Oceanic Sunsets Over Silk-Flossed Streets

Gooooood morning to...YOU. Goooooood morning to....YOU!

Morning my love. So! I've decided to give this blog another try. Not that it ever failed me so much as I failed it, but with a renewed sense of vitality from a freshly healed foot, and a refined sense of purpose from the master's applications we'll 

soon be sending out, I felt it fitting to give my runofthemorningthoughts another go.

I have two posts for this morning! The first is a report about an incredible tree that I've stumbled across a few times while walking/running

 the banks of Burr. The second is a letter I wrote, waxing fully poetic and philosophical atop the banks that shade our little town. With that said:

SILK-FLOSS TREES!

(that's MY picture!)  : )

It took me a good while to find out what these lil' puppies are called. Also called Chorisia speciosa, these guys are native to Brazil, but somehow managed to come to the dry climates of Los Angeles, where it's able to thrive. The trees blossom in a fury of beautiful pink flowers

with each blossom looking something like this

And the seeds of the tree budding in these silky, amazing little puffs like this

The more I research these trees, the more interesting they become. Generally the trees lose the majority of their leaves when they blossom, which, for most trees, would mean a loss of food supply (fewer leaves=less photosynthesis). However, silk floss trees come equipped with green trunks that can photosynthesize sunlight when the tree is leafless! And, the crazy thorns, apart from making the tree look like some jurassic relic, serve to catch morning dew and shade the trunk, allowing the tree to absorb water before it dries up. 

But what's really cool about these trees is that they're a main food source for namakemonos!! Which lead me to this amazing video (he's eating an almond leaf, but still....geeeeebobareedadlkajklfdshakjf!!)

I couldn't embed it, but go to youtube and type in "Baby Sloth Milo eating leaves". And while you're there look up "Baby Sloth"

shhhhhhooooot!!!

ok, and the second post:

___________________________

"I'm writing again, with frequency, which I realize is as necessary to consciousness as oxygen is to the heart, a necessity I am also, slowly but surely, incorporating into my daily routine with exercise.

So many thoughts on the way up here, to the bench-marked mid-summit of the Brand Park hiking trail. Thoughts that now are worn over and much too rehearsed to be real, to be honest.

Instead, I will start fresh. There's a point here, straight out from the bench I'm sitting on, where the hill feigns to be a cliff, and it's rolling connection with the hills below disappears. And the floor of the San Fernando Valley, and all of Los Angeles, becomes an ocean if you let it. The haze of the air, whether from pollution or simply the sandy dryness of the desert air, diffuses the sunlight so that the distant mountain peaks sit above a sea of light, and are easily mistaken for clouds. 

And framed in this way, I watch the sun's setting, with a fixed, intense gaze that breathes in the scope of this ocean, and finds the weight of the day revolving with the sun, slipping from off my shoulders and over the edge of the horizon.

I become a 13th century Spaniard, with the scope, and the edge of the world for that matter, matching its perception. I can fathom the boundaries of my world, but nothing farther. 

And this simple, clear definition of my surroundings, defined by my sight, for this brief moment, gives my mind a breath of clarity and the glimpse of a world where everything is not beyond my comprehension.

I thought on the way up here I would write a poem about the sun and my age. Half way up the mountain I thought I would write of music, or of the growing distance I feel from my mother.  I don't think I've ever before thought the exact words I wrote above, but I am almost sure I have felt their sentiment every time I've come up here.

There's something in that- that our experiences are not simply the real-life counterparts to writing, but that a writing is something novel, and, of itself, an event apart from the experiences that prompt it. 

The sun has set. The dusk, the crepuscule, is now my lantern and I must descend before it's gas runs out.

to my love,

forever yours,

-mister

Honey bee!!!
Originally I wanted these writings to be early morning meditations on the subtle fibers that link everything together- the early morning hours, the wakefulness of the elderly, dogs dragging their owners out to the streets, the defiant glow of the Yum Yum lights. But this morning, as with last morning, I found that I was more simply waking up than watching things closely. There are a few things that are becoming familiar trail markers on my morning run. Somewhere between Alameda and the next light there are sprinklers that pretend to be a rushing river.

oh man....banks.

money money money MONEY.....mon-nay!!

ok, pooper, everyone's home, so this'll have to be the post for today.

love you pooper.
you did awesome with aerobics today, you little worker bee.
-mister

Sep. 8, 2008

Run: home to two blocks past Alameda and back, along

Thoughts:

You are next to me, right now, typing on your computer, with a small crowd of glass holding our breakfast between us. I woke this morning, after having a dream that involved you, Olivia and Shogen, and some lost house on the dry end of a sewer ravine. I woke, went to the bathroom, turned on the lights, and the sting of it, the brightness, caused me to believe it was still the middle of the night, still 3am, maybe 4.
But as I sat on the toilet, a feeling of wakefulness came over me, and I suddenly felt the stillness of the morning, and remembered a similar wakefulness from when I was young. The street lights outside still on, and the traffic passing below the window infrequent and quiet, I remember feeling like the morning hours were entirely my own. Before school started, before my parents awoke even. I claimed the morning and its stillness as though it were a foreign country, newly decorated with the flag of my intentions. Sometimes I'd wake to a ski outfit I'd lain out the night before in ebullient expectation of a ski trip; sometimes I'd watch morning cartoons and exercise; sometimes I'd make a full and tasteful breakfast; sometimes I'd just read or write or play guitar. I don't think it was ever with strong intention that I woke up so much as it was with a desire to explore those few hours that existed before the schedule of the day devoured them.

I think it was that thought that convinced me to stay up this morning. And so with that it mind, I walked out of the bathroom, put on my swim trunks, sat by your side, watched you stretch the quiet morning air above your head and on either side of your shoulders, looked closely and intently at your closed eyes, and then went out to the streets to jog. There were many thoughts, impressions, sounds, passing people, lit morning windows and....I wanted to catch them all, the most important of which was that, with my increasing age, there seems an increasing familiarity with experiences that keeps them from seeming vibrant and novel. Sort of what we spoke of about the radiohead concert- being there but also feeling a bit like you were seeing something on t.v.

I feel like the closest experiences these days exist more in ideas than in physically emperical events.

Like yesterday, when you were down before heading to work, possibly because of music, maybe just 'cause life can get you down sometimes, and I looked at you, and didn't want you to stress, simply because I love you, and I said, "I love you. Don't stress missy."

And the idea of it crossed through everything, and I saw through all the air between us, and all the skin, bone and body between us, to you, and saw it touch you, and you smiled back at me.

I loved that.

k, gotta run to work.
See you soon pooper.
love love love you.
-mister.