Conversation

Thread connects us.

At first, our eyes meet and linger, and the first tendrils reach out.

As words flow and we relax, the tendrils extend, exploring the space between us.

As we find common ground, a dance begins in midair, our threads weaving, flirting, cautious yet curious.

Here, doubts creep in, pulling our minds from the present, and draining the courage from our wispy emissaries.

But then we share a laugh, and they connect. Our shoulders relax, and our eyes soften. Warmth floods our bodies.

This connection is not easily made – we revel in the unique joy of newfound friendship.

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Before the new girlfriend

I asked him what he was searching for. In the shimmering heat, his face was wet as with the slime of a fish.

“You can’t breathe in this goddamn city,” he said.

“The humidity?”

“I want out,” he said, and then his face began to pucker. He first turned pink, a deep watermelon, and then his eyes started to water.

“It’s because of the summers she left me,” he said. “She hates them. Couldn’t stand them.”

“Why didn’t you move?”

“You come from the cold north, and you know. You think you’ll love it forever.”

He paused. He cried, “Fuck!”

Fear

I know why you’re here, Fear.

To protect me from lions and disease and spears

To keep me alive in a world years gone by

I know why you assume the worst

Better safe than sorry

But I’m tired.

Tired of the reminders of the fragility around me

Tired of constant cross-examination of every idea

Tired of regret

There are no spears here, no enemies hiding in the brush

This world calls out for joy. For appreciation, love, passion, excitement, happiness. We all deserve these luxuries.

I know why you’re here, Fear. But right now, I don’t need you.

Inner Monologue

Breathe.

Let the scene before you dissolve into a canvas of color and light. Hear each sound as it comes, crisply. How do your clothes feel against your skin? This moment is art, manifesting in each detail of reality.

Imagine yourself of 10 years in the future inhabiting this instant, in this version of your body. What would you notice? What brings you joy in the scene around you? Cultivate nostalgia for the present.

All will change, so honor this instant by noticing and appreciating, letting the beginnings of a smile curl the corners of your mouth.

Rest and exist.

Squirrel

Goose pecked the frozen gravel. “Tasty,” she said.

Squirrel nodded. Yesterday he left tiny footprints in wet concrete and there was still grit between his toes.

“We’ll stop in Carolina, if we’re lazy. Cuba if we’re audacious,” offered Goose.

Squirrel nodded. He’d stayed in this park by the river for his whole life. Those names were just abstract concepts for ‘places beyond’. They might as well describe the other river bank.

“Doing okay, old friend?” Goose asked.

Squirrel nodded. He‘d stashed acorns aplenty.

“See you in Spring,” Goose said, honking at her entourage and taking to the sky.

Squirrel nodded.

Thursday Morning

I awake, lost in thought.

In the kitchen, my mind races and worries, making plans.

I absentmindedly ask my housemate about his day.

“I’m going to have a picnic.”

The word stops my mind in its tracks. It tastes of sunshine and pine trees, of smiles and slowness.

“That’s cool! What else you got going on today?”

“Oh, was going to meet with some friends and drink tea later.”

The simplicity and beauty pierces my frazzled and distracted mind. Bluebird days like this are meant for wicker baskets, laying in warm green grass, feeling your body fall into the Earth.

Pity Party

She wants a face like a dime, the surface hard, the size of it round, compact, pocket-friendly. Instead, Horseface’s face looks like her name. What is it like, being Horseface? A long, mournful nose, lashes quivering in light. Cheeks muscular, emotion-wrought. When Jenna gets on top of her, her throat dissolves in sound, Jenna hissing at her to shut up, not to tell a soul. Horseface thinks of the time she saw her father with the pistol, pressed against the mare’s side.

“She’s in such pain,” he said, his finger on the trigger. “I want to stop it.”

by phaedrus et al

a body,
a soul temporarily shedding its wings
the eyes, the gateway
an incarnation of a soul

an object,
the archetype of a form
a shadow projected on a cave wall
a second story we run over the screen

a form,
a blueprint of perfection
an ideal, eternal in its essence
perhaps transcendent of time entirely

an initiated,
looks beyond the rhetoric of an object
seeks truth in the myth of a form
sees divine madness, dionysus

i’m quite curious,
yet will i glimpse the unseen cat?
unopened, the future is fluid
here i stay and see where spirit lays

 

Plants are pets too

Athena the ming aralia is enjoying her new foggy home– the sun does shine in the shade.

