I ought to be in bed

But Chloe is home. My beautiful baby sister, who turns twenty in just over two months. I'm not sure how that happened. Neither of us is really okay with it.

But yesterday I was so worried that she might not be able to come that I made Ian sit and listen to the whole saga of her transportation attempts on our way home from the beach. (By the way, we went to the beach with his friends.) And today when came home from work and saw her I danced over and hugged her and she started laughing, because I looked so happy. We eventually took Miley for a walk, and when we got to the creek at the bottom of our hill, we stopped to listen to the water and the peeping frogs, and then we sat, and then we lay in the dirt and looked up through the trees and the stars, and she took and held my hand in silence, and I was so grateful for the place and the moment and for time with my sister that I wept a little, in silence.

Ruminant

Perhaps it is silly and ill-advised to begin everything I write about the workings of my mind under the assumption that it won't make sense to everyone. Maybe my mind is much like most other people's. Or maybe, even if that is the case, the assumption of misunderstanding helps me to write more clearly. I don't know. I don't know what it was that I had been planning to write about when I thought the above, as I started up my car to come home from tutoring. It needs an oil change. And some stop leak.


Something I was thinking of earlier, though (today? yesterday?) was that when it comes to my having to interact with the emotions of others, I feel like a bull in a china shop. I do. It's fine with me for you to feel whatever way, and I can celebrate with you or hold and comfort you or commiserate, or listen. I have no problem with any of those things. But if I am in some way actually involved in your emotional whatever, I get uncomfortable. And if, God forbid, any part of your emotional well-being is affected in any real way by the state of my emotions, then, though I may hide it fairly well, I'm probably losing my shit over here. So that's been the case somewhat often lately.



I've remembered what I was thinking before, I think. It was about outlook, and attitude I guess. Or about the way depression works. I'm not really depressed, but I am getting my emotions tangled with another person's, lately, and also I am exhausted and also I am sick, and those together can roughly amount to depression if I am not careful about keeping them contained, controlled, and brief.

My life is pretty good right now. I have a job, I have a sweet, sarcastic, funny, and attentive boyfriend, I have great friends and a good support network, I have trips coming up that I'm looking forward to, and soon I'll be moving in with my best friend. But still, on days like today, during weeks like this, everything is dampened by a smoggy haze of negativity and frustration. It's not that the haze can't be broken--today, on the way to tutoring, a man rode past on his motorcycle, and the sound made me grin like a fool, because that motor noise sounds like the beach, and childhood happiness to me--but thirty seconds later my mouth was a thin line again, my eyes were grainy again, and I stared with mild annoyance at the road ahead. On hazy, smoggy days, the film will always seep back and fill the cracks and holes. That's why I felt so blessed yesterday and Monday when I woke up unhappy and phlegmy and hating the world, and, following some brief, silent prayers for assistance, somehow managed to find a way through into a lighter place.

And on light-filled days, metaphorically speaking, almost nothing can stop it. Working ten hours? No problem. Nothing good to eat? No big deal. Pouring down rain? I love rain. What a gorgeous day this is!

I was thinking yesterday about how careful I tend to be about my attitude, and I started to wonder why other people aren't similarly attentive. And then I realized that it's probably because most of them can afford not to be, and the others don't know how to do it. A bad attitude is a trap. There's no two ways about it. A poor outlook is a trap, and the deeper you get, the harder it is to get free. And the more you spread it, the greater the number of people you can pull down with you. I can't allow myself to do that for long. Unless I want to find myself back where I've been before, where I was for so many years, I can't allow myself to wallow in fatigue or anger or frustration for any length of time. I can't allow myself to play the victim.

Of course, I can't just ignore those feelings either--I'm fairly certain that my unconscious habit of ignoring emotions as a matter of course was what got me started on the whole depressive cycle in the first place. Which, if you think about it, may loop back around and explain a little bit of the "bull in the china shop" paragraph above. I'm still working it all out. I guess I probably always will be.


In other news, I saw my first bumblebee of the year this morning. He* made me smile.

































*Technically speaking, all worker bees are female. But I still think of them as hims, because I can, and I do what I want.

Temporal displacement

We keep having these warm days lately, and I keep thinking I'm about to go to Louisiana. Today there's zydeco music on the radio (in Virginia!) and that does my heart good. And Festival International just released their Festival Wednesday lineup. Just waiting on the Thursday-Friday lineup, so I can figure out how much time to ask off of work...



