two hundred. forty one.

happy october first, friends.

just made a batch of crockpot whiskey applesauce [bit heavy on the whiskey, ahem] to celebrate this special day. the house smells fantastic.

recently been having some curious sleeping habits. i think this is what it must feel like to go crazy. 

some examples:

talking to people who aren't really there - i wake up whispering in the middle of the night. it takes far too long to convince myself that i'm actually in bed and not at the grocery store or work.

i'll fall asleep with a sweater on and wake too hot, but i can't remember how to work buttons. 

i'll wake at 2a.m. and spend long, confusing moments trying to figure out how close 2 is to morning. is it morning already? did i miss the morning? why, i can't even begin to know. 

another thing:

a young boy told me a story about how his mother saw a picture of herself laughing. 

he said that she wasn't pretty when she laughed [like how some people look real cute] because her mouth was so gaping and her nose so squinched and her teeth so crooked. but it didn't matter because she was happy. 

she saw a picture of what she looked like and stopped laughing so much, because she'd think of it every time she got happy enough to start giggling.

he said: "I bet people who used to take those really serious pictures a long time ago would laugh when they were finished taking them. I wish we lived back then, so she would laugh after being serious instead of being serious when she wanted to laugh."

two hundred. forty.

||

The constant darkness began to absorb her, at first. It wasn't just behind her eyes; it was seeping into her pores. The darkness was eating her so that there was less of her than when she had begun. The saturation of darkness meant the absence of Maia.

 Down by the lake she’d find delicate fish bones or pieces of driftwood with her fingers and imagine them sun-bleached and refined by the water. She would wish in desperate moments to shrivel there, to lend her bones to this landscape and be bleached and refined. Because that’s what light felt like – smooth.

The darkness was clumsy, was rough around the edges.

||

Everyone knew light. Everyone was created for and into the light. The light was certain and straightforward.

We are shaped by it and pattern our lives after it, our waking and sleeping and eating.

There was no rhythm to darkness. It was tumbling and fumbling and graceless. 

two hundred. thirty nine.

You'd think I'd one day grow tired of writing about the same things
[and perhaps one day I will]
but every year I still write down autumn things.
Surprised & delighted again at the way autumn makes every good thing the best thing.

When it turns colder we put away the air conditioner and keep the window open while we sleep. We keep it open for as long as we can, through September and into October, before begrudgingly shutting it and bringing out the finicky space heater.
It's open these nights. Mornings are delicious. I've added an extra blanket to the pile and sleep with my socks on. Often I'll peel them off in the middle of the night, unless I'm very cold or very tired.

[On the word "very" - whenever I use it I always think of that quote about it being a lazy word.
But sometimes I like it better.
For instance, I could have said: "...unless I'm frigid or exhausted."
It doesn't seem as nice in my head though, so I suppose I'll be lazy.]

Other autumn things happening:
-Drinking loads and loads of tea.
-Waiting for mail & sending out letters.
-Knitting rather poorly.
-Making soup.

All of the good things are all so very good right now. Chuffed to bits.
Hope you're doing all sorts of autumn things too, like walks outside and cooking hearty foods with friends. Hope you're bringing your sweaters out of their boxes and breaking them in with bonfires and pipe smoking under the stars.

two hundred. thirty eight.

"Do you mind if I smoke here?" she asked in a beautiful French accent.

 I knew she was French, somehow, before she spoke. It was her shoes, maybe, or the way she shifted her body before she turned around. Something in the angle she held her head and shoulders. 

She pulled out a long, thin cigarette and tapped it delicately, almost impatiently. 

"Go right ahead!" I responded, as coarse and unrefined as can be, my posture slumped and remnants of lunch scattered on my table. 

This is one of the moments where I wish I would have tried to bum one of her cigarettes off her, so we could have been classy and smoked together and talked of Paris. 

I don't, of course. I remain uncouth and messy at my little table. 

