August- Yellow Light, End Days, Bee Sucking
Its the weirdness of August- and weirder and spookier still because it has that end-of-the-world feeling to it- here for sure (in the PNW)-crazy hot weather, yellow light, grass deader than i has ever been, scary. But undoubtedly, its way more scary almost everywhere else. Though, I have no idea, as I have limited information sources. Which include, The Seattle Times, which I thumb through, and the cover of Time at my mom's house (though she canceled her subscription, so that last thing I know about the country is that there is a horrible addiction to new pain killers- is that old news?). That's it, embarrassingly. Except, for what I see, which is on this very narrow path, mostly around my house, and along Second Avernue, and at a local bar, and along the Snoqualmie River, and beekeeping, and a bi-weekly, or less, trip to Seattle, where there appear to be a lot of people on bicycles with Tattoos dealing with spiraling rental costs and nice things to eat. That's about it. So what do I know.
There is this eerie yellow light over everything here- its the California fires, I am told (a guy at the bar here said so). It scares me- and I doubt I am alone. It's like you go outside and you are on Mars. First came this crazy rain, then the sun peeked out, while it was raining, more like shooting bullets of rains down onto the planet- I sure wouldn't go out when its raining like that- and when the sun came out, it was yellow.
There's a great scene in HG Wells The Time Machine where the fellow cranks on the handle of the time machine too hard, to escape the cannibalistic future men we had become, and end up on the ocean side at the end of the world, where it was all in red light, and there were these huge, slow moving crabs moving up and down the beach. Whenever I see the sun get a weird color, I think of that scene.
My information sources are augmented in the following way.
I am reading a life of Darwin (not a fat one!), a book on Electronics (trying to understand Wheatstone Bridges, I spent my lunch trying to recall all those P- IE formulas- its hopeless- but you need this, to understand how sensors work), a book by Forester about being on a destroyer in WW2 , a book of N Yorker Poems (fat!), and I got half way through The Girl of the Limberlost, which I think my mom gave me, as it involves a young girl who collects moths-which I assume, reminded her of me, oddly enough- and also two other books I just got, a 1924 collection of National Geographics, including an article on geography by Joseph Conrad, and I could look at this book for hours- its like this whole other lost world (and, mu father was born this same year, though I just thought of it) and a book by Gilbert White (?) on The Natural History of Selbourne, which I saw at the local bookstore, and avoided, until I read in my Darwin book, that he read it, and it changed his life. So I bought it.
It's not changing my life- but there is this cool letter from him (its all letters, mostly about birds), in the 1780s, about a boy in his town who became crazy for bees, and he spent his days looking for stinging things, bees and hornets, hanging around in front of hives, snatching bees when they flew out, pulling out their stingers, and sucking out their sugar (seems backwards- he'd want the ones coming home, not leaving). He buzzed like a bees, as he went around, did not talk, just made buzzing sounds, and kept captured bees under his shirt, to suck on during the day. Eventually he moved to another town and died, young.
Not a cheerful story, but a weird one, and about bees, so it seemed fitting for this entry.
There is this eerie yellow light over everything here- its the California fires, I am told (a guy at the bar here said so). It scares me- and I doubt I am alone. It's like you go outside and you are on Mars. First came this crazy rain, then the sun peeked out, while it was raining, more like shooting bullets of rains down onto the planet- I sure wouldn't go out when its raining like that- and when the sun came out, it was yellow.
There's a great scene in HG Wells The Time Machine where the fellow cranks on the handle of the time machine too hard, to escape the cannibalistic future men we had become, and end up on the ocean side at the end of the world, where it was all in red light, and there were these huge, slow moving crabs moving up and down the beach. Whenever I see the sun get a weird color, I think of that scene.
My information sources are augmented in the following way.
I am reading a life of Darwin (not a fat one!), a book on Electronics (trying to understand Wheatstone Bridges, I spent my lunch trying to recall all those P- IE formulas- its hopeless- but you need this, to understand how sensors work), a book by Forester about being on a destroyer in WW2 , a book of N Yorker Poems (fat!), and I got half way through The Girl of the Limberlost, which I think my mom gave me, as it involves a young girl who collects moths-which I assume, reminded her of me, oddly enough- and also two other books I just got, a 1924 collection of National Geographics, including an article on geography by Joseph Conrad, and I could look at this book for hours- its like this whole other lost world (and, mu father was born this same year, though I just thought of it) and a book by Gilbert White (?) on The Natural History of Selbourne, which I saw at the local bookstore, and avoided, until I read in my Darwin book, that he read it, and it changed his life. So I bought it.
It's not changing my life- but there is this cool letter from him (its all letters, mostly about birds), in the 1780s, about a boy in his town who became crazy for bees, and he spent his days looking for stinging things, bees and hornets, hanging around in front of hives, snatching bees when they flew out, pulling out their stingers, and sucking out their sugar (seems backwards- he'd want the ones coming home, not leaving). He buzzed like a bees, as he went around, did not talk, just made buzzing sounds, and kept captured bees under his shirt, to suck on during the day. Eventually he moved to another town and died, young.
Not a cheerful story, but a weird one, and about bees, so it seemed fitting for this entry.
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