I have a new job, by the way. Working with kids. I was enthusiastic about it, but now I find that I have a bad attitude toward the whole thing. It's a pretty nice place, and they are nice people, and I find that I don't want to be a person who makes a living by working with kids anymore. Or not again. So now I really need to step on it. Pick a direction and get going.


Also, I made a Pinterest, and that is eating my life this week. Last week it was Words With Friends, and now I have at least a half-dozen abandoned games that I'm trying to work up the motivation to finish.

Weather. And stuff.

The weather right now is beautiful. I walked Miley earlier tonight and looked up at the bare trees and felt that I was finally beginning to welcome the winter back into my world, though the air has been so moist and warm that sometimes I catch myself thinking that it's early spring rather than late fall. As we approached the intersection of our street and the next, a warm, damp wind blew through the trees and sent a rain of wet leaves fluttering and spinning through the beam from the streetlight, each one glowing dimly in its dance toward the ground.

And I need to take my heart the hell off my sleeve.

I keep forgetting things.

One thing was that I like finding the ways that seasons echo one another, or other places that nature echoes itself. Tonight it was the way the silhouettes of nearly bare trees look almost identical to the silhouettes of trees whose spring buds have just begun to form.


AND I FORGOT THE OTHER THING.

"...but it's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world."

Today did not necessarily begin as I would have hoped, but it has been a beautiful day.

I woke up feeling somewhat rested, which was wonderful, even if I did temporarily obliterate that healthy feeling by stubbornly refusing to not eat cereal for breakfast*, and I went to work for Mrs D organizing and whatever, and I was in such a good mood. Regardless of my morning or my stomach, how could anyone possibly be upset when the world has transformed into a red, yellow and orange pointillism painting, and the air is streaming with brightly colored leaves and filling with breathtaking flocks of starlings? How could anyone do anything but grin and sing into the wind when the air is seventy-five degrees in November, and the radio is playing The New Radicals and Alanis Morrisette and Miranda Lambert, with Eric Hutchinson in the cd player?

I came home from Mrs D's for a little while to check email and make more delicious fried eggs with tumeric and chili powder, thyme and garlic in coconut oil, then went to tutor Mary and help her prepare for her history test (why didn't I think this stuff was interesting when I was in school?). Afterward I made a deposit at the bank, dropped off my car at the service station for an oil change and inspection, and walked the  two or so miles home. It wasn't my favorite venue or time of day for walking--I was on a main road with no sidewalk, and I was walking between the sunset and the appearance of the stars, so the scenery wasn't particularly relaxing or pretty--but after a few minutes I started to tune in to the smells of the warm grass and crunchy fall leaves, and that was very nice. The evening breeze was delicious, and the stark contrast between the main road and my quiet, sleepy little street made it seem even more peaceful than usual. A cat wandered over from a driveway across the street, and after I scratched its ears it followed me halfway home, hoping for more love.














































*By the way, I keep forgetting to mention this, but I think I just became lactose intolerant. That would be funny if I were kidding, but I'm not. I am not kidding. And that means that I am upset, because I love milk and other milk-related products. I mean, cheese! Yogurt! Hot chocolate! Ice cream! And I eat cereal for breakfast every day! And do not even talk to me about soy or rice or almond milk. Don't even start. I am grieving right now. Just leave me alone.

Well, it's been a few weeks.

I keep finding little things I want to write about--

the way the water in the creek has carved out a new path through all its ethereal little islands of leaves 

the way, the day after her son's family moved back out, the sun room of a woman I work for had the warm, empty, hastily abandoned feel of a summer camp at August's end

the stunningly beautiful rain of leaves in each autumn breeze 

the rainbow around the full moon--

But I just never do. So here I am, mentioning them in passing. 

Here are two more recent things in my memory:

1. I just made myself two eggs for dinner, fried over-easy in coconut oil and covered with tumeric, chili powder, parmesan cheese, and garlic. Good God they were wonderful.

2. I've gone out a couple of times recently with a guy named Ian. And, though I harbor near-constant suspicions that we are not each others' types, he is nevertheless really sweet and pretty awesome, and his texts often make me laugh out loud. Also he's agnostic, so if this goes anywhere my mom is really gonna love that. But anyway, we'll see.

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone.