Atticus the fiddle-leaf fig is growing up fast. He needs a stake to hold himself upright, else he hobbles over like an elderly man without his trusty cane. All day he dreams of a life free from plastic things.

Dumbledore the dracanea filters out bad air, breathing life into spaces. Left with friends to plant sit, he appeared quite downtrodden when last checked on. Me thinks people are pouring beer in his home. Operation Rescue Dumbledore to ensue before he becomes entirely hairless.

Polihale

Breathing

Watching water roil and tear

At this miraculous outcropping rising from nothing

Not nothing

An infinity of life, incessant, dynamic

She holds us

This land

Firmly but gently rocking against the shore

An ancient conversation

From mother, protector

To proud renegade

We are the west

The outermost bastion of our brothers

Standing chest out against the endless volleys from the north

We frolic, dive, and glide – turning the assault to joy

Silence

Is different here.

It’s richer, it changes, yet the rhythm stays the same

Sky changes too

Blue to rose

Soft theater of light for

Dancing waves

Guilt

I drive past snow-capped peaks. How much longer will they retain their brilliant crowns?

I fill my tank – complicit in our collective crime. As I travel, I’m part of the problem I want to help solve.

I book tickets home for Christmas. I want to see my family, but is it worth the pollution? In saying yes, I support the system that destroys reefs, melts glaciers, and intensifies storms.

What can I do? What should I do? What will I do? The answers are all different.

I hit play on my audiobook, and my mind leaves this troubled world.

Fistful

Some things you never know, like the life you could have been living if you’d dated the other man, or what it’s like being born a tree. This is what you think of at the spot where the guardrail‘s rust meets the air, turns to you its weary face. Both of you are into the secret. Though both of you change your appearances with time, neither of you is alive. Tonight, you do not jump, and your husband will call you many times. You won’t answer, the way the dead don’t. You already know: the dead don’t feel black eyes.

Morsel

“If you can’t write about everything, write about something smaller.”

“Smaller than the universe? What about Earth.”

“Smaller.”

“America?”

“Smaller.”

“Massachusetts?” Pause. “Cambridge? This house?” Pause. “My bathroom? It’s white…”

“Smaller.”

“This towel.”

“Smaller.”

“This square centimeter of towel.”

“Start there.”

“It’s grey like warm slate. There are wispy cotton strands arranged in neat rows, but many have been pushed askew. Some strands end in fine points, stretched from years of use. Others are rounded. It feels like dry moss. It isn’t moving. It’s surrounded by fabric that looks just like it.”

“There’s a lot to say about a towel.”

100 on 100

The most interesting aspect was comparing this go-round to times I’ve done this in the past. I found myself getting hung up on trying to post stuff as good as my old favorites, which is not the point of the exercise. Maybe I’m taking myself too seriously compared to the past? If nothing else, this was a helpful exercise in seeing that. I also like how 100 words sharpens my focus onto the million little vignettes & characters & dialogue I pass by in a day. I plan to continue writing intermittently, and would definitely do this again every November.

Another oversimplification

Sometimes I dream of following the meter maid around with a roll of quarters.

Sorry, you cannot rain on 6ZHL881’s parade today. Clink-clink. Thirty more minutes, see? 6ZHL881 is simply saluting the last beams of sunlight on sand. In this light-catching moment of utter sublime, nothing else matters.

Nope, no ticket for 8HLI675 either. Clink-clink. Life is far too fleeting to leave precious time on the table. Let them order their third espresso, linger in dialogues of dreams, squeeze every last heart-quenching drop out of life that there’s no time to worry about silly details like the meter running out.

100 words, 2 days late, 30th submission

I’m 2 days late to my last 100 words, the 30th submission because that’s the number of days in november, and I realized that numbers don’t count in the word count (numbers as a word does, because it’s a word, but not, say, 30). I had been counting on someone to send me some words, like 100 count roughly, because he said he would send 100 and then I wouldn’t have to count it myself (of course, the computer counts it for me, there’s an algorithm) and now it’s almost midnight and it’s two days later but I think it still counts. counting on that.

Waieo

Waieo sees possibilities.

What if?

She builds worlds. Spaces for herself, for others, both. She finds inspiration in the textures and colors that surround her. When the path ahead of her ends, she sends her faithful fairy forth into the skies, and Waieo gazes through another’s eyes at sprawling landscapes and magical jungles.

