things I am noticing right now.

I am annoyed and distracted by the scratches on my computer screen and equally annoyed that I cannot find an effective way to clean it.

I am noticing that I always have a million things I want to do on the internet, but when I get to the internet, I manage to forget all of them. 

At the moment, a man that I assume is Indian in ethnicity (as in India) sitting across from me in Panera Bread keeps trying to make small talk. I am being polite (moreso than I probably would have been prior to moving to the West Coast) and entertaining his questions, but they are many and random. For example:

"Have you ever been outside of the country?"

"Do you speak any other languages?"

"What do you think is the cleanest country?"

These are punctuated with long silences where, I imagine, he is trying to think of the next way to start conversation. He also made it a point early on to let me know that it's a shame that Baltimore had to lose someone as beautiful as myself. To me this seems to be natural Indian charm - I was waiting from the get go for him to suggest that we exchange information and, true to my instincts, he did just that. Fortunately for my little West Coast "I like to sit and ruminate quietly with my computer in public places" brain, a friend of his has shown up and I am free to ruminate. 

Problem is.. I've forgotten all the things I wanted to do.

Homecoming.

As the years pass, I become more and more unsettled with the idea of flying in airplanes. I still love the excited feeling I get when I enter an airport – the knowing that there is traveling about to take place, the convenience of which is one of modern society’s most priceless contributions to the human experience. I suppose, despite my background as a relatively reasonable person, the entire concept of airplanes still seems to me like a complete miracle. The fact that these enormous chunks of steal can shoot into the air nose-up and stay there, 37,000 feet above the earth, and return to the ground without just dropping from the sky…well, it’s a miracle to me. I don’t care what the science is behind it.

And so I end up losing sleep over the idea of flying, stoking one of my greatest fears – dropping out of the sky and plummeting to a long, splattered death on the ground – and then trying to force the grotesque images out of my mind. I find that once we reach our maximum altitude, I feel a little calmer (strangely enough) and that most of my fear lies in the just-before time of taking off, when there’s still time to safely land back on the pavement. I found myself today welling up with tears upon both safe landings in Minnesota and Maryland, spouting silent prayers of thanks to whatever is up there taking care of things while we sleep. In reality, I don’t know that my pre-flight prayers for safety are doing much because there’s always the chance that people like my mother are right: when your time is up, it’s up. I also always have this hope inside that if I were to ever board a faulty plane or have a faulty captain (and therefore the aircraft would be doomed), there would be a little nugget of instinct inside that would tell me and I would have the sense to listen and not board. Despite my fears, I knew today wasn’t my day to die.

There is this certain distance from the ground – and I don’t know what the number of feet is – where everything below looks unreal. All the cars and trees and buildings and ponds, they all look like miniatures in a toy landscape. It only lasts for a split second and then we’re high enough where everything becomes real again, but for that moment I can convince myself that what I’m seeing is a farce.

Today, the first time I looked out the window as we ascended towards Baltimore, there was just continuous water. It filled me with such joy that a big smile came across my face – we were only flying over the Potomac, but there it was, the biggest missing element from where I’d been living for the last year: water. Beautiful, flowing, ongoing water. I didn’t care if it was the dirty Baltimore river, because it was a river, a huge stretching body with little metal bridges strung across the swaths of land. (I always try to pick out large landmarks and get frustrated when I can’t recognize them from the air, but I did manage to pick out the Key Bridge.) The islands were drawn into geometric shapes, some brown and some still green.

Airplane windows are like postage stamps of the state you’re currently in or over. When I first looked out, great beams of the warm orange sunset-light were spotlighting over the river and over the land. A small boat made a sweeping V shape in the water behind it, motoring past a large patch of reflected fire. It was the kind of thing you see on religious cards, the dark clouds breaking apart to shed shafts of holy light upon the land. It felt that way too. A glorious welcoming, as if to say, “Here is the land of your birth! Rejoice!” And I did.

Don’t get me wrong: Baltimore is a dirty, corrupt city. But there is something altogether magical about the state of Maryland – the Bay, its many rivers that deliver life and commerce to an ungrateful and unacknowledging people, the wooded lands and the large fields, the grass that stays green without irrigation in the summer, the small ancient mountains to the west, the long shifting beaches to the east. The busy, hurried people of the north and the slower, farming people of the south. But sometimes only returning after a great departure can remind you of that. Sometimes I think you can tell in people’s voices when they haven’t been home for a long time – there is this controlled excitement when they say, “Well, I’m here!” as if, as it is for me, there is a spinning ball of joy in their chests that only grows in the moments before your people pick you up from the port of planes.

I looked out the window again. The water was a pale gray-blue and so were the clouds so that the postage stamp was just one color with different shades, broken in half only by the irregular and darker shapes of the land in between. As we passed the river, the great artery of interstate 95 cut across the land, the cars appearing to me as red blood cells carrying the oxygen necessary for life out to the city. Very suddenly we were close to the ground, and I was crying and thanking as we bounced along the tarmac. 

glory.