An evening walk

The very air feels green, and is swimming with that sweet smell of falling leaves and distant wood smoke. The horizon is stacked with piles of purple clouds, all rimmed with gold.

Peace and quiet

Or would be, if there weren't a damn TV in the house. But anyway,

I love that all I have to do this evening is eat dinner with my parents, read my book, maybe take a bath. I suppose I may get around to some laundry.

I love that all I have to do tomorrow, unless I decide otherwise, is meet with Beth to discuss graduate school things.


Thank you, laryngitis.




Said laryngitis was contracted thanks to a chest infection I've been working on, and, I suppose, thanks to my stubborn decision to attend the fall staff retreat anyway. Though I sadly abstained from hiking or canoeing or even going for a long walk (possibly unnecessary, but I didn't want to overtax my sick self or, more importantly, end up freezing and far from central heating), I did a few puzzles, read a bit, played some Catan, addressed some envelopes, and didn't get as much sleep as I had hoped. Saturday night we all sat through/participated in a three-hour staff meeting during which we processed the summer, talked about future improvements, and formed a few committees, and Sunday we had a really great Quaker style worship service, spent forever closing up and winterizing Camp, and headed home. Charity, Anna, Jarian, and I stopped to pick (aka pick up off the ground, as very few were on trees) apples, and have dinner at Mellow Mushroom on the way home.

The weather, and my decision-making process.

This evening I walked Miley in a misting rain--barely even a drizzle--underneath a depthless grey-blue sky that faded to pink as it neared the Southern horizon. I realized suddenly that night has been falling sooner, and that made me smile. I looked up as I passed beneath the streetlight, and remembered that there are few things I love more than watching rain or snow filter through the glow of street lamps. It's nearly the only thing they're good for, if you ask me.


I've been working myself into a panic over this mentoring decision I've been trying to (or trying not to) make--to be, or not to be one? I had a couple of bad experiences--nothing traumatic, just stressful and frustrating pairings girls who ended up being less invested in the program than expected--and essentially quit. I've still been attending the odd large-group meeting, but that's all. Recently I was asked to mentor a great girl that I've known for a while, who will almost certainly be more into the whole thing than those I worked with before. (Just so we're clear, all three of the young women I have been paired with in the past are pretty great. Just not that interested in having a mentor, as it turned out.) But still, rather than just say "yes" or "no," I freaked out. This seems to be my m.o. whenever I'm asked to make a decision based solely (or nearly so) on nothing but my own opinions and feelings. My mind likes to work with facts, so here is the conversation I have with myself when asked to mentor:
"Last time it sucked." (-1 to mentoring.)
"But this is a different person." (Possible +1 to mentoring.)
"But the time before that wasn't great either." (-1 to mentoring.)
"But this time might be better." (Possible +1 to mentoring.)
"But it might suck again." (Possible -1 to mentoring.)
"But she was the first one to get her paperwork in!" (+1 to mentoring.)
"Well how do you feel about it?"
Panic and aversion. -1 to mentoring.
But said panic/aversion is illogical. Disregard.

Calculating: 0 -1+1-1+1-1+1=0. Need more data.

Data unavailable.

Does not compute. Enter inability-to-make-decisions panic mode; shut down.

At this point I push the whole thing from my mind until someone asks me again, at which point I reenter panic mode. Anyway, I said I'd do it. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

When I drive home from painting under the welcome threat of rain, I watch the cloud layers slide past one another over the bridge. Blue sky slips beneath whispery grey, which is superseded by fluffy white and then dark, smoky shadows. Rinsing the paint from my hands at the garden hose, I reflect that this may be the season's last smell of warm water and living wet dirt, so I breathe it in deeply. But though the night brings the seasonally appropriate whiff of dry autumn leaves, the next day it's eighty degrees again. Things are what they are.

Beliefs and wishes

It occurs to me that I mentioned Mark a while back, and then never closed out or continued that story. I think he's awesome. I think that he thinks that I am awesome. I kind of wish that we were soulmates, but instead we seem to be two quite similar people who are not attracted to one another. Shit happens, I guess. Though it can be difficult to find a different rhythm with the same person, I hope that we'll end up as friends.

The weather is seesawing between seasons, but I know it'll truly get to fall eventually. Sometimes the lines of brake lights look to me like angry red sores on the skin of the world. Leaving aside thoughts of practicality for the moment, a part of me just wishes we walked everywhere.


