Further Lemmingy Goodness

[home_and_away]

This time, courtesy Don Marshmallow:

The Plan:
1. Leave me a casual comment of no particular significance, like a lyric to your favorite song.
2. I will respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better.
3. Update your LJ with the answers to these questions.
4. Include this explanation and offer to ask someone else in your own post.
5. When others respond with a desultory comment, you will ask them five questions.
6. Feel free to ask me five questions, about whatever you like, and I will respond

His Query:
Okay, Kitten, your questions are, in no particular order:
1) Dawn or dusk?
2) What is your favourite season and why?
3) Talk about one thing that you remember most from your childhood.
4) If you could do anything, anywhere, with anybody, what would be your dream vacation?
5) What is your favourite sound?

Have fun!


And so:
1) Dusk. Something about the light is warmer, to my eyes. I like the rose it throws over the mountains, here. Well. That, and I'm more likely to see dusk than I am dawn, because diurnal as I am, I still can't manage to haul myself out of sleep before the sun hauls himself over the horizon, and I *sure* as hell can't stay out long enough to see him down and back again.

2) Favourite season's got to be fall. The air's just brisk enough to break summer's oppressive heat, but it's not yet bone-chilling cold. All the changing colour makes the hills here look like a patchwork quilt, and there's a faint scent of leaf mould and burning wood. Mmmm, autumn.

3) Oh, stars... I remember my mom taking me to the Ramses The Great exhibit at a museum in Ogden, Utah (we were in Evanston, WY at the time, so I can't've been more than two). I don't remember a thing about the bus ride down except that it happened and there were people and bright clear windows and pale blue sky outside. But I do remember the thrill of the adventure, because Mom and I were going to see something Old and Foreign. The next thing I recall is everyone walking through a doorway into a dark, dark room. No-one's looking at the Thing guarding the door, but I am. Mom had to be carrying me, because I remember being eye level with a great black jackal-headed man who had his hand on the shoulder of a boy. The boy was just staring ahead, eyes dead. I didn't process that this was a statue; I thought it was a warning to kids and was terrified. So, being a forthright child, I made my concerns known: "MAMA, GET ME OUT OF THIS SPOOKY PLACE!" There was shushing and eye-covering and the quiet talking that parents do to kids who're a hairsbreadth away from rendering a bus ride and tickets moot, and then I was in the room with lit cases. The two I remember best are the display of beautiful lapis lazuli set in gold ("Mama, it's so pretty!") and the display of Ramses' corpse. Don't ask why because I don't know, but the mummy with his graceful dessicated hands and his skull so close to the surface--he was fascinating and beautiful. Anubis worried me; the corpse didn't.

My mother was a woman determined not to lose herself to motherhood; she was damned lucky I was comparatively still and hungry for data.

4) ... wow. Too many options. Let's pick one from left field... If practical concerns (money, having a job when we got back, Dae not travelling well, Mark having low tolerance for being on the road more than 12 hours at a time) didn't exist, I'd pack us all in the van with a jar of quarters for laundromats along the way, a book of addresses for the family and friends we have scattered between the coasts and borders, an atlas, and a couple of phone chargers, and we'd live as gypsies for a month or five. See the nation's biggest ball of twine. Watch the sunrise over Devil's Tower (which you can do, if you park just so on the shoulder of the interstate). Hike the canyon at Hell's Half Acre. Sit on a stranger's front step and listen to the bluegrass jams that happen in summers in Mt. View, Arkansas (assuming they still do). Catch a sunset outside of Carlsbad Caverns so Dae can see the bats flying off to hunt. Sleep in hotel parking lots, because security's never that tight and it's easier than trying to get a room at 2 am. ...Yeah. That. ~sigh~ ~refuses to give in to wanderlust~

5) ~considers~ There are a few. A violin speaking. A recognised breathing pattern. Windchimes tuned nice and mellow. Trees in a high wind. Crows. The "rrrrrrrrft" of a stack of pages being riffled while I read (you can always tell when there's something tense happening in my book: "rrrrrrrrrrrft. pause.... rrrrrrrrrrrrrft. pause....").

Comments

[don-marshmallow.livejournal.com]

Wow. That's some grate stuff. I would love to see the sunrise at Devil's Tower. We were through there last May on the way to Montana and I forced us to take the detour so I could see it. Well worth it, too.

[ladywind.livejournal.com]

My mother and I caught it quite by accident one year, on our way to Kemmerer (I think). I woke up because the car had stopped moving, and there was Mom standing just off the edge of the road in the high, cold morning wind, with a look of awe on her face.

I, bleary and stupid with sleep, followed her gaze.
And saw dawn.
And a rock.
And went back to sleep.

~headshake~ And this is why I want to go back.