Adventures.

 (here)

Well.  On the 29th of January Charissa and Tedd arrived from Florida.  On the 31st of January we went for a drive of 2,500 miles and got back on Valentine's Day.  And then we all went to Cambridge and picked up some other People We Know - and a few we didn't until that day.  Over the next three weeks there were always people sleeping on floors, in Cambridge or St Albans or London.  Often they were me.  Rarely just me.  There were folk songs and whiskey at 3am.  There was charades in a room with 6 nationalities, 12 or so people and around 30 degrees of various sorts.  The kind of game where C19th literature of any of 5 at least cultures would be guessed instantly and references to popular culture led to 10 minutes of head scratching and incredulous cries of 'that's a FILM?'.  There has been poetry and cellos and theatre and home made bread.  And photographs and home developing.  And concerts and gigs and alwaysmusic, written or sung or chosen with purpose always by people I know.  There have been black tie parties and rainy walks around London for art galleries and cake.  There was a WEDDING.  There have been strangers who became friends never to be forgotten. Old friends and new friends and new places and thinking and the watching of the spring.

And today is the first evening I'm spending alone in my house since the 28th January. 

Goodness.

I'm not done yet.  This is a lull between Trips.  There are more friends here this week, and there are Plans for Dublin in a few weeks.  The prospect of spending time with yet more of the best people in the world makes everything wonderful.

I'm feeling peaceful.  I've had a crazy month or two - in a different way from the ones before.  There have been adventures of all the best kinds, in contrast to angst and aching and a freezing of the limbs that characterised the time before.  I feel spring cleaned and awoken.  There's a whole world full of things to see and do.  I have been trapped in this house; it has been awkward and cold and dark and confused, and now it is full of possibilities again.  There might be Paris (three months, to learn) and San Francisco (three or six weeks, to know).  But those aren't the point really.  The new beginning that I have needed for half a year or more feels like it might be here, despite the fact that I still have no prospect of a job in the nearest future.  2010 is finally here.  I finally feel that I can look at 2009 with objectivity, and see its pure highs and lows without feeling them all at once.