Continuing to decipher notes from class. A single page in my notebook looks like this - all these random bits to remember:

|| Life as Poesis. Vocational. Filling it. 

|| "Damn" as Claudia jumps to reach the top of the chalkboard she's already filled with Knocknarea and Ben Bulben and Newgrange. What a funny thing to see! 

|| Violence a kind of impetus.

|| Thumos - furnace, force of being, spiritedness. "Even the wisest man uses violence as an impetus, as a force, as a means for knowing himself."

|| [Like a bulldog, she way she snarls and woofs.] 

|| John says he goes to pubs with friends - talks for 5 min on politics, 5 min medical reports, 1 hr fun & light-hearted.

|| [Reading before made me doubt him, but reading now draws me to him.]

|| But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you...

|| in the deep hearts core - like the innisfree poem. and we shall find some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow.

|| Eros = that which draws you towards that which drives you.

|| Truth is founded in the beggars heart. The beggar is the one who has nothing to lose. 

two hundred. thirty seven.

[at the end of the day we turn our backs to the sun and walk towards the long shadows we cast.]

Just finished camping in Michigan. Let's go back already - yes? A few moments ago I finished dumping all of the sand out of my bag. Missing the water and the woods and sleeping in the hammock. We camped close to a road, but I still thought of that Wendell Berry poem:

Ask the world to reveal its quietude - 
not the silence of machines when they are still,
but the true quiet by which birdsongs,
trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms
become what they are, and nothing else.

Coming back to learning days. It is good and growing. All of my days are learning days, it seems. But I'm grateful, most grateful.

Back to work today. We have a table [fondly called The Kitchen Table] sitting at the front of the shop, and family sits there. Not related by blood, but family by familiarity - they've all been coming to the coffee shop for ages. They welcome newcomers and new staff and Margaret always introduces people to one another so that the family grows larger day by day.
It was sweet to come in today and see them again, curious to ponder the people that make places feel like home.

LASTLY.
Translated this from the aforementioned notes, if you're interested. It's a fragment of a much lengthier jumble of thoughts:

I was struck by many things in class, including a confirmation of my love for Ireland and all of its folklore. 

Additionally, we were discussing at one point how available Yeats was to emotion, to expression, to sorrow and that lovely melancholy. Part of that was due, I'm sure, to his mystical and occult interests. But the surprise comes when you consider his age - the knowledge and scope he was able to realize while still so young. 

I was reminded of the lecture at Newgrange, how the woman said we were so sanitized from death, so removed. We don't let it touch us. Yeats was always walking in the woods and among the people in those early years, listening to their stories. I daresay if we Americans did that today we'd gain quite a bit of knowledge as well. It's not necessarily, I think, that Yeats was some profoundly in-touch soul. Perhaps it's that our souls are so out of touch and so removed from the things that make us human and grant us experience & gravity & wisdom. We live for distractions & pleasures, placing ourselves in the midst of convenience, which lends no depth at all to our perception of the world. His genius is certainly to be lauded, but I think surprise at his experience points more towards our lack thereof.

two hundred. thirty six.

All of my city classes are done - it's a terrible sadness.

I thought I was doing a terrific job of taking copious notes in every class, but upon glancing back over what I'd written it's just a lot of really cryptic scribbles. I can pick out maybe one or two words that might have some significance, as well as fragments of book titles or authors. I continue to tell myself that I'll take the time to decode it soon enough.

I need to get better at note-taking and general organization of written materials. I discovered that for 8 weeks of classes I used 3 different notebooks. Whilst recently shuffling around the study I found a stack of additional notebooks, all of them somewhere around half full, none of them cohesive. I'd start the first part of a story in one book, jot down bullet points in another, and write out half sentences or more notes in other books. If this is a reflection of how I go about organizing other facets of my life, it's a miracle I can function at all. 

