Cold
after a few weeks of unusually warm weather. Brisk, windy,
but bright sun, blue skies. 38 degrees.
The
air is full of small flying seeds, tiny puffs from weeds
or bushes or trees. These greyish white seeds, not much
bigger than specks of dust, flyor blowup,
down, and around swiftly in the wind.
Two
of the seeds that have been drifting through the neighborhood
recently have ended up in my apartment. They must have
blown in through the window I had open the other day.
While I was working on the handpress last night, printing
the last pages of dark, the seeds wafted down from somewhere
above me and landed on a sheet of paper next to the press.
As
I bent down to look at them, they darted to the left about
a foot and came to reststill pulsing
a littleon the wood surface of the table that supports
the press and other printing materials. They were flying
togethera few of their small delicate filaments
touching the othersas if they were traveling
companions on a flight through the universe.
Eachto
the outer limits of its sphere-shaped cluster of white
downwas the size of a small pea. The speck of a
seed hanging from and within the fluffy ball was a bit
crescent-shaped and brownish. It was about as big as a
comma in 12-point type, but pointed at both ends like
a tiny new moon.
The
seeds down is so fine it is invisible when the light
is a certain way. When resting, the seed seems suspended
about /¡§ of an inch from the tables
surface, as if just hanging in air. Actually some of the
invisible filaments are holding it up. The shadow of the
inner seed is cast onto the table, but the shadows of
the unseen filaments are nonexistent. I have to change
the angle of sight or light to see the down. Of course,
when they are flying you see only the down and the seeds
disappear.
They
seemed alive with an awareness that related to me. I thought
about saving them to plant in a potand with that
in mind, put them in the same small box with air-holes
that Id used to hold the cricket I found last fall.
But, like the cricket, they would probably be better off
outside.
After
a few days, I just opened the window and gave themstill
togetherto the wind.