My camera appears to be dying, but I wanted to share these three shots from my recent trip to Toronto. I love them, blurriness notwithstanding.

Rain-shine

I drove south through the fiercest weather this morning. It was still dark when I left; the rain came down in waves; the wind blustered and buffeted. I arrived sore and tense but in one piece.

I took a long exam. The results were good, and I am hoping that they will be the tipping point for the applications. I am applying to places so far beyond my reach it scares me. Do one thing every day that scares you. Right, Eleanor? We never know until we try.

I drove home through equally forbidding weather. The truckers were plowing north in caravans, competing with each other to be first in line. I got left behind with walls of water rushing across the windshield. The sun had been up for five hours, but you would never have guessed that: the air was still the solid gray of morning.

Home, I read and cleaned. I've been shelving Barbara Kingsolver's book The Poisonwood Bible at libraries since highschool. Since highschool, I've been secretly turning my nose up at it. Anything that flies off the shelves that quickly can't be much good! I was wrong. It's that good.

In the late afternoon, the sky peeled back at the edge like an orange to reveal a glowing center. She said, I just want to stand in it. And she did, stood in that palpable glow with the water falling down and the light cascading. I was so grateful to be there.

I am even more grateful to be here, still standing on the brink of uncertainty, yes, but emboldened by the brightness.

Return

Yesterday I was in Toronto, Denver, Las Vegas, and Portland. To accomplish this feat, I had to rise at 4.15am, after three hours of sleep, and then travel for over ten. But the descent into Portland was magnificent: we sailed down through mountain ranges of cumulus clouds which fissured at the roots to reveal stretches of russet and baring trees, the sinuous curl of rivers, and the rain-steaming earth of fields. The man next to me admitted that he had been to LA and Chicago, but never had he been anywhere so beautiful as this. "I don't know why people would want to live anywhere else," he said. And I, though regretting the physical separation that the landscape now tokens, had to agree.

Courtyard, Trinity College Library (Toronto, November, 2011)

In case you were wondering: I'm still here; still in Toronto. But Saturday looms. Whenever I think about this, I feel like the mask in the previous post looks. So I try to think less and just be with. More later when I return to my home on the mountain in the Pacific Northwest.

p.s. My sister got engaged! See here.

Home sweet Canada

I sent this picture to my philosopher today. "Me without you," the subject line of the email read. Thankfully, however, it won't be that way for long. On Wednesday, I'll be boarding a plane for a quick visit to the other side of the border--an anniversary surprise from him to me! We both have work to do (essays to write, exams to prep for, translations to prepare), but it will be so much nicer to do it in one another's company. I can't wait!

Autumn at the end of Cooper Hollow

"Trying to use words,

...and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling..."

(T.S. Eliot, "Four Quartets: East Coker" via Tolle Scribe)

***
I have a draft. I am ready to return to the world again, to quit asking the same questions three times in a row, to remember for more than five minutes what people have expressly told me, and to wear matching accessories to school (earrings, for example). Above all to sleep and to sleep.

***

Tonight after a session someone asked me what my major was. I told her, Philosophy.

"That's cute," she said.

Yes

November 1

This morning, for the first time this season, we had to scrape ice off the windshield. The fields, plowed but overgrown, were marked with the crystalline crop-circles of an alien visit. My hands and feet rebel. We are not ready for the cold.

***
Still (re)writing by the way. Like a pit bull finally sinking its teeth in deep, I refuse to let go until I've said it--and said it right. Sometimes the truth requires more than wrestling. Dislocation is the least of my worries.