January 13

I seem a bit inclined to render these little entries in a distinctly didactic tone, & were I surer of an audience I would feel almost compelled to make formal apology, but as it stands, that tone serves a very distinct purpose. For as little as I know, for as much as I tremble before the world, or in contradistinction for how capable I feel myself becoming of gripping it & clawing it to me, I am the better for composting my experiences into a kind of schoolbook for my own future. I am learning this new language, its tongue some foreign thing I puzzle together as I go, its syllabary a scatter-shot of raw material. I wend & weft, I yoke together, & I render this specious account in order to make sense of it as it comes & fades again, in order that I might gain from it something beyond an ineffable hum within or an occasional memory that I can conjure at my leisure down the line. A record, then, for my senses, for my mind, a thing with which to wrestle. How the salal swallows you whole, its roots almost rthizomatic in their creeping. How the salt lingers on your fingertips after skipping smooth grey stones across the bay. The muting of each footfall with damp pine-needle & rotting bristle-cone. An air wet to the breath. & be damned if it strikes a sophomoric note if there is resonance. I am old enough now to know how to cherish memory, even as it issues into my heart & mind from my present, a fog pulled from a grove, a ghost pulled from a body, its breath yet warm. & there are times in life when the simplest of details beg the world of you, break your heart, conjure every joy or every sadness you’ve ever known. A fine red bark curling off the madrona or the way the lake can chameleon white under the mist, the black leaves tired upon its quiet shore. Or a bird, any bird, isolated in flight. A grace to take it in.