Froggacuda's Weblog

I get that my blog is nearly abandoned and muses a lot about death. I used to write poetry (a lot — see the archives) and I realize potential employers and OK Cupid likes may stumble into this WordPress and back away quick. That’s alright; I have been appreciating my backyard, which is now full of wind chimes and waterfalls, and that sounded like the title of a poem I would have written when I was much younger and scribbling in notebooks.

My faithful companion leveled up last autumn, and I channeled my grief into building a garden, anchored by a waterfall I got off of Facebook on a random Marketplace search, and hanging a huge wind chime from a loquat tree. When I need to retreat from the world, I listen to the sound of the capricious wind and the rushing water, and as Michael Pollan would quote: “there is a deep intuitive sense that the universe is in good hands”.

The loquat tree is now festooned with wind chimes — each one named for a loss — but the music they make in real-time is sometimes harmonious, sometimes cacophonous, but always in noisy motion or breathless stillness, and full of ghosts and echoes and wisdom. Visits to the yard, a soothing, fleeting presence, and a reminder that I am not forgotten down here.

Water falling is its own language: chaotic and full of life, promises, and spitting at you to not be afraid and fall again. As a DJ, I love mixing and mashups, and the falls provides the bass; the chimes provide the treble, and you make what you will of the messaging from the midrange. It is glorious to just sit and listen to what they compose. You’ll never hear the same message, it is like trying to match snowflakes.