A Bowl of Time

just a little hello letter

It has been quite some time since I have made a post. Sometimes it is wildly impossible to focus your mind on one thing and say, I will do this and nothing else, when you are surviving, moving, creating space for a million other things.

I’ve been learning cribbage, winning at cribbage, watching fog roll in like a ghost, driving on ice, eating so much peppered salami on the road that I have to call it quits, maybe forever. But I am back here, and glad to be back, and missed writing to the void, which is actually a group of people, which sometimes I forget. (I know you’re real, but sometimes it is like the way people say goodbye with false optimism to those we love—because it isn’t certain we’ll see them again. I live with false optimism that I am writing these words to myself, to no ears. Less pressure!) But, hello anyway. Hello!

It’s a new year, which people seem to think is a time to evolve, but I say hold on, just wait. Last year I quit everything but myself and what I love, which only unfolded as time laid itself out in numbers, lanes, hills, weather. See, we cannot be one thing suddenly. We cannot control time. At one point last summer I had two leases but three houses and two cars and six jobs. I’ve quit all those things since then, every single one, but over the course of those numbers, lanes, hills, weather. The varying degrees of sun. It took time.

Let me tell you, I am not in the mood for quitting right now. A nice change. I was dragged close to the ocean by some spiritual force, which due to the funny nature or possibility of bodies, must be myself. I dragged myself here with the help of friends and dead friends and maybe even the smell of salt lingering over the mountains like a hot loaf of bread set on the counter.

Something about this town: you can never check the weather. Which is a good practice for expectation. But if you do check the weather, you’ll find that the predicted rainy days are barely a drizzle and that the predicted partly-cloudy days are like entering the kingdom of a mountain range—just wispy clouds, wrapped like scarfs on snowy peaks. The sun shines like everything you felt in youth.

…

I miss my friends and I love them here. It’s not like looking down on a cliff or an ending, it’s like a bowl of time. If you’re given a bowl of time you must receive it with patience, you must know it is a period of waiting. Spring will come again and it will bear everything we love and live to remember.

Optimistically, farewell until next week.

Jo