two things. not related.

I have had two things in my head all day.

{No, I've had many things in my head all day, starting with: Why, oh why, is it 81 degrees at 5:30 in the morning? With a heat index of I don't want to know? I was not born for seasons like this in the Midwest.}

One Thing in My Head. I watched the leaves fall on a bright summer day.

That line came to me as I sat outside the Hotel de Ville in Aix-en-Provence. There were, in fact, leaves falling from the plane trees above me, just as if it were fall, and the whole idea seemed quite poetic to me.

Ephemeral summer. Change. How you can't predict even one detail of one day {that the leaves will stay on the trees in the summer}.

So perhaps a poem will come from that.

Second Thing in My Head. Jane Austen died on this day in...oh, I can't remember the year, and I only know this fact because of Twitter. Twitter teaches me random things like this all the time, which is one of the main benefits I can find in Twitter: it fills me with dinner party trivia.

So Jane died ages ago on this day, and now I'm thinking of a quote from Persuasion: It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at 29 than she was 10 years before.

I am not saying I'm handsomer now than I was at 19, but it's a good quote and now I want to re-read Persuasion.

These two thoughts: they are pretty all right thoughts to have with you throughout a hot summer's day.