Readying for a journey.

Evening at Wonderland Lake, 2 May

The night before I travel, I often sit up later than I mean to, or than I need to. Tonight, I'm largely packed (but for the dresses air drying in the bathroom and the toiletries I'll use in the morning), and I've narrowed down my choice of books for my days away. Do I take Writing Down the Bones? Spell of the Sensuous? The Righteous Mind, which several of my friends have told me is among their favorite books ever? Do I scrap them all and just take Angle of Repose and The Tie That Binds, in keeping with my new love of Stegner and Haruf? Do I take the book I need to review? Do I take The Orphan Master's Son and check out what the Pulitzer people saw this year?

Somewhat strangely, I find myself thinking about rereading Cloud Atlas--only to realize that the copy I read last fall is still at the monastery, with a friend, and that it was a duplicate copy and I have no idea where in Ohio my original copy might be. In a basement, obviously. But which one?

The upshot of some of these questions is that I find myself tempted to drive to the airport in the morning instead of taking the bus and then the other bus. Only one of these is an environmentally responsible choice. The other one would let me leave 45 minutes later (which feels like a lot at 6 a.m.). But the correct choice is no real skin off my back, as long as I stop the madness and actually go to bed.

One reason to take all the books is that air travel has a timespan all its own. Anything can happen in that long then.

Implements of creation.

New Mexico School for the Arts, 5 May

There wasn't a bit I didn't love about that canister in the window, and about the window itself.

Here come the leaves.

These little, shiny, fuzz-tipped leaves are a glory outside my kitchen window. We've made it ten days without snow, and spring would seem to be taking over.

Quiet night in.

Sunset over the Rockies, from eastbound 160, 7 May 

Tonight, for the first time in what seems like a long while, I am the only person home in this house where I'm renting a room this semester. My landlord housemate and his ten-year-old daughter are both out (though she may be returning from a sleepover at a neighbor's any time now; I find myself part of her backup plan), and I have celebrated by skipping an event I meant to attend and instead reading some more of Gish Jen's Tiger Writing: Art, Culture, and the Interdependent Self and eating an almond cupcake from the local grocery store. (That I'm celebrating being here by myself should by no means suggest to you that I am not loving living here; it's been pretty delightful to be an integral part of this household for a few months, and I will miss my younger housemate's greeting me, always, with, "Guess what?!" Sometimes I say, "No." Sometimes I guess. Always, we hit a wavelength of mutual interest in one another.)

I go around and around with myself about whether or not to start writing here regularly once again. The migration to this new incarnation makes it not only easier but also more enticing to put word and image together again in this semi-public way, and as I've poked around in my own archives, I've discovered just how much I used to say to you all, on a daily basis. It really has been the case for a couple of years now that there hasn't always been very much to say, even though (or perhaps because) I've lived in so many different houses and on a couple of different continents since the daily entries stopped. I also know that keeping the Cabinet was my daily practice when I first started it, and I have different daily practices now. It seems unlikely to me that the Cabinet is ever going to make a comeback and supplant zazen.

But there are good sights and big adventures ahead (I think I have neglected to mention before now that I'm going back to England for next year), and so at least for now, I'm taking this work up again. 

For now, though: the rest of this quiet evening.

On the move.

The Sangre de Cristos mountains, southbound US 285, 4 May

The temptations of Squarespace 6 finally got to be too much for me, so I am migrating these shenanigans over. Things are bound to be a little wonky here for a little while, but I suspect I've lost most of you through sheer neglect anyhow, by now.

If you are still around, here's where I spent last weekend: