Fretting zoo

Mom's gone back East and I have the house to myself. I still bide my time outside but now jazz music blasts through the open door and windows. Inside the house the acoustics are even better, the low moans of tenor sax skid across the hardwood floors, finding and filling space in all these empty rooms. Home as concert hall.

The other night, the desert followed me in. As I walked down the stairs to my subterranean dwelling (cool in the day, warm at night), I stepped over a scorpion. I squatted down awhile to watch him scamper back and forth, aware of my looming mass but unsure what to do. His stinger wasn't up, so he couldn't have been that frightened. Just aware. It's not often we get scorpions inside. I've seen a few black widows, and will sometimes hear centipedes rustling behind my books. On rare occasions, rattlers will come into the yard, and back when the dogs were alive, we'd have to pull them into the house. Now, the dogs are buried under crosses in the dirt which the snakes now slither over unmolested. I leave the scorpion the same way. If he found his way in, he'll find a way out. That or one of the cats will get him.


On the turntable: "Sonny Rollins and the MJQ"
On the nighttable: Bruce B. Junek, "The Road of Dreams"