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.