My creative writing teacher always likened writing to cooking - you just have to know the recipe. We all suspected that his analogy had more to do with the fact that he never had anything to eat before class and talked about food as often as he talked about writing. Have I told you how eccentric he was? When he spoke, most of his L's became W's. I tried to write down a sample sentence for you, but alas, it too is also scribbles. I can tell you that he used "like" as a filler word a lot. A wot. Wike, a wot. 

Anyhow, back to writing as cooking, sometimes I didn't want a recipe, I just wanted to mess around and throw a meal together. I didn't want to talk about what made that meal unique based on the ingredients and the recipe. He would constantly point out weird little things that we would unintentionally do in our writing, and then tell us to keep doing that. This was both interesting and wildly unhelpful. How to continue to write subtly? Doesn't the very fact that I now know that I write subtly ruin everything? I can never be subtle again.

I want to know what makes something good but I also don't. 

I always want to know what makes something bad, but he would never say. He would question the purpose of words or sentences, but never outright tell us something didn't work. He would leave us to figure it out for ourselves. Very rarely he would scratch out unnecessary words. I loved going through and finding words scratched out. Good riddance!  

Needless to say, I enjoyed it tremendously. 

He left us with a bunch of really inspirational, hokey statements. It was the best. 

Two hundred. thirty five.

Sometimes walking in the city can feel like I'm immersed in The Truman Show. You know? As if I'm walking around the backstage of a giant production.
When I'm walking to class, I take a back way, a long way, a quiet way. Few people walk here, so it's always jarring to happen upon a group of construction workers reading and doing crossword puzzles with brows furrowed before they begin their day. You know? We all seem so out of place for a few seconds, like actors out of context - the man wearing their hard hats & struggling over a few letters, pencil gritted in teeth. Me, walking an unusual path. Everyone freezes for those few seconds, even the pigeons: "maybe if we don't move she won't see us..."
Later in the day I stumbled upon an unfinished art show at the cultural center. Huge wooden boxes with cryptic names sat in a hallway, waiting to be unpacked and set up. Aha, I was too early, they weren't prepared for me. I have fooled them all! I have beat their system! Was half expecting a security guard to escort me out, and I could wink at him and whisper that I knew what was going on.

Anyhow. So just a little mad these days.

two hundred. thirty four.

Hannah and I went downtown recently to go to an Irish singing lesson of sorts and then a music jam in a pub. Life should always always be this way. The ladies knitting, people playing music, fish & chips at every table.
It flashed me back to a moment to a pub in Galway.
To set it up: We had just met Paul, a nice lad engaged to a nice lass back in Chicago.
"Where did you meet her?"
He pointed. "That pub, right across the corner. We met there!"
"How sweet! That gives me hope that I can find a husband here in Ireland," I said laughingly. [And, you know, completely serious.]
"Really? Oh great, meet my friends!" Cried Paul, in a enthusiastic "but-wait-there's-more!" announcer voice.
Disregarding my protestations, Paul dragged me over to meet his three friends. None of the the fine Irish gents were interested in love and marriage (though not for Paul's lack of trying, as he would constantly check in and ask if we were falling in love yet and point subtly at the church just behind the pub). They were jolly good fun though, mostly making fun of each other and filling us in on Irish life.
Brian and I got to talking about Chicago vs. Galway.
"I would live here in a heartbeat," I said.
"Here? Why?! This pub is as good as it gets here," said Brian.
"This pub is one of the best things in the world!"
"But you have Boystown and Wrigleyville!"
As if the delights of those sex-crazed and boozy areas could satisfy me the way the ocean could, just steps away, and the music playing at my elbow, and the Guiness in my hand. As if the lights and clubs of Chicago could compare to the graves that were older than my country in farmers fields. People passed them everyday without a thought. As if the Budlight buckets could top the warm whiskey drink the bartender insisted I try.
So we shook on a trade, Brian and I.
Still banking on it coming true one day. If you meet a man named Brian parading around in my life, you can be rest assured that I'm over at his pub in Galway.

two hundred. thirty three.