She is a creator, even when she does not want to be. Words, images, movies, worlds – she has many avenues to share her soul.

Where will Waieo go next? What will the future look like? The questions are intertwined; she wants to shape what we’ll see.

Tide Pool

Fish teased Crab. Crab ran away. Crab’s Father couldn’t find Crab.

Father cut off Fish’s tail.

Fish couldn’t swim. Fish cried.

Shrimp heard Fish. Shrimp‘s siblings carried Fish. They found Father.

Fish apologized. Father apologized. Shrimp stitched Fish’s tail back on. Together they looked for Crab.

Crab had met Anemone. Anemone said “I love you, Crab.”

Father found Crab. “Come home,” he said.

“No,” said Crab. “Anemone loves me.”

Anemone met Eel. Now Anemone loved Eel. Crab cried.

Fish said to Crab, “I loved you all along.”

Crab kissed Fish.

Father thanked Shrimp.

Anemone dumped Eel.

Octopus ate them all.

Snow on Trees

A little tap
all it takes
to shake a
skirt of snow
from burdened
boughs.

No trees down,
no animals doing
anything odd
(except a raven
on an overpass
over a traffic
jam—but ravens
always act odd),
no neighbors
after the shaking
stopped.

Snow on slippers,
dawn not silent,
I’m not cold as
flashbacks
have me shaking,
escaping
each aftershock.

So I go on skis
to see and find
streets loaded
but no stories,
near-normalcy,
only sirens say
something
has happened,
is happening.

And these trees
bent beneath
the biggest mystery,
how the snow
hung on
while
shaking,
shaking.

Halea

Halea knew how to surf. But she knew the limits of her skill. And today the beach was frothing.

“You’re too weak for this swell,” said Doubt. “The sets are too frequent. You’ll never paddle out.”

Doubt raised his voice. “These waves probably won’t kill you, but they might. Why do you want to do this?”

The ocean’s power was unmatchable but she had a secret of her own. She couldn’t hear Doubt.

When the horizon rose up in dark ripples, when the vertical face loomed, when others questioned whether to let this one go, she simply went for it.

Play On

Slipping a dollar into his open case, we exchange a nod and a smile as I approach the yellow line, suddenly grateful the train won’t arrive for another ten minutes. Holding my breath as he shakes saliva from the instrument’s hardware, I wait for the soundtrack to begin again. And as the trumpet note echoes off the tiled walls, I slip into the movie that is my life. Where my posture has more intention, where hurried footsteps and drunken chatter are the perfect background track, where the man across the tracks, leaning on a fish mural, becomes a romantic possibility. 

In the Flow

Some days, it feels like everything is in flow–you catch the train on time, you connect genuinely with strangers through eye contact, engaged conversation and friendly gestures (like holding the door open for the other).

Buoyancy and a lightness arise when we are in flow. There is no grasping for a particular outcome. Instead, there is a contentment and ease with what is, and a deepened appreciation for being in the present moment.

It’s not about ‘shoulds’ or ‘have to’s,’ but rather about what resonates and feels right.

Trust your intuition. She will always guide you back to your truth.

Iaeou

Iaeou had an unpronounceable name, and this suited her. When she was two she bounced away from her mother and into the mouth of a lion. Then she wiggled out of its jaws and bounced right back home.

Her bounciness didn’t diminish with age. Some times were good— that day she invented the flamingo game and everyone joined. Some were hard— that night her hammock untied and she woke up falling. But she stayed bouncy, because people wouldn’t always play her games, and she could learn better knots. Each day would feel different from yesterday, and would change again tomorrow.

Dello

Dello’s mother was the wind. Her father was the water. She was born atop waves between two unknown lands. She walked her first steps along wood planks floating upon the ocean.

When she turned ten she went ashore and met normal children. She knew they were normal because they told her. This is also how she discovered she wasn’t.

One day she demanded that her parents fix her.

They said she was perfect.

She said they were wrong.

That night her parents wept, and their anguish whipped up a hurricane. She ran to warn the normal children. They didn’t listen.

Ander

Ander watched. She was good at watching. She liked to do things she was good at.

She watched two roosters fight in some bushes. One clearly wanted to be left to his own devices; the other wanted to prove himself. She wondered which she was.

She walked away, and noticed a coconut on the ground. She picked it up. She was curious about her strength, so she hurled it as far as she could. It landed with a thud, leaving an impression. She wondered if she were the coconut.

