Bird Brained.

My visit draws to a close. I will have to leave at the end of 5 months and 29 days.
They say the flame burns brightest before it is extinguished.

The other day a giant bird just crashed into the glass window in Arjun's office and startled everyone, falling very dead on the ground below. I am trying not to think about it.

Walking is no longer the fun it was.

This fortnight, the leaves on the trees turned pink, orange yellow, copper- all the fall colors, and then dried into brown beautiful shapes. They need to be swept off - every day. They mess up the roads, and while I love the rustling sound my shoes make when I walk on them, it is slippery.

And not all of them dry into pretty shapes anyway- some crumple up really ugly and I wish it was possible to automatically suck them into the huge trash bins in front of every house in Palo Alto, as they fall.

But they are falling harder and faster than anyone can collect them. And it takes hardly a week for a tree to be bare and forlorn right after it turns into a brilliant display of warmth.

The berries on shrubs are red and luscious, but Denny warns me. They are poisonous. She says the birds don't know that. They get drunk on the berries.

At least now we know what the bird crash and fall was about. Depressing. At least nature ought to work right- I mean the birds and the berries have been there forever. The birds ought to know better.

I try to remember that the leaves will turn to useful stuff which will be good for the flowers next spring. And birds also have to die. But I don't have the determination required.

Goodbyes are just so terribly inevitable