'Twas a fine evening for a pipe and some cherry moonshine.
I bought a clay pipe from Ireland and used it tonight for the first time.
Forgot this week about most of the reading for classes so there'll be a lot of Yeats on the train tomorrow morning.
I like him better when it's raining.
You know?
Some things are better read in the rain or the sun
or on a train
or whilst completely stationary in your window seat.
Yeats happens to read very well when the skies are a bit grey.
[no surprise there, you may say rightly.]
The weather calls for sun tomorrow, so it seems I'll have to plug on through anyhow.

Sleep is a thing lately that is not swift in coming & not long in staying. You know? Summer seems ripe with that, what with the sun and the wildness and the loudness of it. I try to force myself to like it, to enjoy the brazen, unapologetic heat. But I'm more content when at least the mornings are cooler.

Had more to say -- something funny too, and I've forgotten it now of course.

two hundred. thirty two.

[Barefeet on wood floors
I'll tell you everything you've heard before
about summer nights.]

I find myself restlessly pacing & toenail painting with cherry whiskey in my mason jar.
Also: reading too many books in the stillness of this sticky evening

The soundtrack is "Michigan" by the Milk Carton Kids on repeat.

"...but I think what really kept him cheerful was his inquisitiveness."
 [Till We Have Faces]

 Isn't that the truth?
Let's always stay curious, searching.
If we remember the wonder we'll stay winsome. Forever and ever.
Promise?

two hundred. thirty one.

When will we know all the things we've learned?
I wish I could remember it all.

I spend every Monday in the city now. I have a Yeats poetry class in the morning, which is better than you could imagine it would be. It's filled with older people, and I get along so well with older people. Pat is a woman who's been to Ireland too many times to count. We stand in the hall and talk during our bathroom break. The teacher walks by and grabs my arm, telling us that she always likes the hall-lingerers the best because they are always the most interesting.
Then I have a break, where I'm prone to wander around the Art Institute with Pappy, or find new places to eat and sunny places to sit.
Then it's my creative writing class at night. It's only successful, educated, young folks, which is the worst. The first day, I walked back and forth in front of the door several times, then walked back downstairs to stall/verify that I was indeed in that classroom. I tried to pretend I was a different person, a confident person, and kept giving myself pep talks. Eventually I made my way in and it's not been too terrible. Only mildly terrible.

I've also inadvertently begun working again. I was supposed to just go in for a few training shifts but now it appears I'm on the schedule every week - like a real job or something. I already miss early retirement. Long, lazy mornings working my way through multiple cups of coffee, stacks of books or pages of writing. I miss the walks and bike rides. I miss cooking all of my meals. Volunteering at the retirement home.
Now it's rushing to and fro, eating old nutella croissants and drinking lukewarm coffee.
[Ok. I suppose it could be worse. Because an old nutella croissant is still a nutella croissant.]

Oh, these summer days are flying by so fast.

two hundred. thirty.

I can see the lilacs blooming outside my window. 

In the mornings we open the doors to let them in. The kitchen smells the best - like coffee & lilacs.

I'll never tire of lengthy mornings. 

Went for a bike ride today. 

Grateful for reminders, strong reminders to be planted. 

We can be moved without being uprooted. 

I, too, sway & raise my branches

[as the wind rushes where it wishes]

but trees,

you know,

they are rooted.

And so I must be too. 

delighted & grounded all at once. 

P.S. It was an aspen.

Remember how those sound?

two hundred. twenty nine.

The books I'm reading are big
[I mean - the things I'm reading are bigger than my brain box]
so it's nice
to talk
slow.

I like when we have time to linger.

We don't use our words
as hasty triggers
[bang]
and hurt the one at the other end.

two hundred. twenty seven.

