Have you noticed the windows in the mornings,
cobwebs pressed flat on the glass and the screens,
bugs flying tired, trapped overnight in between?
Have you noticed when the windows are opened,
that it takes awhile to become aware,
to find the way out on a curve of air?
Fini
Click here for more on prompt “#113 – Curve or Curves” from other Sunday Scribblings participants.
The Essence of a Thing 
Would there were windows to open, now that we’re all bugs caught in the death grip of Texas summer. What I wouldn’t give for a curve of air.
Early mornings are actually the best time to catch the curves: we were up at 5 to get our son and some of his friends to school for their field trip to NASA in Houston: “cool” morning breezes galore, memories of that other briefer season here in Tres Leches: not-summer.
Thanks for your quick response to your readership (a double dose!): no Pynchon you. Mil gracias.
Wow, I struggled to find inspiration with this prompt this week, so I let go of it, and here you have two posts. Ha…
I love mornings and every day I regret that I’m always asleep when those happen. I can’t help it that I’m a crazy night-owl.
This reminds me of a guy I know, spent some time in penitentiary. He said the first three years he was crazy to get out, but when his time came up nine years later he wasn’t so sure. I bet for some bugs over night can be close to a life sentence !
Paschal: and a thousand thanks to you for stopping by this little afterthought of a miniscule ditty!
Speaking as the first stanza: boy howdy do I know what you mean! I remember the TX heat well!
Speaking as the second stanza: have you noticed how endearing even the most questionable quality can be when one is in love?
(Really I could be almost as bad as Pynchon but with good teeth) :-D
Ms. Mood: ooooh girl I had a hard time with it, too! Don’t let quantity throw you a curve! It was an evil prompt I’m telling you! Believe me, I thought of letting it go, too! Anyway, you’ve got three more luscious muse feasts to do for the astrologically minded! You just stay fresh for those, k? ;-)
LOL re: mornings! I love mornings and tend toward night-owl-ness, too! It’s a tragic combo, eh? To me there’s nothing like getting up early, letting the dog out, making coffee, sitting at the laptop, and in the stillness inviting the Universe to dump a load of pretty words on me!
Hey there Bass! You snuck this one in while I was addressing the illustrious P and the divine DM! Let’s see… If a fly went to the penitentiary for the equivalent of nine years of human life, it’d be in the middle of midlife crisis when it was freed to catch the curve of air… The fly’s answer to the little red Corvette???
thats an interesting prompt, and an equally fascinating responses to it, miss! awareness always takes a while. a little longer than usual, if we are lost in our own things. the longest, when we are lost in the bittersweet thing they call love.
… and sometimes the curve of air is too little too late for those who fought too hard and tired too quickly
I’m getting to these comments a little late. That is a very vivid image, and I assume that you meant it (“them” since I refer to both posts) to be both real and metaphorical. I feel quite caught on a screen today.
That’s the perfect description of a morning! I need to go to bed earlier, it’s a must!
Well hey there Dharmabum! Here you are, and how nice, as always with your ultra-keen observations! :-) I totally agree with awareness taking longer when we’re all caught up in and busy with worldly things…but I’ve always considered the bitter part of love especially to be a big shove back toward ourselves…and there we are with nothing to ponder but our sorry condition, and then the condition of the world, then the universe, then it’s Why am I here?, and Who am I, anyway? and all that good stuff! No? Not your experience? ;-)
Danni: dark, but I like dark, and well, just plain true!
Granny Smith: late? Pffft! There’s no such thing ‘round here! I’m glad for a visit from you anytime! I really appreciate your presence :-)
Yes, both real and metaphorical, you could say that… I’d put this little ditty there, for sure. The first stanza is quite literal and the second works both literally and figuratively, i.e. the bug theme can be continued or it can be applied to human lives.
The Cassie story… I dunno, that’s pure weirdness, less metaphorical, more sci-fi, maybe. Certainly I mean it to be a literal invitation to the reader to ask himself or herself What if this could really happen? and to ponder the thoughts that come from that question.
