when my children's children ask me why i didn't go, i'll say the heart of any town is the people that you know

i live a solitary life. i pass hours with my lips zipped, staring at pages in a book, with nothing but the occasional pencil scrawl to prove that my mind is not snoozing on the job. if i could materialize my thoughts, i think they would look like the wispy cotton that blows off cottonwood trees in southern utah. puffs of productivity. coherent in that they are made of the same stuff, but disparate in direction, destination. (i'm not searching for alliteration. it's jumpin' me.)

i have friends. i have roommates. i have family. my heart isn't snoozing either, (what would my material exchange of love look like?) but there is no one who i am accountable to, in the flesh and before my eyes at least. i come and go as i please, making a hundred decisions that only ask for my approval. nothing and no one grounds me, though so many lovely people greet me wherever i land.

i hear my roommate downstairs. she's talking to her mom on the phone, asking her for a piece of domestic wisdom. i'm startled by the routineness of her voice, the casual way in which she says goodbye. ("my waking thoughts of you are but extensions of the dream.") surprisingly, i rarely see or hear my peers interact with their mothers. it is always a pang. i am not inclined to preach against complacency or the taking of what we love for granted: i don't think it's possible to live every day in full gratitude and awareness of our blessedness. even now, i am taking those i still have within phone's reach for granted. i, at least, need jolts. death just happens to be a lighting bolt that sets your insides to trembling with no end in sight.

so many "i"s in the above. i'm grateful for all the "you"s.