{"id":1092,"date":"2014-09-08T17:43:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T08:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/?p=1092"},"modified":"2014-09-17T16:16:32","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T07:16:32","slug":"a-few-hours-of-life-in-a-minor-key","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/08\/a-few-hours-of-life-in-a-minor-key\/","title":{"rendered":"A few hours of life in a minor key"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

\"140906_sunbeams_350\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Nothing will ever be perfect, not in any individual life. Yet each day we greet the morning star. Each day we are given a new chance to shine.<\/p>\n

Ahead the clouds hung low, and the grey was thick. It was\u00a0a true rain, not mist, but it was\u00a0soft, didn’t splatter on the windshield. It seemed as if\u00a0the drops were being dribbled out from\u00a0hundreds of\u00a0invisible eyedroppers, their tips fractions of inches above the glass. The windshield was\u00a0already wet, so the drops spread out silently into big perfect circles.<\/p>\n

\"140906_tiger_lilies_butterfly_2_400jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I remembered a long time ago, during a high school summer, working with a team of brick masons. It was my job to push the wheelbarrow around the muddy lot, delivering the cement that the masons would trowel onto bricks and blocks. If it was too stiff they couldn’t work with it. If it was too soupy they couldn’t work with it. It had to be just right. And they’d get irritated if I splattered\u00a0it onto their arms and clothes or into their faces. It took a while to get the hang of it, lowering the shovel right down to the edge of their “palettes,” tipping the shovel gently so that the cement—the “mud,” they called\u00a0it—would spread out evenly, gently, without a mess, just like those soft raindrops on the windshield.<\/p>\n

\"140906_susuki_500\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A bit of unpleasant business awaited. Maybe, I thought,\u00a0not able to see the traffic light just a hundred meters or so up the road, the next couple of hours\u00a0were going to\u00a0play themselves out in a minor key. All felt somber.<\/p>\n

But as I turned toward the park,\u00a0I found myself thinking (as obvious as the fact was) that it\u00a0wasn’t complete<\/em> darkness. If it were, I wouldn’t even be able to see the soft drops spreading out on the windshield. For sure, light, which I seemed not to “see,” was seeping through—and as long as there was light, no matter how much or little, no matter how strong or weak, there was the opportunity to shine.<\/p>\n

\"140906_tree_stump_350\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It was weird how tangible it was—how I could feel,<\/em>\u00a0submerged in the\u00a0pea-soup grey,\u00a0<\/em>all the good things to come.<\/p>\n

The next\u00a0morning I was on Ryuso Mountain.\u00a0 Beneath the cedars,\u00a0you could see the sun filtering in. \u00a0All there was to do was to climb—and see what the light hit.<\/p>\n

At the top, out in the open, everyone was hungry.<\/p>\n

\"140906_thistle_bee_400\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Nothing will ever be perfect, not in any individual life. Yet each day we greet the morning star. Each day we are given a new chance to shine. Ahead the clouds hung low, and the grey was thick. It was\u00a0a true rain, not mist, but it was\u00a0soft, didn’t splatter on the windshield. It seemed … Continue reading A few hours of life in a minor key<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1092"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1111,"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1092\/revisions\/1111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/persimmon-dreams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}