Behind her, someone yelled: “which stars will extinguish when I die?”

Dulu

Dulu lay on her back, fabric pressing against her eyelids, and listened to the drums.

She wondered why this medicine wasn’t helping. She wondered if she should do something about it. She wondered if everyone else felt like this. She realized these thoughts were worries. Then she worried that the worries wouldn’t stop.

She needed to leave. But her body was stuck. A moment of panic. Worries compounded like layers of a wave stacking before they broke upon shallow reef. Whitewash, then calm. She didn’t need to leave. She was here. She’d always been here. And she always would be.

Zoruso

Zoruso ran away. She had nothing to run from, and nothing to run towards. But something told her to run, so she ran.

She came to a strange land. It was too hot to breathe, so she held her shirt in front of her face and coughed. She met someone who seemed friendly, but he was just being kind. She met others who reminded her of better people she had left behind. She started to work, but it wasn’t clear what for.

One night, as she battled her mind to let her sleep, she realized why she had run here.

Corion

Corion didn’t realize she was walking in the real world. She thought she was moving in the other world.

In that world she was floating above a dark landscape.

In this world, she was walking away from her bedding towards the food storage. She opened a pot and ate leftover rations. Her bedmates heard the commotion but rolled over.

In the other world, Corion watched her body grow to absorb the whole land— forests and oceans and magma became her bones and guts and thoughts. A normal dream.

In the morning, Corion decided this nightwalker inside her needed a name.

Pack

A group of eight coalesced around a common goal. But no one knew the goal. Each time one member raised an opinion, others would either acquiesce, decline, or amplify. Three options existed, not four: never did anyone begrudge. When rain came some got wet, while others cowered under shelter. When hunger struck some cooked, while others relaxed. When drowsiness loomed they shared beds, giving the sleepiest the softest pillow. In conversation they were quick and kind, in games they were competitive and strong, and in both the weakest felt held. The goal remained a loose mystery. And so they lived.

DNA Match

At fifty years old, she found her birth father through ancestry.com. He lived on an Idaho farm. 

He was an engaged teenager when he conceived her. 

Before the wedding his fiancée ran away with another man, who convinced her to put the baby up for adoption.

A year later, the man left her.

She returned to her fiancé. By that time he was with someone else.

Both of them wanted to know what had become of their daughter, but Idaho adoption law prevented them from learning.

Now she’s met them and their whole separate families, and they’ve welcomed her.

Progress/Perfection

It’s tempting to just give in,

Let the violence, hate and greed win.

Because why take in one refugee

When thousands are stranded at sea?

Or protest racial discrimination

When it infects the police of this nation?

Why recycle your bottle of lotion 

When we can’t stop the rise of the ocean? 

So yeah, throw hissy fits and cry

But keep your eyes lifted high. 

Maybe we won’t get it ‘right’

But ‘better’ is worth a fight. 

If perfection’s required today,

Without space for reaction’s delay, 

Then martyrs will sit in their sorrow 

Neglecting an improved tomorrow. 

Progress 

over 

perfection. 

granddaddy boyd

The last Boyd with any means, Granddaddy Boyd, lived in his old age with Little Aunt Fawn. And he wrote long letters to Big Aunt Fawn (it was unclear whether she was older or physically larger), mewling that cruel Little Aunt Fawn wanted the house, that she was trying to poison him. Big Aunt Fawn replied that he was senile and paranoid. Two weeks later, Granddaddy Boyd was found dead in the gloomy shade of his front porch, with a broken glass and a few partly-muddled mint leaves, the julep dried and sticky on the warped Louisiana cypress boards.

Riding to the beat

I don’t go often, however on days I’m craving an intense workout,  good sweat, full release, and inspiring message, SoulCycle has become my vice.

The music is always bumpin’, the lights are low, and the one main concept is to ride to the rhythm of the beat.

Once you clip in, and pedal them legs to the rhythm of the music, you’ve set yourself up for a thrilling, challenging, exhilarating ride.

Heat builds, heart rate increases, sweat begins flowing out of every pore. The intensity of the day begins to fall away, creating space for a rejuvenated and elevated spirit.

you should know that to my eyes every thing is the platonic ideal of its class

when you tell me about your favorite book, i will love you. cummings says we open slowly like flowers in the spring, and our questions open us “petal by petal”. tell me about your favorite thing to cook, or eat; tell me which tastes bring you home. tell me about who you were before i met you, i will resent that we are only here now. stay up with me and tell me a funny story about your first pet. tell me what keeps your fire lit, where your horizon lies, and which way your winds blow now. feed me.

