to the stop sign, before I even knew what I was doing, I found myself waving and smiling at him. Almost immediately, a smile spread to his furrowed face, and he haltingly pulled a shaking hand out of his teal windbreaker and raised it to wave back. I saw him in my rearview mirror as I drove away, still grinning and holding his quivering hand in the air.

It's curious that Roseville would place a retirement home on one side of the street and a college dorm on the other. Like two bookends. We prologue and they epilogue. The rest in between is still missing.

Well, I hope he knows that he was recognized today, that he wasn't overlooked or disregarded. I can't stop thinking about him.