As far as setting the scene and offering some primary palette with which to color this piece of writing, know this: It is early summer, early enough that the severe angle of the late afternoon sun slices through the still-too-green canopy of trees on this mountainside with the nonchalant precision of a surgeon preparing dinner. The perfect smell of gardenias–reticent to release their once-white, head-now-bowed blossoms with caramelizing petal tips–underpins the very moment, the ephemeral sensation that stirred me from a writing hiatus that has lasted years: that scent arriving when a light breeze off the lake idly changed direction.
There is an undercurrent I catch now and again; or rather, which catches me. I felt it in the smell of those gardenias. It’s a pulling sensation that’s similar to a more familiar impulse to stop and sketch, to create, to capture. But it’s not as demanding; It’s almost wistful. I’m pulled to write. It’s the promise of the quiet satisfaction of re-reading something you’ve written, years later, and meeting yourself again. It’s the need to write for it’s own sake and yours–like a loyal dog’s love of playing fetch, and the understated need of the owner, to participate in the joy and exertion of throwing things away with the full knowledge that they will be returned.
Aqueous Transmissions 