Verbal Video

Tonight right outside my garage there's a smell of wet grass. Not wet from the rain but from the sprinklers, and it's vividly a smell from my childhood.

I expect mosquitos but there are only clouds of little insects, hovering around wet places in the road. Also from my childhood.

A man is walking with two little kids by the lake. The lake is still and glassy, the green algae sludge that was there a few weeks ago is gone (who knows what scary counteracting chemical they put it to do it, but I appreciate it), the fountain is going but besides its small ripples it's just a cool metallic reflection of the beautiful light in the beautiful sky. The man is an older man, not the man from across the street, which is good - the across the street man was a little while ago married from someone who works on my floor at work, and it's clear he traded her in for a younger model because the girlfriend is there on weekends when the kids are not, walking his black dog and smiling wanly at me. The girls, on the alternate weekends, spend all day riding slow circles in the driveway on their bikes or scooters and look sideways at me as I come and go, and I'm sure one day I'm either going to run them down or be rude to them. Anyway, the man walking tonight is not that man, and I am relieved.

I walk to the mailboxes and there's a big white disk of a moon hanging over the identical little buildings. The buildings out of context would be quite scary, but the vivid medium blue (not light, not dark, just blue) of the sky and the fabulousness of the large moon hanging low there are just beautiful, and I understand about the little identical condo buildings and forgive them.

The sky in the West, above the barn and silo and field across the road (not corn this time, some kind of grass that has sprouted to seed at the top, a whole field exactly the same height but I don't know what plant it is or what it's for or if the cows over there will like to eat it) has pink streaks across, and a yellow glow. Sunset. Summer sunset.

I walk back to my house with the mail, mostly catalogues but one postcard with handwriting, have to see who sent that (feel a pang of guilt at the thought of it, who do I owe a letter to who wrote me presumptively first?), and the sky's blue is deepening and the pinks are getting darker and the man and his daughters are further around the lake.

The lake, the sunset, the moon over the houses. The smell of wet grass. Four things to capture.