The Red Fox, the Lavender Room and the Purple Hyacinths

Every morning I drive by a lake and see the sun rising over the water. The first glimpse of this daily sight sets my mind loose and some of my best writing thoughts bubble to the service as my car hugs the curving shoreline. Today, I remembered why the woman in the chorus seemed so familiar.

Last Friday night we were in the audience for a thrilling performance of Brahm's Requiem performed by the Handel & Haydn orchestra with a 50 member chorus and two soloists. Big orchestra with even a Serpent. Bet you've never heard a brass serpent make music. I had two hours to look at the chorus, and most of the singers reminded me of someone. Classical music frees up by mind as good as a drive by the lake.

One of the singers looked like a woman I noticed a few years ago having breakfast at Henrietta's Table in Cambridge, MA. She was young with short hair and no particular style, good or bad, at a table with 3 or 4 others. She had obviously ordered the "healthy breakfast," and for a long 40 minutes she took tiny bites of a bran muffin and a humongous bunch of purple grapes. One at a time grape by grape and crumb by crumb. Well, it sure didn't look like anything one would want to gobble down. I felt condescension and pity that anyone was so constrained as to order such fodder to while away a pleasant occasion when all around her were eating something tasty. She'll outlive us by a week.

Today, still driving by the lake, I thought about the year I graduated from high school. Two days after graduation, my folks moved to Denver, the far far edge of Denver into a development where all the houses were basically the same. My mom like to watch The Price is Right. Whenever I walked through the living room (back then the only room with a television) I would yell "freeze!" much to her annoyance. For the first time I was allowed to pick the color of my room and chose a soft pale lavender that looked great with my first modern art, a Raoul Duffy print. My mother, whose choice of paint for any room was always beige or white, burst into tears when she saw my room. I loved it. I read the Molly Bloom soliloquy from Ulysses in that room.

Today at noon I took a walk, and where I work the only place to walk is a) the parking lot and around the building by the loading and unloading docks and where the empty trucks are parked and b) the industrial park next door. Last spring, I saw a fox sunning herself at the edge of the Industrial Park parking lot. She wasn't shy at all, just scratched herself and looked at me. A week or so later, there was a dead fox, hit by a car, along the road and I just knew it was my fox. I never saw her again. Ttoday, on my walk, I looked for her again. No fox.

There was so much trash and refuse along the route that I wanted to weep. Every yucky kind of plastic, paper, metal. Nowhere to rest one's eye without seeing garbage. Yesterday I noticed the snow drops blooming in a particularly icky area. I keep meaning to take a trowel and a plastic bag to work and rescue them. Never have.

Just when I was beside myself at the sight of so much dreck, I rounded a corner and there, in the sandy soil, someone had planted a little circle of hyacinths, which were about to burst into bloom. It was such a pleasant shock. Then I noticed a bush with tiny leaves and even some trees budding out.

I thought about addressing a letter to all the offices in the area.

Dear Mr. Office Park Resident:
Kindly send someone out with a big contractor bag to pick up all the disgusting crap and garbage on your property. It looks like the worst kind of slum and is ruining my noonday walk.

What to you think? Should I? Or just suck it up and get on with the walking? Always some dilemma. Always.

Grapeshot