Smokey Mountain Breakdown

The day was well underway by the time I rolled out of bed at the crack of afternoon. Dogs restless, eyes bleary, nightgown twisted--I'm hung over from too much sleep. Fall is such a sleepy time of year, but it didn't hit me until today. The quality of the light changes, becoming more golden and somnolent.

I make a pot of lapsang souchong, steeped exactly 6 minutes--it's my special tea, different from the Middle Eastern Assam Earl Grey I drink on a daily basis. I have to drive to Asheville to find it unless I'm having formal tea at The Gallery. Don't know why I decided to drink the Sunday tea on a weekday, but it tastes like fall--tastes like a faraway fire. I go and sit on the bench looking out over my view--the dogwood is just beginning to turn over on Sol Messer Mountain.

I close my eyes then open them, focusing on the tiny bits of thistle and motes blowing through the air. It's one of those things I always look for in spring and in fall--the change of materials shuttled on the back of the wind. The wind column coming from the holler 300 feet below carries chaff stirred up by the bush-hogging in those fields. The air sparkles with seeds and small lives.

A pair of blue-tailed skinks have taken up residence on my mantle. Not sure how they got in, but I've enjoyed their company, these two small beings. Every once in a while, one will lose balance and fall, sounding like a pencil dropping. I wonder if skinks feel embarrassment somewhere in their lizardy brains. Surely, it's a cause for shame to lose footing when your prehensile toes fail to grip? I don't know why I haven't put them outside. They have poisonous tails, they say.

It's just one of those days, I guess. Sparkled and sleepy, where somewhere between Zen seeing and skink tails, you dance on the head of a pin. Alone.