Aug. 24 ---- The sun is a pearly yellow grey this morning, behind thin clouds. The park is tinted grey, but the summer flowers are everywhere, saturated in colour. Armfuls of orange jewelweed and purple pickerelweeds and loosestrife clog the marsh. In the woods, wayward blue asters glow against the greygreen. Before coming out this morning, I worked on chord shapes, particularly the range of diminished chords. In the late summer colour of these wildflowers I am suddenly struck that they too hang suspended, unresolved. Even the sunflowers still have an edge of green in them. Yet as a Northerner, with the ancient whisper in my bones, I look at them, and suspect autumn: but they say nothing like that.

In their incandescent oranges and rich purples they say: here am I at my fullest, am I not beautiful?; this is no time for the pale hesitations of uncertain youth, for what I was or maybe will be tomorrow -- catch me now, here, today, or miss the greatest glory of what I can be forever. Like M--, who I danced with at the wedding last week, a woman in her 50's. All the men, young and old alike, watched her, even the boys in the band (which is saying something). Everything about her said: "Girls, stand back. A woman is out on the floor". Like armfuls of the intensest wildflowers, in her greygreen dress, a lady in full summer, glorying in herself, undiminished.

Time to go to work.
(p.t.)