The Kin of Perspective

One rainy evening I met Crisis. Demanding attention as he walked into my life where I sat writing my priority list. He took one look at the paper and promptly tore it to shreds, declaring my time to be his. 

But on that very same night, I failed to notice, his sister Healing arrived. Silently, and out of sight, she gathered up the pieces in her brother’s wake. As the weeks wore on, she reassembled his wreckage, but began to run out of glue. So when she returned my list, it was quite a bit shorter, but finally manageable too. 

Quietude

An evening at home with no plans or distractions. What an incredible gift!

It is nearing dinner time and I select some seasonal produce–delicata squash and rainbow chard–and get to work slice and roasting while quinoa cooks on the stove.

I savor the quiet and also the incredible smells as they emerge through exposure to heat, herbs and spices. The rich and wholesome smell of sage fills the kitchen and warms my soul.

My appetite grows and I am eager to taste the flavors of this beautiful food. I make myself a plate, light the candles, sit down…bon appetit!

preboarding, norman y. mineta airport, san jose, california, 8:38a

Old be-scarved (babushka’d?) Russian ladies pushing ahead of young couples with infants dangling from newfangled front-hanging contraptions called björnssonęnfantil

Gujarati interspersed with accent-free blips of “IPO,” “Sunnyvale,” and “computational linguistics”

Enviably (or rather, fetishized) racially ambiguous teens in leather Rainbow flip flops and standard-issue black North Face fleeces, though less ambiguously followed by their parents, who are stressed about the delivery of their Tesla

They appear to make high-top Allbirds now, in laughably diminutive children’s sizes, to fit the Vietnamese toddler whose grandmother is using a pink iPad as a phone to FaceTime her cousin in Ho Chi Minh City

Driftwood

Log had always known Earth. She was born in it. As seed grew to sapling she sucked each of her branches from the soil.

In death, she learned water. She fell, tumbled downstream, and floated to this shore. Tides pushed her higher onto the beach until she dried. Then she was gathered.

This evening she felt fire. Set aflame by capable hands, she glowed with the quiet wisdom bestowed by her long and meandering existence.

Now she became air. As her solidity gave way to smoke, her sparks drifted up to join their twinkly sisters splashed across the night sky.

A few men and their moments

“Starfruit?” He nodded, biting into a section and showering the car with juice.

“SPOOOOOOOOOORTS” he yelled, hurling the squishy green ball across the beach to the other team, also men without shirts.

“What a time to be alive,” he sighed stepping into Costco to buy two pounds of frozen shrimp and a gallon of margarita mix.

“My fear is that I won’t be fully present this week,” he admitted through a mouthful of ribs and rice.

“Colon dash d is an emoji,” he laughed as two roughly hewn stick figures with arrows pointing to their colon and dick appeared onscreen.

Zatypota

I get intrigued when the first line of a scientific paper has the phrase, “…has long captured the imagination…”

In this case the authors are talking about the manipulative powers of parasitoids, wasps in particular, which hijack their hosts and force them into abnormal behaviors.

Alongside a small spider that lives in interesting cooperative colonies, they’ve found a wasp. The wasp’s larva, planted on a spider’s back, begins to eat. The hijacked spider exits its home and spins a dense cocoon nearby, where the wasp is safe to eat the rest of the spider and mature.

Whose imagination is captured?

Finish Lines

It’s similar to driving home, when in the last ten minutes, you realize it’s gonna be a close call. 

Who will win? The liquid in your bladder busting at the seams. Or your will power to retain it. 

You unhinge your top button. 

Thinking *any* thought to distract from the conundrum you face between reckless driving and upholstery wreckage. 

Pulling in, you make a plan. 

Pitch forward. 

Hobble to the door. 

Drop bags on the threshold. 

Sprint for the bathroom …

Just like my All of 100 discipline, excruciating to hold as I get close to the toilet called December.

Comments On an Article About Justin’s Brother, Whose Car Was Stolen With His Grandma’s Quilt Inside

“PSA: Do not leave anything of value in Seattle.”

“@mayorjenny considers this a low level crime and therefore not important. Sorry young man. I would be heartbroken as well. Too many things stolen from my car to count.”