These past few days I've spent holed up in Chris & Steph's apartment as they're on vacation.
My aim was to get some real writing done, to finish several projects that I've just been blankly staring at, lock myself in a room until I emerge triumphant and all that. Whenever I have these lofty goals, real problems start to arise.

For one, when I spend a lot of time writing, I begin to ask myself: "Who are you kidding? What are you playing at?" Because it feels like I'm pretending to be a writer sometimes, but instead I'm just sitting on the floor going through huge mugs of black tea and jars of Nutella, and saying things like "plot holes" as if they mean something.

For the blessed moments where I forget about myself completely - it's good.
Little things spur me on, like the artist I had just met and she asked if I was an artist as well.
When I said no, she responded with: "You're a writer," and nodded her head.
She knew. I wanted to hug her and ask her how she knew.

Anyhow. I've thrown the Nutella across the room so that my laziness will override my need for hazelnut, sugary goodness. I've refilled my mug. Turned Kim Janssen back on. Ready for another round. Cheers.

two hundred. twenty six.

i walk often and i'm reading three books, and one of them is about walking. it's excellent. all of my journal is filled with quotes from others recently, i've nothing of my own.

In Ireland no one ever really asked me what I did. As in, just after meeting someone your next question is: "So what do you do?"

If they did ask me, it was after several moments of preliminary conversation, establishing a base for who I was before asking what I did.

Does this make sense?

It was so nice not to be asked that, to have to tuck that question away as I was over there. People would call me out for using it: 

"You Americans, always asking people what they do, you all have to know what people do. It's a status thing for you. You have to know where I rank."

I've known that I hated that question, but never realized what life was like without it.
I'm so accustomed to feeling forced to ask that question to form any sort of initial relationship with a stranger, and so accustomed to feeling forced to answer that question in a comfortable, impressive way. 

You know what I mean by comfortable?

:: In order for our interaction to proceed in a usual fashion, I'll need to answer the question in a way that puts you at ease by leading off with an aspect of my life centered around my education or work at the time. 

Heaven forbid I shun convention and make you uncomfortable by giving you other sorts of information about how I spend my time, information that won't immediately compute. You might not know where to file it and how to respond. 

Here, we are all so task-oriented that we value the lives of others based on what they do.
If they spend their time in efficient ways, doing "worthwhile" things, like maintaining the pattern of a busy life. 

Ex: in a speech for a graduating class recently: "Get out of the slow lane, get into the fast lane."

Once, I had met this guy and like a good conversationalist asked him what he did. He said he was a financial analyst. 

I asked him if he enjoyed it, because that doesn't seem like the kind of job that someone IS, in the way that an artist or writer is usually both a job description and the defining essence of a person. 

He stopped for a long moment before saying, "You know what, no one has ever asked me that before."

In Ireland, the first question would most often be a "why" question, which is so revealing.

Instead of asking what it is that you do, ask why you are doing it. 

So, in the context of a traveler, they would ask me why I was traveling. And since I was traveling, why Ireland? 

Then more questions: what had I seen, what had I loved? 

They asked me if it was different than I thought it might be, if it was my first time out of the country. 

They asked me where I lived, if I enjoyed it there, if I would come back to Ireland. 

They asked me where I was going next, and proceeded to fill in any and all gaps with their own personal experience of Ireland, giving me suggestions and so much history. 

I love this way of being introduced to a person because you gain all sorts of insight into their character before peering into the mechanics of how productive they are. They knew what I ached for before they knew what I did for a paycheck.

And maybe it's too idealistic and grand to put it that way, but it did alter how I view introductions. Ask more "why" questions. Ask why when someone tells me they're a student or a teacher or artist or financial analyst. 

I asked a man in a pub why he was a teacher. Without missing a beat he said because it was important for him to preserve the language. He grew up on the West Coast, where people still spoke it in their homes, and it was a way of life that was too crucial to let go. 

It occurred to me then that if I had asked the financial analyst why he was a financial analyst, I don't know if he would have had an answer.

