This post made from 85% post-consumer recycled material.

It's spring, it's spring, it's SPRING, and the staff retreat starts tomorrow. I mean, two days from now in my mind, but technically tomorrow.

Speaking of which, have I mentioned this? The fact that I have many strengths, but that regular sleep is not among them.

Back to the beginning: the staff retreat. It makes me so happy to think about it. I am so looking forward to being there, and for so many reasons. I'll be taking a break from work, I'll be taking a break from everything that is my life in Richmond, I'll be seeing so many people I love and living in a place that is, in so many ways, the home of my heart. I can't begin to explain the logic or the depth or breadth of my love for the place. The air is different. The tone is different. Obviously people are still people there--people still do stupid things, people still have the same personality flaws that they have anywhere else--but still, somehow, sometimes it feels like wings begin to sprout from my shoulder blades when I step into the car to leave for camp, and when I step out into that gravel driveway and I hear the sound of the creek and see the trees stretching up around me, they unfurl. When I think about being there this coming weekend, I literally feel as though I've been breathing stale air, or like I've been holding my breath. I literally look forward to being able to breathe this weekend. That's all.

The unexplained.

I need some kind of miracle. I'm not even choosy. Maybe I am choosy.

(The above written yesterday.)

I had a dream about David last night. There were other dreams which have gently faded, but I liked them. The one about David was the second of three.. I think, it seems like he came walking toward me down a dry streambed--I mean really dry, dusty--and was coming from uphill. I guess he had decided to abandon this idea or experiment or decision of moving apart from one another. There was one long soft slow kiss, and then we moved off together into the next dream, which I can't quite remember. I think I remember us standing in a large room and talking to someone who was chained, maybe, or somehow imprisoned, but that's all I can grasp now. I should have written it down earlier. They were good dreams.

Speaking of dreams, I have been almost obsessed over the past few days with one from my childhood that I think I mentioned the other day. I don't know how old I was, but not very. Maybe six? I had my own room, the room I live in now, and I think I had the bunk bed--so maybe more like eight or nine. I woke up on the bottom bunk, so it must have been before I shared a room with Chloe. I remember bits of two related dreams that night: In the first, the back yard of this house was a pastel-colored jungle filled with soft greens and huge flowers. The space under the back porch was larger than in reality, and there were two tigers underneath it. I don't remember whether I was initially afraid of them or not, but one came forward and spoke to me--possibly they both spoke--and gave me a tiger's eye stone. Maybe the one behind suggested the gift? I'm not sure. I almost desperately wish I could remember what they said, or what it said, but I don't have a clue.

In the next dream I was walking down the left side of my own street, below my house, nearing the corner. Maybe ten feet before the corner I bent down and picked up a tiger's eye stone, the same one, and that's the last I remember before waking up. When I woke, the stone was in my hand. It is in my hand now. I didn't recognize it and took it to my parents asking whether they had given it to me, but neither of them recognized it either. I have no idea where it came from or how it ended up in my hand, and  I hadn't thought about it in a long time, but now my curiosity has been fully reawakened. At this point, I'm not sure what to do with it. I've just been making a mental list of the strange, inexplicable things that happened to me as a child, not that there are a great many, and quietly wondering whether I'm being ridiculous.

It's September, right?

Okay so it's fall festival time. Ready, go. GO. I need some damn apples and unpasteurized cider and crisp air. Do you hear that, air? Crisp. Cut out that sogginess. Get on it. Go.



Also, it would seem that talking to people, and sometimes watching or reading or listening to supposedly unrelated material, can break things free inside of you. Set them loose to breathe again. Pry them away from the places where they've been clinging and jamming the gears. "Unrelated materials" and talks of recent days:

Walk/talk with magical beautiful smiling Anna. How do I always forget the magic and power of shared walks?

Watching "Eat, Pray, Love" with Maggie.

Reading Charles deLint's Dreams Underfoot this afternoon.

Being momentarily honest with David. Via text. Don't judge me.