Sky-gazing

I'm not generally one to stand about gazing at the sky, thinking deep thoughts. I don't think that those who do are necessarily silly (though some of them certainly are) -- I just don't have the time. I've caught the sunset only a few times during my years here in Chicago, and never by intent; it's only been by lucky timing when I've been out walking, or have just happened to glance out the window after a storm.

One evening a short time ago, though, during a time of too much tension in the house -- summer guests, summer heat and too little sleep do not a good combination make -- I took my dinner outside to sulk, or to just calm down. The air was in fact almost unbearably hot and humid (though cooler than that stagnating inside our apartment), but it carried the sounds of cicadas and of the traffic on Addison Ave, somehow a strangely soothing combination. After I finished eating, and needing more solitude, I pulled on my dirty gartdening gloves and poked around the tomato plants, netting a handful of red jewels. The sky sputtered once, for a few minutes -- big, fat drops that tried to show how much damage they would do if only their ranks were multiplied by several thousand. And then the clouds were lit from one direction by a red light that I so rarely see here in the city, and I felt compelled to actually take a picture.

It was such a rare moment for me, and it was lovely. Eating outside, a few red tomatoes harvested from the garden, and the sky on a wants-to-be-stormy evening were enough to take me out of my funk. Snap me out of it?, maybe not, but at least to give me enough room to breathe, to calm myself down, and to try to re-start the evening. It's a remedy that I should take up more often: Eat, breathe, garden.