By Amy Clampitt
Frame within frame, the evolving conversation
is dancelike, as though two could play
at improvising snowflakes'
six-feather-vaned evanescence,
no two ever alike. All process
and no arrival: the happier we are,
the less there is for memory to take hold of,
or -- memory being so largely a predilection
for the exceptional -- come to a halt
in front of. But finding, one evening
on a street not quite familiar,
inside a gated
November-sodden garden, a building
of uncertain provenance,
peering into whose vestibule we were
arrested—a frame within a frame,
a lozenge of impeccable clarity --
by the reflection, no, not
of our two selves, but of
dancers exercising in a mirror,
at the center
of that clarity, what we saw
was not stillness
but movement: the perfection
of memory consisting, it would seem,
in the never-to-be-completed.
We saw them mirroring themselves,
never guessing the vestibule
that defined them, frame within frame,
contained two other mirrors.
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We took my parents to the airport on Thursday morning for their flight home -- they were originally supposed to go from Seattle to visit our relatives around L.A., but one of them has covid, so my parents are taking no chances of catching it. While they were flying, we came home and did a bunch of work and chores, then walked to the beach for the first time in a week -- there are merganser ducklings now and adult and juvenile eagles.
My Thursday night chat group was in a good mood because of Trump's convictions, though we talked more about Doctor Who and new Trek. Then Paul and I watched the season finale of Hacks, which reminded me of the first season in some brutal ways but was excellent, and now we're watching the last episode of PBS's Pompeii: The New Dig. Some photos from the Mariners game against the Astros on Tuesday, which ended better than today's:
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