So, last night, after a lovely dinner with Lila and sprout, which was unfortunately short due to the fact that I didn't so much sleep the previous night as bodily rearrange the sheets and blankets, I was on my way home. It's a fairly long drive, not too bad if you speed pretty heavily, but what with gas prices being what they are, I've been really trying to slow down (hard for a speed demon like myself.) Unfortunately, everybody else on the freeway last night seemed to have not gotten the memo that fuel efficiency drops the faster you go over 55.
Humid as it was, last night was a beautiful evening, it was still light out, and I just plain didn't feel like 
speeding, for a change. One of the truly pretty things about Michigan is that, outside of the major cities, there are a number of very pretty country roads that are in good shape where the speed limit is an efficiency-lovers 50 mph (if there is one at all,) with very few stops and starts. I pulled off the freeway, and took the scenic route, all tree-covered roads and open fields. It was mostly empty on the backroads, which was a good thing, given the number of times I veered ever so slightly into the other lane, craning my neck to see some other pretty or intriguing thing.
Everything, everywhere, was just so ridiculously alive. I realize this sounds like a strange thing to say. Even though it's technically summer, many things in Michigan are still the spring phase of growth, flagrant, exuberant and obscene. Green things taking over every space that wasn't coated in blacktop or gravel, and in a few places that were. It's a beautiful time, but it also makes me feel a strange combination of being incredibly long-lived and yet utterly ephemeral at one and the same time. I feel pale, wraithlike in my simultaneous comparitive longevity and comparitive brevity. A flower, a leaf, last only a summer, but flowers return, and trees endure.
Coasting along with my melancholic wonder, I noticed a particularly nice grain silo along the road*. One of the glazed tile variety, it was largely intact, but looked to be out of use. I wondered if it would be possible to live in one, wihtout making it bigger, or adding anything to the outside I debated where the staircase would go, then decided that one could make do with an interior ladder between levels, with some other method for the cats. The ground floor for cooking and eating, a second floor for a sitting room and a small bath, and a bed up under the dome of the roof. Tiny and cozy, and totally impractical. That's me.
* For whatever reason, having a grain silo out in the middle of a field away from the main buildings of the farm, is a totally normal thing. This may be a local thing, I don't know. I'm from the city, these things are mysterious to me.
*Pictures stolen shamelessly from other people.
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