Gray in the afternoon

I've got two beautiful little Cornish game hens cooking in the oven. My kid, he's watching a Tom and Jerry movie. My husband, he's asleep catching up on the rest he normally doesn't get during the week because, he insists on staying up after a long day at work. The sleep deprivation, that's his self-sabotaging effort to squeeze out a moment that he can enjoy by himself.

I'm here writing to you, feeling kind of mellow. I just put into the blog the code for the music that describes how I feel today and all I want to do is play it over and over because the sky over my home is gray and Jehro's voice, well, it's just the perfect companion for a day like this.

From my window, the crowns of trees are swaying in silent undulations, dancing to the music of gray skies. A small squirrel newly startled, resumes his munching - there he goes, up into the tree. One tiny bit of gray lost into the grayness of another.

Years ago, Federico Cabrera, may he rest in peace, showed me a photograph he had taken of a lonely looking man sitting on a park bench. He had captured solitude, aloneness, separation. I never forgot it. That photograph he titled Gray in the Afternoon. Now you know where the title comes from. I feel somewhat like that today. My kitchen - a little island. My husband, my child - tenuous moorings for the thoughts floating in my head. Sometimes I enjoy moments like this, the perfect nothing of a nothing kind of afternoon.