Oh hi, Ms. Mood! You love it here, don’t you ;-) I love your place, too (as you can see!) MMMmmm, it is delicious indeed!!! But we night owls have to be real, you know? I mean, I agree we should aim for going to bed early because the reward is like an Olympic gold medal! But let’s not be too hard on ourselves if we revert to our nature and have to take bronze! Good plan or merely bad psychology? =:-0
Interesting thoughts in there. Like it..
gutted
I’ll have to take the bronze for now. Good plan, good plan.
Bass kinda caught onto my first thought after reading—that for a bug, caught in between windows, a night could be a year, a decade or more. The process of aging is an intriguing concept (my birthday having gone by has nothing to do with my intrigue). Why is it that we live for some 70-odd years, when dogs live for 15. Do they see the world differently because of that? If so, what about tortoises that have lived for 190 years, or whales that have lived for 211 years? How much have they seen, and does it seem like it to them? I guess there I’m going into the whole animal consciousness thing, and I don’t want to go there. Not right now. But there’s a woman, Jeanne Calment. She lived for 122 years and 164 days. Born in 1875 and died in 1997. She married in 1896, and her husband died in 1942. She lived for 55 years after that. In fact, not only did she outlive her husband, she outlived her daughter (who died in 1934 of pneumonia), her grandson (who died in a motorcycle accident in 1963) and the man who she sold her condo to (who died of cancer in 1995). She has seen so much (which I want to, true) but at what cost? Scientists predict they will find a cure for mortality soon enough. But the same question applies—at what cost? Will we be forced to live for eternity as wrinkled old fools? (Clarification: I’m not calling old people fools, but we will be if we choose to live that long.) At some point you will have seen everything, at some point the most exciting thing will be finding a new way to die. Whoop de doo. I apologise for my morbidity.
Oh, almost forgot my second thought after reading this one. Is it possible to become so used to something, that change—or the possibility of change—takes a while to notice?
gautami tripathy: oh gosh, you, the supreme poet were supposed to read the Mind Curve piece and not notice this poetry attempt! ;-)
Welcome back! Glad you stopped by :-)
Devil: alright, let’s take our bronzes, clink our champagne glasses, and run, get some cash for ‘em at a pawn shop or something! :-)
Void! You are amazing. You are possessed. You’ve compiled in one paragraph some of the most interesting information and facts on ages, aging, ageless, timeless tortoise-ness… Great questions. I would love to know what accounts for the discrepancies, why time doesn’t pass at the same rate for all creatures. Like why is one short year of living for a dog, seven years hard? I’m thinking it has to be a chemical thing. Like the adrenaline our bodies produce allows us to perceive what’s happening and what’s required of us at a faster rate, although to us it feels like we’re in slow motion. Different creatures, different chemicals and quantities produced, different life spans? Back to the old DNA thing!
Man I haven’t heard the name Jeanne Calment mentioned in eons! Wasn’t she the one that smoked and drank substantial amounts of cigarettes and alcohol every day of her life? That cracked me up when I read about her many years ago. That’s DNA again for you! Devilish stuff it is!
I’m in agreement with you 100% on human aging. I say a short time on this planet goes a long way. And hilarious, but scary, too (because you’re probably right), is finding a new way to die! You know humans, we’ll find a way to market anything! Can you imagine seeing ads for different methods of dying on TV, different companies touting their new and improved methods, in the same format as the drug companies’ ads, with fake-smiling-happy people running on the seashore, “I’ve chosen Dycom for when I’m ready to die because they offer….”? What a hoot! Well, I guess you see now you didn’t need to apologize :-)
About your afterthought, absolutely it’s possible. It’s the second stanza, whether it’s change or opportunity presented to us that we miss or take awhile to see, I can tell you I’m a case in point, not so much anymore, but I have been that oblivious, and when you look around you can see lack of awareness everywhere. Now that’s scary!