August 2023
August 2nd
We report: a little grace of spending more time in the world, that sunsets become more meaningful to us every time we see them. As the sky reddens shade by shade, and the light turns to gold, we let ourselves get taken away from time for a little while. It feels alright, then.
August 1st
We report many months when we looked forward to the full moon, but missed it by a few days each time. This time, we found it by chance, felt a pang in our chest when it showed up through the clouds; suddenly emotional about it still being here, even though so much was changing.
August 4th
We report: August now, and we feel like summer passed us by like a storm. The way the weather is these days, rain keeps coming at least once every day - and we remember the dry spring we had, and we feel thankful for the water. The countryside is greener than it was in May.
August 3rd
We report about the sunshine coming through the leaves like stained glass, creating shades of green within the spectrum of light that we did not realise existed. The afternoon is coming to an end at a very slow pace, watching the sun come around the forest in between branches.
August 5th
We report about a moment in the night when the wind, the trees, the sky, and the stars, and everything close and in between are made of the same fabric. To know where one begins and ends is impossible, and we would not want to. It is all like a dream, the whisper of the shadows.
August 7th
We report about the clouds that look the most solid in the sky - for how fragile and ever-changing clouds are, that is. There is a landscape there, one that nobody can ever walk, but it exists in this specific time and place. Sometimes, we wish we could freeze them like that.
August 6th
We report: we forget how long sunrises take. Surely not any longer, any shorter a time as sunsets take, but the anticipation makes them feel twice as long, it builds over time. It starts when the night sky lightens at the horizon and does not stop until the sun is way up there.
August 11th
We report about a comically small cloud - it could also simply be far away, but the result is similar from our perspective. This is one spot in the sky where the humidity condensed into this small dash of white, a punctuation mark in the otherwise uninterrupted blue.
August 8th
We report: the sky is full, it is windy, it is not cold. There are ripe apricots on the kitchen table, and there is a draft from the open window to the open door (but it is not cold). Our expert is packing a windbreaker for us, but we feel confident that it will not rain today.
August 9th
We report that we slept through the storm, but our expert told us all about it in the morning, how it caught the sky and did not let go until long after even thunder had ceased. How the lightning lasted for less than a second when it struck, but it touched every shadow each time.
August 21st
We report about light travelling through space and about us down here who are here to see it. The sky is still light right above the horizon, but the stars have already come out, bright and many, far away from city lights. We stay with these stars in our mind for a long time.
August 10th
We report: we have lived hard and well every day and night since we were born, and we try hard to remember this in the pit of our heart every morning. That the planet spins, that we live there, that the sky is new every day, and that we have a lot more to do under that sky.
August 12th
We report: the dawn came later today, in the rain, and then it kept on raining through lunchtime. We tried to guess where the sun would have been above the clouds, but no spot seemed bright enough. Had it risen yet? Surely it had, it was already late in the morning.
August 13th
We report about specks of dust suspended in smoke, or snowflakes caught in car headlights, or maybe stars in a cloudy sky. The scale is slightly different for all of these options, but in the end, they all look alike. We slowly make our way across the constellations. Goodnight.
August 14th
We report: we looked at weather reports from several sources, and they all reported wildly different situations - thunderstorms and heat waves, cold spells and showers, cloudless blues and dust clouds. Our expert looked it all over and concluded that it was best to wait and see.
August 15th
We report that minute after minute, the sun comes down earlier each day. It always becomes a little easier to miss the sunset around that time of the year, when we are still busy living life. The white of the clouds slowly turns to gold and our eyes get a little tired.
August 16th
We report: the way the light is hitting the clouds is making them look silvery, almost liquid, and the way the wind is pushing them is making them move smooth and easy. The sky is a river like that, in its perpetual movement, something we expect to keep flowing forever.
August 17th
We report a deep blue settling over the countryside, and it gets deeper, and deeper, until we think we could drown in it, from how we are now surrounded in it. Our eyes cannot seem to get used to the darkness, and more blue keeps pouring in.
August 18th
We report: the wheat was harvested while we were not looking, the flowers of summer have wilted before we knew it was summer, and the days keep coming and going before we can understand what is happening. Time is the same as it always was, so we enjoy the sunsets that we catch.
August 19th
We report about the muggy August air and the clouds that form in that space, the tall towers that our expert tries to explain with complicated words before they fall over. We walk under the noon sky and get an obvious sunburn on the nose; our expert scolds us about sunscreen.
August 20th
We report: a rainbow that slowly appeared and vanished just as slowly, in increments. We could see the colours vibrate as the clouds moved, the sunshine piercing through raindrops that we could not yet feel. The grey of the sky got progressively lighter until the colours left.
August 22nd
We report: the day not yet warm where the sea is waking up (although one might say oceans never sleep) and the sky still dark enough where the sun is emerging from behind the horizon. Many shrieking seabirds are gathered on and above the water, many species we do not know.
August 23rd
We report about the most subtle traces of passages, the light touch of a finger on a dusty mirror. The moon is half there, pale in the afternoon sky; some of these clouds are vestiges of condensation trails, taken by the wind. Like paths that have not been walked in a while.
August 24th
We report: it seems as though the weather had many worries today, fold after fold like so many wrinkles that the light does not get through well. When the wind comes, the uneasy heat of the day lifts and the sky quietly unfolds, flattens each wrinkle, again, one after the other.
August 25th
We report about how the night moves in, our temporary roommate with too many boxes and suitcases that we do not have room for. We thought we had cleared some space for the night to settle in, but we are not so sure anymore. Just like every other night, we will deal with it.
August 26th
We report: we held some anticipation for this sunset. We saw promising shapes in the clouds, and the colours appeared early enough that we tried to deduce what the sky would look like in great detail. In the end, most of it looked very different from our vision, in a good way.
August 27th
We report about days of continued rain, and the few moments when the sky does clear up every day. For summer rain, it sometimes goes like this, relentless drizzle for half of August. And when we see the blue sky, it looks ready to welcome the clouds again in a matter of minutes.
August 28th
We report: we are sitting by a poorly insulated window that the rain is drumming on, and the wind is whistling through. The rain has been falling all day, and the wind rises and falls through the hours, bringing the rain to an angle and releasing it, wavering and strong in turn.
August 29th
We report about pieces of sunset caught in the night. Sometimes, our expert and we go out after most of the sunset has come and gone to watch the night fall; none of the flashy colours, and frankly not much light to help us walk around. But it is nice, the darkness seeping in.
August 30th
We report: August is ending soon, and here we stand in its glowing embers. We clung to every beautiful moment that we lived through, tried to squeeze this month for every last drop it could give. The clouds are devouring all of the dying light.
August 31st
We report in the late afternoon, when clouds are starting to dip in the shade and the sunshine comes out from between the trees. We think we spent a lot of summer lodged in that specific space, in the constant ending and finishing and achieving of moments and their contemplation.