treasure: when the words come back

i know it's been all quiet on the western (now eastern) front.

there was too much and not enough to say. but today... today is the day the words start to come back.

it's just it's just it's just... sometimes it's hard to find the right place to start.

that's the dream

secret: return of the prodigal

a few months ago i made a reflection that the day when i woke up to look out the window and realise my mountains were missing would be a tough day.

yesterday i woke up at 6am, wide awake almost instantly. jet lag is a bitch. i lay in my cocoon; sleeping on the futon that was mine all through my high school years, wrapped up in blankets i've known and used for cubby houses since my childhood.

at 6 am, the world is very still and quiet. as the minutes pass and my mind wanders, there are hints of pink and orange. in a slow miracle, the sun rises, and i watched out the window, curled up in warmth. i thought about a lot of things, like who i was and where i was. i thought about the one i love, so very far away from me, both in kilometres and time. i watched the world become real again and the night disappear, i watched the bare rolling hills and the few gum trees in my eyeline.

no mountains. it's winter here, or starting to be. winter in new england is delicious, smoky and cold. crisp like an apple. sparse. familiar like family. there are clear blue skies and a tentative warmth that disappears as the sun sets. the sun has a way of shining off the frost that often appears from the cold clear night before. it widens the day with the sparkle it makes, and then it melts. i like when my nose is cold in the mornings outside.

i worried, those months ago, that i would always want to be somewhere else. i've never been so satisfied with a sense of place as i was in canada. my poor jumbled brain needs to feel that feeling, to have a base to work from. it was perfect, that sun rise, for showing me that things can shift, and any place can be my place. wherever i go, there i am.

secret: dear diary, this coffee was too strong.

dear diary,

i'm comfortably set up in a coffee shop on campus, looking at the uni students, reeling from a caffeine high because i ordered a 20oz latte, forgetting the fact that i've nearly given up coffee and so i don't need that much to feel alert and perkified. is it normal to have tingles in your hands and the left side of your body? am i dying right now? should i be alerting the authorities?

perhaps we'll just make this blog my official cry for help. perhaps i need to give up coffee.

you know you're on holidays with nothing significant happening in your life when the small issues become bigger issues, and you have nothing to distract yourself from the fact that your boyfriend now lives in germany, while you, in fact, live nowhere really. nowhere! who would live there? and who would live in germany when they could live nowhere, with me? (the answer to that is of course aaron, and if you're reading this, it's ok, i'm just using this factor for dramatic effect... loooooove yooouuu!)

other pressing issues in my life include the weird sleeping patterns (5am til 11am is not right. just not right at all), the fact i've nearly watched a full season of grey's anatomy and am somewhat convinced i could be a surgeon if the necessity arose, the fact i've been window-shopping university webpages and have picked several different career directions for myself. there is such a thing as too much spare time.

i'm not unhappy to be on vacation, i'm just amused by my own choices in how to spend this luxurious leisure time. things i should be doing include organizing to ship my crap to australia from canada and writing an updated resume. things i could be doing include restringing my guitar and then actually playing it, learning german, doing yoga, writing sensible blogs that don't reek of coffee and crazy...

but where's the fun in that?

that is all. love, helen