smile-shaped moon; cue marimba, piano

The moon is currently a half-smile... enormous and bright and deeply complicated in its moon-ness. Yesterday there was an incredibly bright star just below it-- the shape formed sort of a vintage metronome.

Appropriate, since the last two days I've celebrated the moon and my thoughts in the same way as I've celebrated music and quietly happy moments.

Last night I worked late... left exhausted... went out for coffee with Sarah and Reji and ended up in a weirdly depressing coffee shop nook for a couple hours with a lovely conversation... looked at their photos from the inauguration and their trip to D.C., and we cheered on each other's ridiculous stories about minutiae, and my dramatic stories about things that will never really amount to anything in the future, but we all pretended in the moment that maybe that wasn't the case.

At some point I realized they were both sick and we were all looking exhausted... drove them home, turned up the heat, pulled over for a badly-needed tank of gas. Rotated cds until it landed on 2 of the 3 that I made for a friend's cross-country trip... sadly, he didn't end up getting the mixes, so I burned the tracks onto a couple cds of my own to test drive around town to see if my spontaneous road trip mix skills are worth anything these days.
I dropped Sarah and Reji off around Broadway and Iris, and it was almost completely empty on the roads, so I settled on a few of the more sad/mellow tracks, turned the music up, and took all the country roads home.

Sia "Breathe Me"... deep, soulful marimba, mournful piano, and a moving string section... then Sia's throaty, expressive voice kicked in. I turned right on Jay as usual, with no street lights and no traffic... passed my favorite intersection in the world, where the Greek Orthodox church sits staunchly across from the Jehovah's Witness church (in an eternal showdown with each other)... the bass and string sections were split so beautifully between my speakers that I turned up the volume several more notches and went past the turn for my apartment complex.
Up Jay, turned right on 75th, the Foo Fighters song "Are You There" came on... wandering, contemplative guitar and dreamlike, heart-torn lyrics. I watched the half-smile of the moon and turned again onto an even darker country road-- headed dead East with the moon in my rear-view mirrors. At one point I drove under a rickety bridge that supported an endless freight train heading the opposite direction... it's a fairly amazing feeling to drive under a train that's suspended by an old, rickety bridge,with pieces of gravel and turf falling on your windshield.

Crested the hill on East Arapahoe and had a surreal and breathtaking view of the power plant that I've never seen before-- instead of dark and ominous as I'm used to seeing it, the plant was fully lit... the huge rectangular windows were glowing with a deep amber light, and endlessly long rectangular amber reflections were cast out into the water surrounding the plant. It was like something out of Terry Gilliam's "Brazil". Magical and beautiful, in a mechanical and eerie way.

Then a piano/intrumental version of Radiohead's 'Let Down'... at this point I was simply worn out, teeth chattering a little, so I hunkered down in my jacket and turned North on 95th. A coyote ran in front of me and I braked softly... he turned and looked straight into my headlights, and then gently loped parallel to my car until I lost sight of him behind me.

Turned West just in time to see the moon set behind the foothills... and as I came over the hill on Lookout Road, I realized for the first time what a truly spectacular view that can be at night. I could see the familiar shimmer of all the Boulder lights, from Longmont down to almost Table Mesa, but the lights that were scattered up through the foothills all the way to Eldorado were incredible. It looked like pollen or something that had scattered in the wind instead of homes.
(I'm the world's biggest sucker for twinkling city lights at night. Thank god I wasn't alive in the 50s, when surely all the high school boys would've discovered that about me, and driven me up to 'hangman's point' every night, just trying to get to 2nd base while I gawked at the city lights.)

Tonight I spent the evening at Meg's... she made a delicious feast of chicken/pasta/peanut sauce and a carrot-oatmeal cake... I brought a rather forgettable but endearingly tasty bottle of Chilean cabernet sauvignon. Kenai ate a large blanket and barked at us with his adorable tongue hanging sideways out of his mouth and all was right with the world. After a long and wonderfully Meg & Jane conversation, I headed home... wondering for a minute if I was the world's lamest bachelorette before turning on the same cd and heading back through the same country roads. This time I turned up the heat a little more and put down the windows... appreciating the feeling of heat encircling my legs as cold air rushed in the side windows while singing the harmony line loud and meaningfully along to Ben Folds' "Fred Jones Part II." Possibly one of my top 5 songs**.
Turned the bend in front of my apt. complex just in time to watch the brilliant ivory half-smile of a moon sink behind the craggy silhouette of the foothills, casting a brilliant halo up over the mountains.

**Maybe if I'm more awake tomorrow, I'll dig out the novel I wrote to my music-obsessed friends about "the top 5" so it won't get lost forever in my endless gmail archive.

What a beautiful place to live.
What a luxury to be able to sing harmonies with all my heart on dark, dark country roads as I peer down long driveways, looking at the one lightbulb burning in a large, haunted country house as I wonder about people's lives, people's whereabouts, people's quality of life and dreams and secrets.

To watching the crescent moon set behind the mountains, and the long coyote tails that disappear behind my headlights.
to friends. and driving. and thinking. and breathing. and singing.

*clink*