Today can’t decide if it’s spring or winter in southern Oregon. The sun is exhibiting spring friendliness but that wind has a winter bark and nip. The rest of the area seems reluctant to take sides. We humans stay cautiously busy, waiting for the day to make up its mind.
The Pre-writing Walk
A northern wind slices off some of the sun’s warmth. It’s a surprisingly clear, bright sun, the kind of sun that appears after storms dump inches and feet of snow.
But there’s no snow today. Snow is as rare as found diamonds this year. Ashland’s traffic is light. Town’s energy emanates a feel-good vibe. Restaurants are gearing up for lunch. Enticing aromas tempt and tease on every corner and most doors. I identify grilled burgers, French fries, and grilled onions among the scents. There are others that tantalize but leave without identification. We have a lot of good eateries and abundant offerings. Fortunately, their plot to capture me is avoided.
The writer, editor, and I discuss today’s writing plans, works spoken only in my head, so others don’t pin unwanted labels on me. The plans are fully developed, and I’m eager to get to them.
Still, I walk, thinking about last night’s dreams. One in particular trots alongside my thoughts. I was doing dishes, and I had a plan, but I was falling behind…is that about writing, life, or something else? It involved a POTUS but not the current guy. Others want to step in to help me, but a woman instructs them, “Let him go.” I struggle, turning in different directions, becoming thoughtless and distracted about what I was doing. It occurs to me that the sinks in my dream were full of dirty dishes and hot, soapy water. I slip a reminder into my head to look that up.
Lifted by the day, I walk longer and farther than planned, but finally make the turns necessary to reach my office away from home, the coffee shop where I write. ‘My’ space is available, and I take to it.
Time to write like crazy, at least one more.
Sunshine and Rain
Have you ever been walking through the rain but in sunshine, wearing sunglasses and looking for a rainbow, and think, this could be the perfect metaphor for my life?
Yes, once in a while, like today.
Just Wondering
You ever complain about your weather, and then read about someone else’s weather, and say, “Well, at least I don’t have it as bad as them.”?
Yeah, it’s freezing fog here, but it’s dry and in the thirties. Of course, we worry about the snow pack, and not having water this summer, and what those dry conditions will mean to the fire season.
Do you ever think we’ll get weather control? And, if we do, will we have weather neutrality, or will corporations and the wealthy “manage” it for their own benefit?
Whether
You ever look out the window to check the weather, and then check the weather online, and wonder whether the weather online is the weather for your area – or maybe it’s the wrong day – because it just doesn’t match?
Yeah.
Feels Like…
I was checking the temperature for our area via Wunderground. It said, “104.3 F.” Underneath, it said, “Feels like 78 F”.
We wondered where they were, that they were so optimistically cool.
May!
Hey writers, it’s May!
You didn’t know? Sorry, I didn’t mean to spring it on you. Guess I should have included a spoiler alert.
I’m lovin’ May so far. Here in Ashlandia, the rain has ceased. We’re in a delightfully pleasant crease of weather, greenery, fresh air and blooms. ‘Spring’, some call it.
Whatever, the days are longer and sunshine rich. The furnace didn’t kick on last night, one of the traditional signs of spring arriving here. That warmth, long days and sunshine platter feeds my writing and creative energies, enabling a surge of writing like crazy.
How ’bout you? Do you find the seasons, weather or daylight affects your writing?
Today’s Theme Music
Theme music is often about setting the stage for what’s about to happen. It’s a familiar, establishing your expectations.
On some days, I like defiant theme music to play in my head. They’re not necessarily days when I battling conditions; these can also be days when I’m determined to complete a task or pursue a dream.
Other days find me seeking melancholy theme music for accompaniment, fun music, or dance music. Theme music that’s nostalgic to me is frequent. That’s not surprising. Nostalgia is all about trying to achieve a particular state of mind. For me, that balance was often about hopes and dreams, youth and maturity, satisfaction and eagerness to pursue life.
The weather also affects my theme music choices. Today’s song, though, hits in many areas for me. It’s pouring rain through balmy air and upset winds. So I’m reaching for a song that accompanies my mind’s drift toward nostalgia and weather but remains something that
T2POIM
Writing is about learning what you like to read and then learning what you like to write and then writing what you like to read. That’s my opinion. Naturally.
So today’s Things That Probably Only Interest Me (T2POIM) is about our local temperature. Arriving home yesterday just past five in the pre-evening (or post-afternoon), I checked the temps. Thirty-seven F. Sweet.
We’ve had days of colder weather that we’re used to. I’m not bragging that ours was cold because I know my sisters were out shopping in twelve degree weather. We never went that low.
That’s the thing, however. We usually don’t go low on temps. A few times per winter finds temps in the low twenties and high teens, which is what we’ve been experiencing. As our homes aren’t built to endure that, we need to attend matters like the furnace, pipes and cats to ensure nothing freezes on us.
Thirty-seven yesterday pre-evening marked the first time that we were over freezing that late in the day. I skated through some relief with a mental cry that the worse was over. But I kept watching the temp. Six: thirty-seven. Seven: thirty-seven. Eight: thirty-seven.
Midnight: thirty-seven.
By now, I believed my weather station was kaput. But local online stations showed the same temperature. So…I went to bed.
Three: thirty-seven.
Six: thirty-seven.
Seven: thirty-seven.
Eight: thirty-seven.
I went to Southern Oregon University’s online weather station. It’s physically situated several hundred feet lower in elevation and in a field where either sun or fog often envelops it. Its temp was but one degree below our temp. Pulling up their graphs, I saw the same results I’d noticed at home: the temperature hadn’t changed since five PM yesterday.
By ten, our temperature had finally climbed to thirty-eight. But it struck me as astonishing, that through a winter night and past sunrise, the temperature remained the same. Of course, seeing the thick cloud cover and then the rain, I knew a warm front had moved in.
It’s interesting. I’m sure, though, seeing an unchanging temperature over fifteen hours remains a T2POIM.
Winter Has Come
Snow has been sneaking down the surroundings mountains day by day since mid-November. I’ve tracked its progress, glancing up to see peaks and fields sporting new white blankets, setting off the barren brown and evergreens. Last night, under the night shield, the snow advanced to us.
We’re not the valley floor. That’s about two thousand feet further down, but one to three inches at our location is significant for the I-5 corridor. For just fourteen miles from us is the pass. This is where I-5 makes it through the mountain range between northern California and southern Oregon. It’s an impressive climb, in the top ten at least, of climbs I’ve driven, although way down from the scale of those encountered in the Rockies and Alps.
The pass isn’t looking bad this morning. The absent sunshine and temperatures hovering around freezing aren’t good signs for easy commutes but the roads are fairly clear. Just beware of black ice. About as far as I’m commuting is down to the coffee shop, lucky me. I’ll drive down there and then walk around downtown, stimulate the writing juices, and look for The Wall, the men of the Watch and white walkers.
Michael Seidel, writer 