How is it that we have not all collapsed from how beautiful this time of year is? My soul is about to explode over how the late August sun shines. Makes me want to paint everything in dandelion wine, to follow the end of summer for the rest of my life, to cry. 

hamlet

The sun left much too long ago. I've barely been scraping along this week even with all the wonderful ways I got to spend my time. When I stepped out my front door on Thursday into blowing snow I wondered if I'd ever get the gloom out of my heart. Cold temperatures are difficult but doable, however, land without sun, well, that's no land at all.

So yesterday I broke down and curled into a tanning bed with kindest Roommate E.L. in the next door booth. I have huge qualms about this, it goes against my principals to (1) be tan like everybody else and (2) risk skin cancer. Alack, seasonal depression/vitamin D deficiency effaces my principality.  I filled my pores with SPF 50 because I'm a non-tan, fair-skinned kid and I ignored claustrophobia in pursuit of UV rays. 
I finally felt warm. 
They call this feeling sun-kissed. 
I call it alive.

Today, the grey gloom got to my soul again. By 6pm I'd had a day of spiritual learnings, yoga, bicycle ride on dearest Bicycle to the grocery store, yummy cookings, and yet I had mopey-heart. I finally dropped everything mid-dinner preparation (one of my favorite past-times) and went running. That did the trick.

The world wide says that it's not just me, most everyone feels rotted by sunlessness. But sometimes it feels like just me. By March I start making wagers with myself on what will come first: spring or me cracking. I guess this year I cracked first. 

What does one do?




Invest in a sun lamp?


link to listen to Equatics remix of Bill Withers' "Aint no sunshine when she's gone"

across the wide and lonesome prairie*

This photo is stunning.

Led Zeppelin is playing on a pandora station. Sometimes I forget how they hit the spot.

I have a rather significant collection of "Dear America" books I amassed in elementary school. I loved reading every journal entry, even the banalities of "Monday, January 4. Today was wash day."
Journaling/documenting has been my one true love since birth. Journaling I'm not always good at but I'm certain it's one of the most amazing things to hit this planet. And it's a love that keeps growing. It's why I'm studying film, it's why I study, it's why I converse, it's why I breathe.
What an utmost expression of honor for life. For an individual life and for the world at large made up of all our lives.
When I read the pages of someone's recordings I feel woven into something deep, profound, and heart-reaching. There is sincerity, pure heart, pure ideas. Free. Freely. I feel added upon, I am lifted up, I am humbled.

Enough of my literary flowerings.

Today I shared lunch with chums M and E, enjoyed the sunshine while traveling my errands on bicycle (BICYCLE IS FIXED!!!!!), and dear-friendsy-catched-upped with roommate E. An afternoon well spent with friends and lots of sunshine streaming in through windows. What more could one ask for than:

good food
friends
sun
bicycle

I am content.


*title of a Dear America book and a line that makes me ache for home and childhood of reading in bed until 1 or 2 a.m.......