Bat Signal, Eh?

Remember Vasehenge?

Another trick of the sun...

Bat Signal, Eh?

I looked up at the ceiling and saw this. Is someone calling the Canadian Batman for an emergency in Sedona? It took a few moments to see that the morning sun was reflecting off a bowl on a table.

Rats

I was going to let you guess how that occurred; now the suspense is ruined.

Drifting Off Into the Memory

I was hiking on a trail yesterday,* earbuds installed and music playing. I was listening to Joni Mitchell's Harry's House-Centerpiece from the Hissing of Summer Lawns album. I was fairly certain nobody was within earshot and was singing along. "Baby You're My Centipede**" came out loud and clear, but at the last verse, I suddenly shut up and was smitten by nostalgia. Although I listen to this album and song fairly frequently, this time my alleged mind was cast back to the time and occasion when I first had it...

I had a newish portable cassette player which held a recording of Hissing of Summer Lawns and other Joni music in my pocket. I walked across town from my place of striving to Bloomingdale's, a distance of perhaps mile, singing as I galumphed. (It's OK to sing in the streets of New York City; in Sedona one is protected by anonymity, in NYC people assume you're dangerous and avoid you.) Harry's House was playing as I neared Bloomingdale's, and I didn't have to look far for the skinny black models in raving curls. I probably waited outside the chocolate shop until the song finished, made my purchase, and contemplatively, returned to work, musically satisfied and chocolatically renewed.

Snapping back to the present, I thought how differently life has turned out. The first time, it never occurred to me that I'd live anywhere but New York City, that Bloomingdale's would never deprecate the ground-floor chocolate shop, and less than a decade later, I would be residing in suburban New Jersey. And half a lifetime after that, I would find myself in Sedona Arizona, of which I had never heard back in Harry's House days.

* I was initially reluctant to dignify my activity by characterizing it as "hiking." It's really walking, albeit in the boskage rather than on a man-made surface. But, as with rocks and boulders, there is a definition of both activities, and hiking refers to the setting rather than the difficulty of the perambulation in question. So, even though I was simply walking to the food store to procure "ingredients" it was a legitimate "hike." Am I a Nature Boy or what?

** Yes, I am repeating myself a tiny bit.

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