A beautiful evening: the sun is shining (but sweetly), it's seventy-two degrees. The sky has turned a soothing blue and is streaked by beautiful cirrus (or stratocumulus) clouds, long and flat and wispy. In some places the clouds blend so gently into the sky that it is difficult to see where one ends and the other begins.

The sky looks like the sea, the clouds like strands of foam.

The air temperature is perfect and I drive with the window down, twenty-five miles an hour through neighborhood streets. Three preteen girls are gathered around a wading pool, playing with three toddlers. A boy rides past on his bike, looking tough, a pre-adolescent Eminem. The playgrounds are filled and there's a soccer game on the field at Trost Elementary. Kids in green and yellow shirts chase the ball while their parents lounge in adirondacks on the sidelines. A group of Mexican men waits on the sidelines, ready to start their own game when the field is free.

Outside of town, the gentle rise and fall of Township Road cuts through freshly plowed fields.

On Central Point Road, the hillside falls away to the left and cattle graze in lush pasture. They bask in the sun. They look as content as I feel.

Along Union Hall Road wildflowers bloom on the roadside. Are those lavender snapdragons? A Golden Retriever walks down the center of the road, unconcerned with traffic. The car in front of me slows, edges by on the shoulder. I do the same. The dog looks at me as if to say, " I own this road," and I know that he does.

My client lives at the top of a hill in a shady grove. The sunlight filters through the branches creating shafts of light and haze. Wild rabbits graze beside the driveway. I stand by the side of the car for a minute and listen to the birdsong. There's no traffic. There's no radio or television. I hear no evidence of human life.

And if I face to the southwest I can see no evidence of human life. There are oaks and firs and wildflowers among the tall green grass and the birds and the hares flit now here, now there. Behind me are fences and cars and a house and a broken computer. In front of me is only what I see: life -- nature and life on a mild midsummer day. I am not a part of it. I am a part of it.

I am a Luddite at heart. That's something good and wonderful, not something of which I should be ashamed.

Don't fence me in.

On this day at foldedspace.org

2004 — The Amazon.com Knee-Jerk Contrarian Game   It's the internet meme that's sweeping the blogosphere!

2003 — Costco Trip   In which I fall into the Sarlacc's Pit of Haberdashery.