another fast and furious piece of classical beauty outside--rhodes is pretty, rhodes is pretty, rhodes is pretty. the trees are growing shrunken clusters which look something like shriveled grape bunches but are really underage leaves aspiring to the strength of butterfly wings just out of the cocoon. in twilight, the last singing birds don't seem to have hit upon the difference between the beginning and end of the day, and the sound reminds me of my family on vacation, where we'd arrive at a motel sometime right before dawn and i'd listen to the birds singing in the dark with my eyes wide open and my doll held close. rhodes is pretty. i have always appreciated the color of rhodes' streetlights striking dead tree leaves, because the bright orange and then the tawdry bright blue, like the color of my mom's high school prom dress (those crazy 70's clothes), make such a nice contrast. that's an interesting way to remember a color. i always looked at my mom's old clothes in the closets when, as a child, i was supposed to be cleaning my room--i have good memories of examining the strange places and things in my house. that place has a strange feeling about it, like i'm never going to really get to know it. consequently, home has a natural beauty; it looks as though nature never really let go of the organic-like character of the site. rhodes has something of a contrived beauty, but i can always steal a less-invented, private beauty from somewhere where it wasn't really intended to be, find mystery in the images that everyone, to an extent, sees, but which take me to unexpected places in memory.