This is so much later than I meant to stay up tonight. Tomorrow we're building raised beds and planting lots and lots before running to find some water to sit by. These days. 

two hundred. twenty five.

Just like that it's all changed.
I've left the dear coffee shop for other things, and this blog will suffer, I'm sure, without stories about nose-picker Joe and such.
Tom the farmer gave me some daffodils before I left.
I clutched them tightly on the drive back home.
They nodded their sunny heads encouragingly because it's going to be ok.

To mark this transition I found a hill and sat on it for a bit, because when it's all altered I need good space and good sky, as if a clear view from horizon line to horizon line would lend me clearer sights into what was coming next.
I over thought a lot of things and then began simplifying them.
Living now in gracious uncertainty.

two hundred. twenty four.

I've been stalling from making a post about Ireland because, you know, it's only the place I've spent my life dreaming about. 

I can tell you that I did a pretty terrible job of taking pictures if we add up the moments I could have taken pictures and then look at when I actually did take pictures. 

But if there was music, I was too busy dancing and clapping. 

If the hills were nearly mountains, I was too busy driving (or nearly crashing). 

If the pub was quaint, I was too busy chatting. 

If the food was superb, I was too busy eating (minus the one picture I got of my stew. Mmm, and what stew that was).

I did a decent job documenting the trip in crazy bullet points scribbled across journal pages, words sharing space with random bits of flowers and moss that I would find too dear to leave behind. 

"What was your favorite part of the trip?" I've heard so many times. 

Usually I end up sputtering, making a lot of noises that signify deep thought and ending in a hopeless, shrugging silence. 

The silliest question. 

I can tell you a few things, only if you promise to understand that this is not the half of it, not the half of the half of it, and we'll talk more later. 

It was strangely surprising to me how real it all was when we first were driving (and lost, incidentally). Worried I had built it all up in my mind, I wanted to stop and kiss every low stone wall, every pasturing sheep, every old home with simple, clean lines. The music in the pubs, the stories we heard until too-late hours, the beer, the brown bread and smoked salmon - it was all really and truly. I kept saying stupidly "This is real life!"

Here, anyhow, are some of the answers I give to the impossible question of favorites:

The people dancing in the streets to the gypsy band in Galway.

The music in the pubs. So much music, everywhere.

The Guinness. Friends, it's real life.

That time we lifted some pub glasses. 

The one dear librarian with the glasses on her nose. She had to look over them to see the computer, and she moved so slowly that it took her a half hour to look up directions. Once we got there we discovered it still was not the place we had been looking for. But you've never met a dearer librarian.  

Speaking of poor directions...the hilarious amount of poor directions we received.

The ruins we crawled around. 

Talking to Stephen about the ruins he crawled around growing up. We also discussed Irish history and economics and language. 

Receiving maps of Sligo from the John the map guy, the cartographer who carries a bag of his maps with him.The man was an absolute gem, and has a website: johnthemap.co.uk 

The smell of the Long Room at Trinity College. 

The chills I got at Newgrange - partially from the wicked cold, partially from the incredible structure. So much to say about this!

The pub in Slane where the owner played us the U2 DVD from the concert he went to at Slane Castle. We all sang along. 

Speaking of singing along, I'll always associate "Ho Hey" now with the time we sang it with a room full of Irish folks at the top of our lungs. 

Ronan, one of my very, very favorite. He regaled us with tales of the pub he'd owned for the last 22 years, then walked us to our car to make sure we got out alright. 

The tea with milk. Always tea with milk in cups. 

The woods. So alive and eerie at the same time, what with the moss and ivy and crumbling ruins you'd find.

The rivers. 

Every perfectly delightful friend we made. 

There, that's enough for now. 

Now that I'm back I'm bracing myself for the future, trying to find signs of spring and remembering to love this land as well.

[And, of course, planning an extended return.]

two hundred. twenty three.