“Your grandma is very talented. That was a great gift.”

“Five finger discount from a feral Seattle pet. It’s your fault, son. You f’d up and went to Seattle.”

“Need to offer a reward. Some people may see and buy it but not return it. Some people would buy it and drive it to your Grandma’s house in Bellingham but not many.”

Time is running…

Time. An invention and a way to structure our experience–past, present, future.

Currently, I feel like time is running out, like I’m constantly at battle with the passage of time.

I feel great anxiety–tightness in my chest and knots in my stomach–worrying about the “limited” time there is. Or that the world will keep spiraling out of control until a point where it’s too late to restore the devastation and destruction that’s been done.

How can I return to the present–the precious moment there is right here–to pay attention, see and appreciate what’s there, and respond from that grounded place?

mumma’s salad dressing

stand upright nearly 6′ with elegant silver-grey hair; mix:

10% women in your incoming yale class because you’re a 2nd wave feminist

40% of your career in business because disrespectful board-members caused you to get an MBA in 1980

a dollop of grainy french mustard

a dash of passion for comp lit to temper the acidity of having to administer the myers-briggs

get your master’s and PhD in counseling psychology at night with two children under 6, to emulsify effectively

refrigerate; this is your contribution to dinner that your husband will make while you drink a glass of California sancerre, because you fucking deserve it

Potential

“A real renaissance man,” the local paper wrote when highlighting him as the valedictorian of his graduating high school class. On the eve of his fiftieth birthday, he peered at that very paper that his parents had frame. He went to a top university, got a job at a prestigious firm that he loved. The whiskey in his glass right now was a rare 1932 Glenfidditch. He had a loving husband, four bright kids, and two dogs. He did yoga, swam in the ocean twice a week, and took painting classes.  Then why am I so goddamn bored, he thought.

mirror

How much have you had to drink?[swig]

Four and a half glasses. [swig]

Whoa. [eyeroll]

[swig] The fuck you care?

[swig] Nothing really. But I bet she’d care. [points with lips]

[glance over the shoulder] She knows already.

[swig] She still thinks you’re drinking grape juice.

No one [swig] is under that illusion. Not even her.

[glass down] Hey, Mom.

[chug] [whispers] Fuck you, Jo.

[Mom looks over] What?

Oh never mind. I thought I lost my phone charger. Found it.

[Mom furrows brow] Okay.

Thanks. [swig]

You really gotta get clean.

[looks in mirror] Only when you do. [smile]

It’s late night in a city, any city

Late night in any city, and I have found myself in the twinkling presence of invisible populations that have come before me, amnesia’d intersections, facades, monuments, memorials. In one, there is no monument to those who willingly believed the Third Reich would raise German estimation after the Great War; another, no memorial to the Chinese laborers whose bodies underpin and underwrote their life-giving railroad, funnel of early San Francisco wealth. But the absence of memorials is not the absence of memory: oral histories are easier to ignore than hulking stone, but the un-monumental–quilt, diary–is harder to tear off a pedestal.

The Firekeepers

The elders tell of a time when everything burned. All the forests burned and all the animals left.

Our village used to be several days away from here, following the path of the river. We were chased out by this great wall of fire. Our people had never seen fire before.

When the fire finally ended, a brave few went into the burned land and captured hot embers. This is where our people first got our fire. Since then, we have fed it for generations. And so it lives on in the village center – fire for us all to share.

Untitled

His little hand disappeared inside his dad’s, resting on the corner of the table. 

“You can do it buddy.”

A reassuring thumb slid back and forth across his bony fist. He didn’t complain, but wished he didn’t have to go through with it. 

“I just need to go at my own pace,” he asserted. 

“Ok,” his mom cooed reassuringly.  

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, pitched forward and with the determination to overcome the imminent gag reflex, he pushed the fork full of spinach into his mouth. Because no green monsters could keep him from his sugar cookies. 

Returning

Amazing how much can change in such a short time-frame. Though, perhaps it is more attributed to perspective and what we choose to pay attention to…  

After being gone from home over the last nine days, I arrived back this morning to a space that felt both familiar and also like a distant memory.

The air was finally clean, crisp and clear again after those many days of toxic smoky air.

Fallen leaves carpeted the sidewalks with deepened golden yellow, burnt orange, and crimson red tones.

Little tufts of bright green grass had begun sprouting, signally new life and rebirth.