"a sunset in dallas, tx that reminds of western mass"
. . .
I feel the need to be honest. This will come later.
Tonight is the final night that I reside with the family of a friend from Harvard in Windsor, Massachusetts.
During my stay, I had a large and comfortable bed, enough food to fill me at every meal, and air so fresh that it seems to have rolled directly from the coldest mountain top. It goes without saying, but here I am to say it, that I am very content.
The best that I can do about telling anyone what I did here is make a list right out of my head. For starters, the first morning I woke up in Windsor I could see trees rolling beyond trees until each row faded into the blue, that hazy blue that means natural things are far away. All of the tree, I mean it, all of them were covered in transparent ice like how a soldier is wrapped tight in armor. It was the most magnificent site I have ever seen. The sun when it came out sent white careening around every branch, making each row of frozen arbor shine like battalions made of transparent sea-glass.
By contrast, the inside of their home was warm and felt like a real home, even to me, a stranger there. As a sign of gratitude, I wrote up a short poem about their home, titled Pocket of Fire. I figured it would be appropriate or ironic to leave it tucked just noticeable between two pages of short poems by Robert Frost, found in a book on the shelf in the guest room. I hope that they find it soon but more to say that I hope they like it.
Though the air up here is fresh as fish and my mood is high, the cold is formidable up here. I am proud to have found and purchased such a reliable coat (corduroy with a furry interior) for such a bargain ($25). Even so, my body at any given moment is more stiff than I prefer. I am afraid to turn my upper back against my lower, to pop it, because I know that my muscles will probably settle in another uncomfortable manner. I enjoy the cold, though I am not too sure why, but I was brought up in the Texas heat and I don't think that's changing in four years.
Here is the honesty that I promised. I am kind of surprised that right now I am typing in a box that will post to my blog. It is difficult to articulate why, I think because there are so many little reasons that mean more than their size. For instance, it took a trip to rural Massachusetts to realize how important a role television can play in my daily happiness and my mood. Did I feel it was garbage? Certainly a lot of it, yes, but it also is a great means to an easy laugh. Why neglect that?
Not everything has to be done and feel so important, which is a mindset that I feel I have acquired since being at Harvard. There are always two sides to perspectives like this one, though. Some of the time work needs to happen just as often as some of the time nothing needs to happen. The more I think about it, the more I am starting to believe that the nothing is necessary. Doing nothing and needing to do nothing creates a nice space, a mental availability that is not a very scarce resource at Harvard and yet for me so rare to come by in a satisfying way. See, it is already happening. This little thing of doing nothing has already gotten to mean more than its size in words.
After some thinking, I feel that I only need to close with a few simple words that contain enough truth to move by:
I write by hand in a book, preferably the same book, but I also type into the Internet.
Facebook is exactly the place for my streams of consciousness, where others can float and swim, too.
It is good to have more than enough time to do work; a flexible work schedule is much more enjoyable.
I don't need to be methodical or consistent with my blog, even though I might like to be.
The things that bring me close to home are the things that make me happy.
I really, really love everything about trees. This is important.
in good tidings,
rossi