Life is a branch & it is a dove // handcrafted by confusing love

Where have I been?
Not here, clearly.
I've been on some trains recently, that's something. I make little notes of things to remember to tell you later, but I've been doing a bad job of it recently.
But on the train I wrote a few things down.
Nothing very interesting, but for some reason I find everything interesting on trains.
Ok, I pretty much find everything interesting ever.
Except March Madness.

On the train there is a man sipping something from a Two Brothers bottle. "I love Two Brothers!" I want to lean forward and whisper, but don't.
In front of him a young man hangs his head in slumber, hands clasped as if in prayer. I notice how clean his nails are. Peeking out the back of his rabbit fur cap is a single shy curl.
The woman in front of him plays solitaire on her ipad. I cannot see her face but her hands old, and she's a wizard at solitaire.
They all sit close to the windows on the bottom level, and it gives the welcoming appearance that they might be alright if you sat next to them. But see what happens when you do, how they shift uncomfortably in their seat and subtly let you know what an inconvenience your presence is.
I sit up top in the single seat, so that I can see farther out the windows when I'm pretending to read but really just watching people.
I sit in the single seat so that no one can mistake me for being friendly, even though I consider myself pretty friendly, or at least terribly curious which usually amounts to the same thing. But when I first started taking trains by myself when I was younger my Dad would make sure I sat in the single seat so he didn't have to worry about stranger danger. It's one of those funny things that stuck and now I habitually sit there without even thinking twice.

Perhaps I make it too grand, this life of mine.
This nonsense over strangers in trains.
Catching my breath over bridges and in cities and under stars.
I get teary-eyed at dumb things, like the cook next door giving me one of his stale donuts as we talk about traveling.
And the baby-faced college student customer who suggests a C.S. Lewis book club.
And the older woman who brings me a neck pillow for my plane ride to Ireland.
Certain songs and the starkness of this land right now stop me constantly.
Quite grateful. It makes moments of fear and doubt that much less significant, such simple blessings as reminders to not be afraid.
Tarry a little longer, friends. These moments are not to be missed.

two hundred. twenty two.

A song for someone who needs somewhere to long for - homesick

Walks these days are great.
& quiet - the quietest I can remember.
I felt offensive even whispering for Kanoa to keep up as we tramped through the snow. It began snowing moments after we arrived one day and we relished it, running where we would and sitting where we wanted. Twice I heard loud cracks in the forest, startled me. I had to comfort myself the same way I comfort myself when I'm alone in our house - by telling myself that it's old and is liable to make noises. There in the trees I was in a home-of-sorts and those trees are old, older than me, and given to shifting and cracking. Several times Kanoa would raise her nose to the air and I would raise mine too, trying to smell what she smelled.
I've come to love winter and arrive home unwilling to take off thick socks and warm boots.

Greg said some things today about walks and what we learn. "Participation," he said. "It's about participating in what we have. It means paying attention, being grateful."
We say similar things, but I think we mean it in different ways. Greg always says "You just have to get hip to it" which could mean any number of different things. He has an ominous way of talking sometimes, makes me feel like Greg knows things I don't know. He comes across like the crazy guy with the stringy hair, but gosh he's fascinating sometimes. He's hip to it. Whatever it is.

Nose-picker Joe is back from his travels and everyday he's digging. We had a great conversation about how cold weather matures people and how powerful literature comes from places where the writers have a season to be contemplative, when weather forces them inside, and the musings that come from the lingering darkness. But you know, I really struggled to take Joe seriously because I was so caught up with his nose-picking.


Change is slow but I feel it taking shape

I hope these next six months are as crazy as I think they might be.
Do you want to know something?
I'm going to Ireland!!
[I never use exclamation points because they seem awfully intimidating, but in this case I need them!!!]
Like a small child, I am ridiculously excited to have a flight long enough to watch a movie and eat free food.
I won't be there long, just a week, but I'll be there.
Holler if you have Ireland tips. I've been googling lots of random things in anticipation.