I've been reading another Charles DeLint book, which is full of magic. And I'm not sure how I feel about this, but regardless of how I feel about it, part of be believes these things. Fiction. People think I read fantasy because I like fantasy, but really, that's what science fiction is for. That's all entirely made up. It's about technology that doesn't and probably can't exist. Obviously fantasy is arguably also entirely made up, but a lot of it (and the sort I'm most drawn to lately) is based on cross-cultural myth, and it pulls me in. Often I read fantasy because on some level, I believe in magic. Not Criss Angel, not rabbits-from-hats magic, but the kind of magic that lets us sometimes dream the future. The kind of magic that put a stone in my hand while I was sleeping as a child. The kind of magic that can allow us to affect one another across vast distances, or encourage plants to grow taller with our thoughts or voices. I have stumbled into it before, but not for fifteen years or more. I hope to stumble into it again. And maybe "magic" is a misnomer. Who was it that said that magic is just science we haven't discovered yet? But whatever it is, even if it isn't unquantifiable, it is unquantified. So I call it what I will.

Regardless of what the trees seem to think, it's here.

Though it will take me some time to adjust to these new lower temperatures and artificially heated spaces and driving with the windows rolled up, the nip in the air makes me feel alive. The smell of woodsmoke wafting across the yard and the feel of warm gloves and chilly fingers, the cold wind on my face and the act of arranging logs and embers in the fireplace to coax a flame into being are all excellent. All alive.


Also: fall festivals. Obviously.

A fair and a fire and a late-night stroll

And it's finally cool enough to walk with a hoodie and hat and gloves. This is all so wonderful.

Harvest Moon

The first slivers of fall are starting to seep through into the air. I am told that tonight is the first night of the harvest moon, and when I walked out with Miley I swear I felt a nip in the air. I felt the same on the ride home as I halfheartedly tried to sleep in the passenger's seat--I curled up against the wide open window under my folded comforter with the early fall wind blaring against my face and eardrums, and I thought about fall festivals and apple orchards and wood smoke and cider and cool soft winds. The leaves are beginning to change. I can't wait.




EDIT:

I walked Miley and then felt that I just absolutely had to come back and write about it. That's a sure sign of approaching winter, right there. It starts.

To begin: we live on a hill, not far down from the main road--so when I walk, more than ninety percent of the time I walk down the hill, and deeper into the trees.

This means that on nights like tonight, when I walk up the hill, I am astonished by the broad, magnificent stretches of sky that hang over the higher parts of the road. I stepped out and watched, mouth wide open, as the cottony clouds drifted inexorably over the moon like obscuring leaves in a slow stream. The air is crystal clear tonight, the stars like diamonds, and the full moon threw a soft rainbow onto the surrounding clouds and lit them up with a shine that was the color of frozen lightning.

Just pretend this is in a normal font and size. I reserve the right to write elsewhere and copy/paste from undisclosed locations.

Camp is over, three friends came and stayed and are now gone. My resume has been (probably poorly) updated, and I'm looking for jobs in a meandering sort of way, doing little odd jobs for people that need them, chewing on the idea of grad school.

Still doing this weird "online dating" thing, which in large part I find distasteful and dorky, but which I continue to use as a way to get myself the hell out of the house. Thus far nothing goes anywhere, but there have been some interesting emails, some decent movies, and whatever. I am pretty excellent at going on lots of first dates and never really talking to any of these guys again. Usually this is more a function of my apathy/laziness than of any strong negativity. And I mean, I guess that's alright. Still hoping to run across somebody awesome, on there or in real life. Preferably in real life, obviously.


I have a truly terrible case of poison ivy, contracted while I was running siphons out into the backyard during the hurricane in a (thankfully successful) attempt to keep the basement from flooding. Nothing I was doing was helping at all, so yesterday I broke down and went in for a cortisone shot. I think it has helped, but the stuff definitely isn't gone. Time to call in the prescription for prednizone, I guess. I'm tired of being unable to sleep through the night, and waking up scratching the skin off my forearms, fingers, ankle, face, etc. It shouldn't be able to spread once the oil has been washed off, but I swear it's still spreading, six days later. Good times.


I've been working with my neighbor Hartley, helping with storm cleanup while he fixes the roof of a house that was smashed in during the storm. So many long-established trees were blown down, and now are being cut up and loaded into trailers and hauled off for mulch. It's a sad thing. But the wood smells like fall to me, and I've been catching whiffs of fall more and more frequently in recent days. The temperature is dropping just slightly, and the leaves are beginning to fall and accumulate along the side of the road. It's time.

