moonlight also leaks

dinner with baby sister

i just returned, under a nearly full moon, from a great early birthday dinner with my baby sis and her husband, both uber-cool human beings.  we ate at my favorite provo restaurant, you know, communal.  

highlights of communal's dinner for me were the cheese platter with honeycomb and cherry preserves and the kale spinach salad.  the butterscotch pudding in the mason jar was so festive and celebratory. kyle and christian went nuts over the corn with queso and christian was trying to drink the remains of the whiskey brown sugar sauce that the carrots were cooked with from the ramekin.

my baby sister valorie had arrived in the middle of the night from arizona after passing by a huge fire in fillmore, utah, the original capital of utah.  the air is heavy with ash and smoke in provo, a couple hours north of fillmore, blowing in from the six wildfires all around us.  our eyes and lungs are burning, and there's an unsettling feeling in the valley.

valorie said at dinner, "kyle was driving and i was sleeping when i woke up in fillmore at  2 a.m. and saw the fire.  if it wasn't so terrible, it would have been really beautiful."

then i came home to read izumi shikibu's poem "although the wind." valorie's statement and izumi's poem were synchronous.  or maybe valorie's poem and izumi's statement?

both utterances point to what, on the eve of our blog's six month anniversary, has been so beneficial about writing down daily observances.  there is terrible and there is beautiful.  

sometimes they co-exist.  

i've gotten markedly better, even since january, at understanding this, and realizing that you have to let them happen together if they need to.  it's been really good for me to consciously look for the beautiful in every day.  

or whatever you want to call it.  

the significant.  

the observance.  

bloggers and poets both get accused of sometimes picking experiences to have because they will make good fodder for writing.  this can be a danger, the danger of not being able to live the poem and write it, both, as thoreau said.  

but so far the daily writing and observing has made me more grateful, more observant, and more deliberate about the experiences i have every day.  i know it's a little self-indulgent (a lot?), but maybe it's not so bad to live well so you can write about it?

at any rate, thank you for indulging me.  

and thank you for the moon tonight.

“Although the wind ...”

BY IZUMI SHIKIBU

TRANSLATED BY JANE HIRSHFIELD AND MARIKO ARATANI

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.