With rustling leaves...

These days I have been taking long aimless walks around my neighborhood(s). The air has been cool and crispy. The sidewalks and streets are blanketed with brown and bright golden leaves. Countless times my senses have been exploding with pleasure and I have had to stop and just witness this. In a neighborhood park I rest my knees into the rustling autumn earth and reach my hands into its layers of dried leaves.

To translate the poem from the previous post...

The garden is full of dry leaves;
Never have I seen so many leaves in their green trees, in spring.
-Jose Juan Tablada

When I first read this poem I took it to speak to how one notices death much more than life. That, in fall, we mourn the death of the leaves' but we also mourn that life because we realize we had not fully acknowledged or celebrated it until its passing. However, as I read this poem on a morning like this, surrounded by abundance passing on; I can truly say that never have I felt such gratitude for death nor so much contentment with its falling.

Hojas Secas

El jardin esta lleno de hojas secas;
nunca vi tantas hojas en sus arboles verdes, en primavera.
-Jose Juan Tablada

I came across this poem this summer in an old, stain book of "New Mexican Poetry" a friend found in a dumpster and gave to me. I liked the poem and wrote it into my journal. It has been returning to me incessantly ever since and probably for good reason. It plays in my head like a song one cant forget.

I will return and translate but I am using the computer at work and my break is over. soon come.

Done did it

I live here. For real. I am embarking on week two in my new home on the southeast end of the Emerald City and I am falling in love with this place all over again. I will try to find a way to share photos in the near future but until then I will do my best with words.
I live in an old building above an Ethiopian "spices and phone cards" store and a barber shop named, A Cut Above. The entrance to the building has a faded grey sign with the name Mohawk Apartments legible only to the keen observer.
Deep red carpet with golden mandala print lead to the stairs with broad wooden banisters heavy laden with many layers of paint. The stairway seems to always smell of incense and maple syrup shifting quickly to frying chicken as you enter the second floor hallway.
I live in a semi-unoccupied wing of the second floor next to the fire escape (my adopted balcony). I have a bright blue kitchen and four large windows that look out to a jungle. The first floor rooftop is outside of my windows and it has been converted to a tropical potted plant garden by an elderly Vietnamese woman named Linda.
The linoleum in the kitchen and bathroom is at least 35 years old and has the most pleasant yellow and orange designs. There is a large closet equipped with a "shoes rack". The shoes rack is a shelf the previous tenant left in the closet with such a description hand painted in cursive on the top shelf. The shower is walled with tiny blue square tiles and there is a big tub. The main room is spacious and I have acquired a few articles of found furniture and last week I made a cloth lantern for the ceiling light.
All in all I am happy to be here. I should be getting a job sometime soon at the Madison Market (the only true food co-op in Seattle). I will take the fall to get settled and start my prerequisites in the winter at the community college. In about a year and a half I should be all set to being the Naturopathic Doctor/Midwifery dual program at Bastyr.
Thanks for tuning in....more to come soon.