moving.
i'm moving again. 9th time in just over 6 years. i'm pretty damn sick of it. and this one has me a bit torn. i'm moving home again. to live with my parents pretty much indefinitely for the first time in more than 12 years. part of me wants this. i'm so lonely in my own apartment right now, living with someone that i don't know very well and with whom i don't have a whole lot in common. it will be nice to wake up and share breakfast with people i love. and to have someone i can talk to when i get home in the evening. but i'm already missing my own place, the small semblance of having a "real" life that i do have. there is a part of me that clings to having my own place, where i express my own tastes and wants and needs. but one of the costs of that right now is not sharing that place with someone i love. so which do i sacrifice? i don't know. thus the experiment. maybe i'll be back in my apartment in three months. maybe i won't. one thing i do know is that i need to let my hunger for my own, more settled life fire my efforts to finish my degree. the sooner it's done, the sooner i can actually start building my own place in this world, a place that hopefully will feel less transitional.

rain.
last night it rained. with thunder and lightning. i love the world when it rains. everything seems clean. the grass smells alive. even the asphalt smells good. and the lightning amazes me. reminds me of how miraculous and wonderful our world is. even if we do understand the phenomena we see in it. and because we understand them.

i know i shouldn't, for the sake of those living on hills, but i hope we have another wet winter.

perfection.
last night i rediscovered perfection. it's been hot lately. fresh out of the shower, my skin gets clammy. the air in my apartment is still and sticky. night time brings little relief. in fact, it seems to only get hotter in my apartment when it hits 11pm. sleep comes hard. but last night it cooled off for the first time in a week. really cooled off. i climbed into my bed next to my open window and was surprised by the cool touch of my sheets. i had forgotten how lovely a cool, cotton sheet feels. i snuggled down under my cold sheet and blankets and slept easily.

it's strange that cool sheets make me feel cozy. it wasn't hot. they didn't give me relief from heat. but they felt good. it made me think of the goose bumps i get in my hot car. it's black, so the expanse of reflective silver i put in my windshield does little to prevent it from pulsating heat waves on a hot summer day. when i step in on such a day, i close the door and sit for a moment in the breathless heat of the car, watching goose bumps raise on my arms. chills from the heat. i fill my lungs with that hot air and shut my eyes and something in me lets go.

write.
this often happens. i write in my journal. regularly. explore ideas and thoughts and experiences. try to understand myself. and then. silence. sometimes years of it. they always seem to happen when life becomes hardest. when perhaps i need to be writing the most. fleshing out my problems. ranting. weeping. laughing hysterically over odd little things that jolt me out of my funk and make me know, again, that life is good and lovely and beautiful.

it is time to break silence again. one of my best friends told me once that to write is to think. that without writing, one cannot think. i don't know how absolute that statement is, but in some way it is right. i would add that to converse is to think. i have existed thinking only in spurts. randomly. when compelled to because i'd rather converse with my friends than sit a sullen lump. but lately i have realized how much i miss thinking. all the time. hard, laughing, wailing, rigorous, silly, exhilerating, mundane thinking.

so i will write.