Winter and spring, then summer

Here is the difference: I love winter like I love sleep. I love the quiet. I love the dreamy, ethereal qualities of the season, of the air. I focus on the fixtures: the unmoving trees, the pendulous moon, the here-and-gone frost that mirrors the glittering stars in the night. And when summer comes, I am suddenly lost. Where is my moon? Where are my bare, silent trees? Where is my quiet beauty? The leaves grow suddenly so thick that I can barely see the sky. But then the sun sinks toward the horizon, and its yellow rays mix into those green leaves, and my breath is stolen away. I am slowly, slowly coming to remember that I can't look in the summer for what I loved in the winter. In the summer the beauty and magic are in the movement, in the shockingly quick growth of the plants, in the changing landscape, rather than the spinning sky. It's in bioluminescent bugs, and in all of the animals that seem to somehow have appeared out of the ether. Where have they been? This evening I stood barefoot in the stream again, again drinking in the feeling of its coolness around my calves while Miley refreshed herself by swimming in small circles and huffing, and I was struck by the fragility of the water skaters. I was glad to see them, firstly, but (never having done a whit of research on them) I always wonder where they've come from. How could such spindly, tiny little bugs--water bugs, even--have survived such an icy winter? But it doesn't matter. They're here now.


Just as Miley and I crested the hill, the church bells up the street chimed eight, and the late afternoon sun reached over the Western trees, and gilded those standing to the East. A handful of bluejays circled the sky over the neighborhood, calling back and forth. Winter is about sleep, but I am relearning how to be awake.


I am still sneakily trying to teach Layla that all life is precious. This week we've (finally) been doing swim lessons rather than math lessons, and the design of their backyard pool is such that hapless spiders crawl up to the edge, lose their grip, and fall in. They are light enough to be able to stand on the surface tension in the water, and can often cling to floating leaves or make their way back onto the walls of the pool, but they can't make it up over the lip and back onto dry ground. We've been rescuing them when we see them, and noting those that are jumping spiders. They still make her nervous, but at least she no longer demands their deaths on sight. I'm working to warm her up to bees, but I am making less progress.

The loveliness of metamorphosis

The lanes down which I walked all winter when they were wide and bare and starkly beautiful are now close and warm and lush and full. I've been walking and wondering why I've not been so awestruck by the night sky as I was, and then I realized that it's because I'm so distracted by the glistening arms of the trees reaching out into the road and arching up into the sky, and by the flat lawns and bare forest floor that have suddenly grown up into jungles of tall grass and flowers, and by the tree shadows that have transformed from woodcuts into tissue paper collages, making softly variegated asphalt surfaces each evening. And the loveliest thing about spring and early summer is the puddles--the rain-shined roads and the running ditches, swimming lowlands and storm drains filled to flooding. Tonight I passed a gravel driveway that held a large, still pool, wherein were reflected the dark branches of the trees, and the full moon peering through. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.


David used to tease me a little about having so many favorites and so many superlatives, but appreciated, at least somewhat, that I was (often) serious about them. I was, and I am. I say "most beautiful" so often, and I know it sounds silly. But there are so many different kinds of beauty. The beauty of that puddle--of the night reflected in the water--can't be compared to the beauty of even simply the day reflected in the water, much less to the beauty of a flower or a newly molted cicada or a towering roller coaster, a much-needed scientific breakthrough or sweet nephew climbing a tree. They are each different, each precious, each superlative.






Something I've been meaning to say:
Lately I have been slowly coming to realize the meaning of the phrase "live without regrets," or at least the way it can apply to myself. Maybe it's different for others, but I have never liked this idea. I have always felt that those who claimed to live without regrets were either delusional or disgustingly lucky. As I said, though, lately my perspective has been shifting. The other day I was listening to a friend talk about past time wasted, and it wasn't the first time. I was beginning to notice a pattern of wallowing in past regrets, and it occurred to me that the only reason that the time in question was "wasted," in my opinion, was that we were still talking about it, rather than accepting it, learning from it, and moving forward. It was still pulling my friend's life into revolution around itself. It was creating more waste. So I have decided: missteps and mistakes happen to everyone--but the only time wasted is time from which I do not learn and grow.

Sun and not enough swimming.

