Moondance

Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance.

Never mind the moon won’t be out tonight.

Beautiful evenings come our way in Sausalito quite often. We are fortunate that way. The temp is a pleasant 61 degrees and the sun will set in 32 minutes at 8:31 PM. Yet, well past the sun going down, light lifts our skies for quite some time. And so it is on this particular evening, I eat alone with someone in my heart sitting on my balcony watching the day give way to night. I take solace in the fact that when I am not with my family or friends, I choose to be alone (with my dog Taylor, a now svelte 85-lb svelte block of nine-and-a-half-year-old love).

Tonight I decided to marry Thai and Indian with each other. For dinner, I made Pad Ka Praw (aka Thai basil chicken), curried potatoes with turmeric, mustard seeds, chili peppers, shallots and onions, and curried rainbow chard with coconut, garlic, ginger, curry leaves, basil and Serrano peppers, all served over a bed of basmati rice in a beautiful bowl handmade by my friend Sarah (the bowl I always eat out of now, after she and her husband Ben gave it to me).

A plane soars overhead as Taylor sleeps inside. We had just come back from a three-mile hike. Staring at me while I worked at my desk, he asked for it. Those eyes pleaded, even after our three-miler early this morning to start the day, huffing and puffing the entire way back. Plenty of boats sit on Richardson Bay, like toy figurines on a sheet of blue glass. And the trees move ever so slightly; it’s not windy tonight. The clouds that dominated this morning’s skies have given way to variations of blue from periwinkle to cyan to cerulean, some of which is reflected back a bit more brilliantly from the water below it.

And all the leaves on the trees are falling
To the sound of the breezes that blow
And I’m trying to please to the calling
Of your heart-strings that play soft and low

I finish eating, happy in my thoughts. And my heart is full as I make my way back inside, thinking those most special of thoughts.