What is the magic behind snow? Why does it captivate us and give us that little giddy feeling inside? Was it this way for our ancestors, when they were still stalking deer in the bush by foot and spear? Winter was a time of scarcity, of living off whatever you'd managed to save over the summer harvest. True winter is something many of us can't even understand because we have the convenience of supermarkets, with their eye-burning synthetic lights and rows of upon rows of false security. This is why I wonder about Those Who Came Before Us. Did their faces unconsciously move into a smile when they looked out of their tipis or thatched huts to see the first of the year's gentle snowfall? Or did their stomachs turn with worry? I can't help but think they were pleased to see the flakes, drifting down from one continuously white sky, pulling their hides a little tighter around their shoulders.

In at least one native culture that I know of, snow is a powerful thing. It brings the ability to wipe away all things from the previous year (years were measured in 'winters,' months measured in 'moons') - both metaphorically, and literally, by covering everything in a thick layer of powder. Everything vanishes beneath it and the landscape becomes something altogether ethereal and different. When the snow is laid down, our tracks have been obliterated - the water will wash away any print left behind, and in the new snow, we are best able to make new tracks. The snow is a purging - it is pure. It purifies the land in a similar way that fire purifies with its brilliant white and deceptively heavy weight. It brings trees to the ground, it can be melted or worked into an actual dwelling, it displays clearly the blood and meaning of a hunted animal, and it collects in the mountains to feed the valleys when the summer sun melts it away. Small animals actually dig complicated tunneled burrows in the snow and hibernate there, where it can actually be warmer then in the ground or in a tree. It can be melted for fresh water and it can be transformed into breathtaking, sharp icicles that cling vertically to any surface. 

When I was in college, I wrote about the death of the snow. In Maryland, we'd get heaps of it once every four years or so, but there was always a time when the weather warmed slightly and it started to melt. It became slush, and it collected the dirt and grime of the streets. It was so sad to me, this dying - that it became so soiled, its glory taken. In Bend, it's not that way. If the sun is hot enough, it melts the snow before there is time to sully it. If it does not melt, it lays in drifts across the landscape, gently hugging the sharp, dry junipers, pines, and sagebrushes. It is a canvas for bird prints, for the hop-kick-hop of the juncos while they search for food beneath it. If only we appeared to enjoy our work as much as they do.

Winter is a time for going inside - again, both metaphorically and literally. We go inside of our homes where it is warm and safe and there is food and fire, but we also retreat inside ourselves to process the lessons of the summer. This processing becomes wisdom. Winter is a time of wisdom, and a place of the White Buffalo in the Ojibwa way. The North is the place of Winter, and it is a place of Ceremony and Ritual. In this time, it would do us well to be grateful for all that we have - for heat, for food, for clean water, for family. For shelter and safety. These are our most basic necessities and with the eye-burning lights of the supermarkets, we take them completely for granted. Winter is a time of remembering and of being grateful. In the Great Circle of time and the seasons, the Buffalo stands in the storm, protected by his thick coat and his knowing of the ancient ways. Sadly, we no longer practice the ancient ways and so the knowing has been lost to us. One day, I will know these ways and I will teach them to others who have realized the thirst inside of them for something more, for ritual, for marking the passings of our lives. And we will have a reason to rejoice, a way to reconnect, a way of knowing. 

May this winter bless you with all the comfort you want and all the wisdom you need, in a way as gentle as the snow falling on the juncos outside at this very moment.

my boss got fired.

So today was my second day at work, more like a half day because of exams, and my boss got fired. She'd been there for 20 years but apparently there had to be some kind of reason for her getting canned, because it wasn't just some random layoff. 

The job looks like it's going to be fun: there is a whole Nature Center to attend to complete with trails and little gardens, and a host of creatures to care for. There are three snakes, a handful of toads and frogs, some lizards, four owls, a goshawk and a bald eagle. I'll only be able to actually interact with a small number of those, but it's fun to take care of them anyway. I'll be doing a lot of programs with kid and adults come spring time so for now I'm just settling in and learning the ropes. The move from apartment to house has shaved a good 10 minutes off the drive which makes me REALLY happy (now 25 instead of 35), but I won't get my hopes up too high since I do have to cross a 4500 foot pass in order to get there and the snow hasn't started yet. For now it's only part time, and I'm hoping that translates into me being more motivated to get my Etsy shop up and running. I already have my tags and banner made, now I just need to get to sewing. I'm trying to narrow down my selection of goods to what I make the best and what I enjoy the most, so I'll probably have a number of yoga mat bags, greeting cards, tote bags, and.. well some other stuff. I also want to offer some small animal/spirit quilts, but those are extremely time consuming and take me months to finish. We'll see. 

I leave for Baltimore on Monday and I could not be happier. I can't wait to see my mom and my best friend and spend some time in Hampden and Fells Point. It's been an entire year since I've been home, and this year I set aside two whole weeks to spend with the fam. Unfortunately my grandparents are being jerks and don't really want to talk to me, but at least I have mom and the dog. 

Well, I think Tiara is the only one that reads this so I'll cut it short here. 

decisions.

So next weekend there is a local craft show going on. I have an application, and there are spaces left. It only costs $30. 

I'm considering going because I want to bust out with my own business sometime in the remotely near future, but I'm suddenly realizing how difficult this whole thing is. Mostly because I don't know what, of the million activities I've been involving myself in, I'm good enough at to pursue and make more of. I've been playing with hand stamped greeting cards, which are really fun, and jewelry, which I'm no good at. Maybe I'll make more yoga mat bags. 

I don't know. I'm feeling a little indecisive about it. 

Hrmph.