I Bought A Bathrobe

Morning Birds
by Thomas Transtromer

I wake my car.
Its windshield is covered with pollen.
I put on my sunglasses
and the song of the birds darkens.

While another man buys a newspaper
in the railroad station
near a large freight car
which is entirely red with rust
and stands flickering in the sun.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Straight across the spring warmth a cold corridor
where someone comes hurrying
to say that they are slandering him
all the way up to the Director.

Through a back door in the landscape
comes the magpie
black and white, Hel's bird.
And the blackbird moving crisscross
until everything becomes a charcoal drawing,
except for the white sheets on the clothesline:
a Palestrina choir.

No emptiness anywhere here.

Fantastic to feel how my poem grows
while I myself shrink.
It is growing, it takes my place.
It pushes me out of its way.
It throws me out of the nest.

I bought a bathrobe.  More specifically, my grandmother bought me a plush Santa-Claus red one, and my mom helped me pick it out last weekend.  My mother is a devotee of her own robe, and while I used to un-ironically walk the halls of my college dorm in a kelly green terrycloth one, what I want to know is: how have I been missing the bathrobe train for so many years since then?  Bathrobes. Are. Amazing.

I have to remind myself that cooking in my bathrobe is wrong.  I try to wait several hours before slipping into its loving, fleecy arms after work.  Sometimes I am successful. Sometimes I am not.  But I am always grateful for this easy luxury, and it reminds me that life can be really simple sometimes.  Just buy a frickin robe and get on with it.

You know what else is at once simple and all-encompassing?  Travel.  Exchanging worlds.  Or having visitors.  Okay, maybe they aren't 100% simple, but I find both travel and visitors profound pleasures.  At the very least, they are jubilant excuses to eat elegantly, take pictures, and drink exquisite wine / coffee / wine.

I guess I don't have as much to say as I hoped this morning, when I woke early, accidentally made coffee for three, and tied on my trusty robe. 

Instead of prose, let's have a little picture diary, shall we? 

My mom came.  We went to a lake.

In October, we went to LA.  

 

Since that trip, Amelia posted this about our visit, and won this.

In September, our little family of three crossed the Continental Divide.  I am here to say that western Colorado is crazy and wild.  Go there if you can.  Tomorrow if possible.

Happy trails!
*Kara