nessie

It started, logically enough, in Scotland. At Loch Ness, to be precise. 

Hannah and I had taken a trip up to Edinburgh from London, where we had been staying in a flat in Bloomsbury for two weeks (on Great Russell Street, where Charles Dickens had lived). On our second rainy day in Scotland, we went on a bus trip that took us all around the country — touristy, I know, but sometimes there's no other way to get around. It was led by the sweetest old lady named Fran, who aggressively plied us with whiskey products and whose liltingly accented voice could make even statements like, "And then they dragged William Wallace from the castle, and he was hanged, drawn and quartered," sound positively charming.

We had been driving through the greenest, foggiest hills for hours when we came to Loch Ness. After rambling through Castle Urquhart and frolicking on grass that, as it turned out, we weren't supposed to walk on, we took a boat out onto the Loch. Much to our surprise, Nessie came out for a visit. 

Upon our return to London, we made one of our many visits to the British Museum. There, we discovered a distant cousin of Nessie's. 

The quality of the picture's not so great, but the family resemblance is uncanny.

From this moment on, Nessie followed us everywhere. We even saw her on Rome's Palatine Hill, to see Augustus Caesar's frescoed palace:

We think this tree had a bit of Nessie ancestry in it.

I couldn't count the number of times she's popped up (and yes, let's quash the rumors: Nessie is a girl). I haven't always had my camera on hand, unfortunately, but just this past summer I was able to capture one of Nessie's most striking visits yet. Sunset over Lake Michigan:

Such a long trip just to see us! It's flattering, really.  

For your viewing pleasure: the first sighting.

pigment

I've never been to Arizona, but I imagine it would look something like this. 

We drove on a bus for over an hour, winding up and over and around the steadily climbing hills of the Luberon valley and eating tasteless crackers to keep from getting sick. Then we step out and this golden-orange view, peppered through with greenest evergreen trees, is what awaits us. 

We rush to climb and play in the silty dust like children, and the ochre cliffs — run through with brilliant smudges of pinks and oranges and crimsons, even — rub off on our clothes. 

Soon we are covered with it, and traces of color will make their way back on the bus to Aix-en-Provence with us, only to be found hours or even days later by scolding mères d'acceuil, impatient with hanging the laundry outside to dry only to find it still dirty. 

Why they insist on cleaning our clothes is beyond us — the teachers tell us it is a difference culturelle which translates most directly as don't question it. We could wash our things ourselves, but why would we want to when such beautiful color still lingers?

But for now, the earth feels soft like charcoal on our fingers. We are grown but today we are in Roussillon, or is it Arizona, and the old quarry is ours to explore.

patins en ligne

Going to see the Eiffel Tower and the October streets are full of people. The métro is still running, shuffling back and forth across the City of Light those accidental Parisian revelers who are even aware that it is Halloween, something of a peculiarity to non-Americans. Bon, let me get this straight. You just give out candy?

The tower is still blocked from view by the tawny apartment buildings, and Kiely turns to me as we prepare to cross one last street before everything is clear. The excitement reflects in her eyes like the twinkling, spinning lights that are currently on the Eiffel Tower (we know they're shining, even though we can't see). We are about to take our first step onto the empty road when a Frenchman on rollerblades zooms in from the right.

And then another, and another. Soon there is a whole crowd of them whizzing by under the golden light of the streetlamps, some wearing spandex shorts, others in helmets, one is still in a suit from his work just a handful of hours before. And then there are costumes, too, lots of them for the holiday. I catch sight of a woman dressed like a sandwich, and the slices of cardboard bread are so wonderfully out-of-nowhere and unexpected that I feel a pang for back home.

The whooshing sound of plastic wheels on cool pavement dies away as the last of the rollerbladers continue into obscurity down the street. We can finally cross, and do. We drink Heinekens by the tower — just as tall as Kiely thought it would be, and glittering — and Dan talks about American things in his loud, carrying voice. I think fondly of the sandwich, and then we go home.

lapis lazuli

"Oh my, I love your lapis," said the cashier at World Market. He was very friendly and extremely gay, and he flashed me the thick silver ring on his third finger. The blue stone set in the middle was the exact shade of cerulean as the three silver-banded rings I was wearing. He pointed and I looked down at them, flexing the fingers on my left hand.

"Thanks," I said, placing my Haribo packets on the counter. "I love this color."

"Me too," he went on. "Are you into Egyptology?"

A tingling of déjà vu crept down the back of my neck. Wasn't this the same guy from last winter who complimented my garnet ring and asked if I was born in January? No, I'd answered him then. I was born in December and I just liked the bloodred color. Isn't December's birthstone turquoise? Yes, it is. And I have a lot of that, too.

"Well," I said, "I did see The Mummy when I was a kid."

My grandmother's lapis scarab pendant still sits quietly in my jewelry chest.

back to school

There was just a sound that went with the end of summer. It was the usual cacophony of crickets, of course, but there was just another element that she couldn't put her finger on, and that was what officially made the change from summer to autumn, for her, anyway. Was it frogs? The distant hum of the highway? The leaves changing color? She lay in bed and whatever sound it was came in through her window and blended with the gentle thrum of the fan. It swayed back and forth across the span of her bed, rustling the sheets against her bare legs.

These days, the nights when she didn't wake up with her sheets tangled around her waist and the thin cotton comforter pulled up to her chin were becoming fewer and fewer. The air was more than crisp when the sun went down, and every day the sun was going down minutes before it had yesterday. Soon she would have to put her fan in the back of her closet and the vacant space would be replaced with soft, oversized sweaters and fleece blankets and plans to go apple picking. That didn't sound so bad.

It was still summer if she had bare legs. But now there was that sound drifting through the curtains, that inexplicable, indescribable, end of summer sound.