Suddenly, walking through the humid night air, it's clear that I'm walking through a mid-growth forest. Suddenly the weather turned and the deciduous trees bloomed into the foreground, and now I walk beneath a low roof of leaves, rather than under the open empire sky.

Today, I tutored Layla out on the dock in the bright sun, and we began and abandoned a story about three geese, and she sounded out words--water, sun, swim--that  I had written on the white board, and we counted and wrote numbers in chalk up to 100, and practiced a few addition and subtraction problems, and I wanted nothing more than to dive into the lake and swim around with all my clothes on. The water looked delicious. The dock isn't even close enough to the water to wet my toes, which is really a shame. But tutoring went relatively well, and afterward I helped Sannah with her fractions homework*, and just hung out and talked for a while. Layla and I started late, partially because I was late (thanks, Hunter) and partially because Sannah and I talked for a while before Layla and I started working. I love them. They're pretty great.


On another note, is it just me, or are there about eight hundred times more inchworms this year than usual? I've always been rather fond of them in the past, but bugs*** seriously lose their charm when they show up en masse.



Tomorrow, hopefully:

Clearing the driveway

Doing laundry

Packing for Lafayette (I leave Wednesday, and probably will not have internet access.)

Picnic at the park with Sara (<3)

Tutoring Layla

Introducing Hunter to the magical world of Talladega Nights

Drenching myself in epsom-salted water in an attempt to get rid of this stupid poison ivy. Why did it have to be on my face? I want to just take a bath in bleach, which is my usual remedy for the stuff. Not baths in it, obviously, but just pouring it over the affected area, or soaking a paper towel in it to accomplish the same thing. I'm not totally insane, no, though I do realize that this is not an option for those with more sensitive skin than mine. This remedy works because poison ivy is highly acidic, and bleach is a very strong base--so it neutralizes the acid. Or that's the explanation I've gotten, at least. The point is that it works. And I'm thinking of showering in it.

































*Maybe I'm just a late bloomer, but lately it truly amazes me to realize how much easier math has become as I've gotten older. It isn't that I've practiced any of it, or even looked over it--but suddenly I can see the logic behind so much of it. Suddenly it makes sense, and I can't see why it seemed so difficult before. It's all geometry.**

**I mean this metaphorically. Geometry was the only math that seemed to fit with the structure of my brain when I took it in high school.

***Please note the use of "bugs" rather than "insects," as I am fairly certain that worms of any kind do not technically fall into the "insect" category. Six legs, and all that.

Happy day-after-Easter, loveys.

I haven't really been writing anything lately, except for short little things on my cell phone which are largely about sunsets. Perhaps I'll copy them over here. I haven't decided.

This past weekend though I was in upstate New York visiting my friend Lindsey and my godson (her son) Ian and his twin sister Adrienne, for their birthdays and, incidentally, for Easter. It was tiring and also really good to see them. Also though, it was cold. And when I stepped off the plane tonight into the warm, humid Virginia air, it was almost like a religious experience. And when Jack and I drove home on the interstate with the windows down, and talked the whole time. And when I walked with Miley through the moonless night, under the quietly, constantly rustling leaves of the trees. And when I smelled the wet dirt and the little creek and the hay strewn across someone's lawn. It is emphatically spring, and I love it. I do not ever want to move to the North.


ALRIGHT. Some of the things I wrote on my cell phone notepad:

4/22--This April morning the sun rises like a rocket, drawn up by invisible strings into the low hanging clouds, from the horizon to some unseen place behind the rainswept cloud bank in a matter of minutes. Last evening I watched the spring in the treetops, the sinking sun kissing and melting through the outstretched arms of warm wood, bathing the earth in green light.

4/24--We're flying through the ethereal world between cloud layers, in a perfect palette of muted white and graded blue. Slivers and spots of light from the setting sun spread softly and quietly across the Western horizon.

And tonight (and this I did not put into my phone), we flew near a thunderstorm on our way between LaGuardia and my hometown. Though I know I look like a small child and a person who has never flown before whenever I do this, I love to press my face up against the airplane window and watch the lightning in the clouds. The clouds themselves are rather stunning--sculpted shapes of the darkest possible gray filling the sky above the city, and enormous banks of it piling up in the distance--but in the darkness they have no definition. Each lightning strike looks like a tiny sunrise, and it highlights the hidden depths of the clouds for the smallest instant. It's gorgeous.