When Silence Isn't Golden

Silence is not always golden.  Today's is smoky as the northern California air which tells under its breath of distant fires, the dull heat of late August, the parched and sun-bleached land that won't revive again for months.  I find only muddle where my words should be, a garbling rather than warbling, a smudge of fingerprints obscuring the glass of the window on the world I press my nose against to try to see through—looking desperately for inspiration, finding none, not even a glimmer of a castle turret out beyond the clouded interface (though faith promises it is there, still there).

Nectarines, Matisse, Mozart, tiramisu, none manage to clear my muddy mood, to fill with their typical charm this lackluster lacuna in the month.

But then a little junco comes, in drab colors, in unassuming form, and cheers me.  And when I check the spelling in my father's ancient dictionary, the big Random House, I find juste-milieu, the golden mean, which gives me equilibrium again, gold of the best sort.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, View from My Durham Window