Pumpkin Party 2001
It started with a full half hour of laying on my bed watching the trees blow in a warm wind. Providence is not as cold as it should be today. Just as I began to fall asleep the guests arrived and I bolted downstairs to let them in.
Tonight we carved pumpkins. My attempt to carve Hanshan's face didn't work so well; he ended up looking like Winnie the Pooh. Four people standing around the kitchen counter with hands covered in pumpkin guts, knives carving, and spoons scooping: this is what I enjoy in my house. It made such a huge mess.
Salted, the seeds go into the oven at 350 and come out when they smell right. The finished pumpkins are carried into the living room carefully and set in a line one by one. Then lit one by one. The "Happy Cat" that sits next to my Hanshan needed ears and ears it has been given, fashioned out of autumn oragami paper.
What I missed was sitting in my backyard in Austin on a little raised deck looking out over a sea of large pebbles. Bamboo casts soft shadows in reverse light on a piece of canvas stretched to block the view of my neighbors. A pot of tea and the fall that doesn't exist. Perfect for an Austin that never existed.
"We should fill the studio with leaves," someone suggested later.
--Posted 10/25/01 12:17PM