it was not a dandelion.

There was an impromptu rainshower last night. It lasted all of three minutes before hastening off to another clime... it was as if you could hear a director shouting "cut, cut!" behind the scenes. Or like a singing telegram at the wrong person's house... oops! That's San Diego rain for you.

Anyway, we watched it speckle the pool's surface from our back door, just in time to see our downstairs neighbors across the way painting their walls a vivid Chinese Red. The last strip of the previous shade, a bright Coral Pink, was glossed over forever... fun to watch, indeed. And why were our neighbors painting their living room at one in the morning? Just 'cuz. Gosh!


Do you know what i do miss, though? The kind of weather that foxes get married in... When i first saw Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, years and years ago, i was so taken with that story. If i'm lucky, the day that i (if i) get married will be sunny and showering. Please watch this film if you haven't already.

Saw an "S" on the floor of a cafe last night, formed from a frayed and discarded piece of string– a broken shoelace, perhaps? The bike ride home graced me with a "c" (errant black tar spill), and an "m"– not sure about this one, it was probably a straw wrapper or something.
The prevalence of 'S's and figure eights that i find is starting to making me suspicious... i guess they are in that family of shapes that is just generally more likely to occur in nature (like 'V's, and 'T's, for whatever reason). i am also starting to wonder if i should quit reporting on these until i can get photos, which would make it all ever so much more interesting. But for truth's sake, i think i shall continue the chronicle. They are obviously not spelling anything out at this point, although at the beginning i have to admit that i thought maybe they were.
Is it going to be an anagram, then? Or do i fill in the blanks as i see fit? Do i have to wait until the end of my life to figure it all out? And what will it say?


In other news: there was a house, a tiny, skulking house which no person was ever seen walking in or out of, on Raymond Street, around the corner from us when we lived on Alcatraz Ave. This house's singular characteristic was a great gossamer mass of fluffy seed-puffs all over its frontice (yes, i just made up that word, go with it) and all over the monstrous prickly weedy plant in the yard beyond the sidewalk. They would adhere in teeming numbers to this sprawling mass of vegetation from which they (presumably) were spewed, which itself appeared to grow from directly beneath the house. It was weird because they never seemed to actually float away; to get anywhere to take root... it could very well be that this creeping plant was some sort of enchanted organism, designed solely to intimidate and reproduce, and that a Sleeping Beauty of sorts lay within the house itself, waiting to be awoken.
In any case, this choking mass of fluff would appear once a year, clinging quietly to the stucco, the brambles, the crabgrass. We used to walk by and delight in it... i would scoop up great big handfuls of the stuff and fling it into the air above our heads, where they would scatter, startled, and drift lazily down.... it always seemed like they were airborne for an exceptionally long time.
My greatest dream back then was to collect enough of these puffos and place them inside a giant makeshift snowglobe, which proved to be the project's main hindrance– could i find something big enough? Glass would almost certainly be too fragile at that size, but would plastic be pretty enough? And what would the scene be, inside this little world? A girl, playing in a huge meadow? A farmer, endlessly raking up pile after pile of them? A stretch of lonesome highway, depicting a Tumbleweed Attack? Or a simple snowscape, diaphanous and gentle? Could someone my size shake it? Should i go beach-ball sized and keep it tangible, or rent an entire storefront and use some sort of air funnel to keep them constantly in motion?

I never figured it out. Bummed about that to this day.

And i know that that house is still there, sitting quietly between its neighbors, not asking for anything or giving anything in return, except for this wonderful yearly crop. If anyone is ever on this particular block, it is a small, unassuming house somewhere on the west side of the street, and of course i can't remember which time of year it does it's thang- probably summer, but what do i know. Have fun. Hope you find it.


Leaving you with my favorite track from one of my favorite movies... Takes me right back to the glory days of youth. Until next time.