Building the Tree

I've tried to post a few times, about what's going on, and I keep getting sidetracked, by what's going on. It's a bit of a shame - some of these drafts are funny, or wry, or poignant. Of course, I could be lying to you. They could be a bunch of dead, floppy fish. Or they could be nonexistent.

You'll just have to: a) take my word for it, or b) write your own version of the truth.

In short, then:

I am adjusting.

I am alternately kind of happy and kind of sad. I am wistful. I have fantasies. My ankle is better. I ride my bike. I overcommit myself both in work and in personal life. I wonder how it will be, when some of my friends move away. I might move away. I might stay.

Things are not the same. I suppose they are never really the same, not even from moment to moment, and that it's an illusion that we ever stay in one place at all. Even the planet spins. Even the moon, which was so huge and red last night as I rode over a giant bridge in the giant dark, that I had to pull over and look at it, after which I remembered that I'm afraid of heights and have to keep moving on bridges.

My friend Shannon is going through a great loss, and wrote something exquisitely beautiful about it. Read it, but make sure you have an adequate supply of hankies.

Another friend has had a baby, and I am, for a baby-averse person, quite smitten with him. I think it's him, not his babyness. He sits on my lap and we read Dr. Seuss.

I think, really, that I would like to write Dr. Seuss, but for adults. I wonder if that can be done. I have some ideas.

I find beginnings and endings to be difficult. This baby-friend of mine is the same way. He cries when he has to wake up, and when he has to fall asleep. I so understand. We like each other, and I am pleased that it's mutual. I can tell my friend is pleased, too. She gets a particular look on her face when she's watching us hang out, as if she's about to cry but doesn't.

I suppose I am rambling, but there is something about it that feels like I'm rambling in concentric rings, building a tree trunk from the outside in. I'm not at the center of it yet, not nearly, but I'm getting somewhere, I really am.