Vacation tchotchka

Bee dance

Bees
The bee hive lives. I returned home on Thursday from Portland Nursery to a swarm of bees in my back yard. I had just been remarking to T. that morning that we should call Tom, the beekeeper, because the dead hive was attracting the attention of local bees. Well...those local bees were scouts for a hive that had outgrown their current digs. The scouts led the pioneer honeybees to their new home, and marked the occasion with a swarming ceremony. It was terrifying and beautiful. The world around us works to it's own logic and rhythm, even as we humans attempt to ever increasingly control it.

Sadness
I've done little writing this week. Sadness. Especially since I've been on vacation. I think my body and mind both needed a break though. I drive so hard throughout the week, and then I don't even let up on the weekends. I'm the girl who wakes up at 6 am even on Saturdays. After a week of vacation though, I'm amazed to find that I can sleep in. I woke up at 9:30 today.

I'm afraid to go back to work. Not only because I've been having a hard time and I'm not looking forward to what and who awaits, but the idea of getting back on that moving train. Do I even know how to have fun now? Do I know how to relax? I watch The House of Elliot, and think "I'm just like Beatrice..." who obsesses about her business, whose marriage has failed, who is angry and worried all the time. Egh. We even have the same hair.

Movies
If you haven't seen Cache yet, you should. The best film I've seen in a while. Subtly political. The conflict between France and Algeria, and the current conflict in the Middle East form book ends to the story, and the film manages, through the story of a bobo family that starts getting creepy parcels and anonymous phone calls, to call attention to the way conflict can build up over nothing. Paranoia, distrust, leaping to conclusions without evidence...human failings that have global consequences. It made the war in Iraq feel very personal, in a way that no amount of CNN coverage can. Don't go if you're sleepy though. It moves slowly.

Fog
Early Friday morning, T. followed me out to Gresham in his truck, so I could take my car in for repairs. But he had a meeting at Leach Botanical Garden to start some web work for them, and didn't have time to drop me off at home. So unshowered, uncaffinated, unbreakfasted me took a hike through the garden. I was hoping it was early enough to avoid humans, but I was greeted by the groundskeeper Scotty, who told me just how many species of ferns and birds were living in the garden. I nodded politely, and sought escape in the woods. Every spider in the garden must have spun a web across the trail, because after awhile, I could feel them building up on my skin. Tiny invisible filaments everywhere. I'm sure I had a spider or two in my hair as well.

I also saw a snail crossing the trail and a cat hot-tailing it down the path as it was chased by some very angry birds. Eventually, I picked a bench and thought about what it would look like if I were to take a little nap. Would I get kicked out for vagrancy or something? But a bus of grade school kids on a field trip soon saved me from appearing homeless. And in past years, I would have felt uncomfortable under the critical eyes of children, sitting there alone on a bench--hair wild, and drowsy--but maybe I've truly grown up because I didn't really care. I just sat there and listened to the teacher until T. was finished with his meeting.