Spent the holidays traveling with friends. Went to a wedding. Did some sight-seeing. Slept for 12 hours on a train. Ate lots of good food. Got cranky at an officious bitch and a few unwanted 'helpful' types. All in all, a perfectly wonderful holiday.
And now I'm home and very certain about the future and what it holds and where it's going and what I need to do in it. Mostly, however, I am sleeping. I am shadowed by felines and listened to by anyone who sits down long enough for me to start talking (my listening skills are somewhere else. they got lost in transit.) and have not picked a starting place. Not a definite one anyway.
The sound of Ethel pawing at the tub of blankets on the floor of my office startled me into writing this. Every now and again my own stillness requires me to pull out a book and read until I cannot pretend to have room for any more thoughts and facts and my brain lets me sleep. The cold that has been with me since just after Christmas lets up for hours at a time and then, right about now, starts in with the post-nasal drip and the beginnings of a cough and all I want is warm tea and my bed with its electric blanket and the promise of Ethel curled up at my side.
She may be reminding me of my own presence as much as she reassures herself of it and collects my body heat for her own nefarious purposes. Seriously. The cat is strategic.
I am reminded that I love to write letters. I am reminded of the joys of domesticity and the potential for work reminds me of all of the things I have missed for lack of something consistent to do.
It is all still distant, all of the things of my world - the books and shelves and stuffed animals; the tchotchkes and mementos and candles; the paper and pens and glue sticks and typewriters. Drinking fountains amaze and astound me. Deliberate violence is astonishing and horrible. Nothing happens in the day without a series of stories wholly unconnected to each other or their inspiring moment.
I dream of stonecutters, lines of tourists in glowing halls, feet bare and warm on sandstone tiles. I feel spices in the colors of my dreaming world and have no notion what happens while I am there. Words do not push their way out of memory.
The physical gifts have found their places around the house. The rest of them got slipped into cracks made of mental exhaustion and overwhelmed senses surrounded in safety by laughter and family and friendship. I had room to slow down and enjoy the world. Who knows what lurked in while I wasn't looking?
Boris chooses my mother's company over mine, but watches me with his big stare and comfortable rolling purr.
It is coming home.
It takes a while.
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