53.

i just stopped doing schoolwork for a while to do something that i love - write a letter to folks that i love.

there is something really honest about writing a letter, saying what you can say and not being able to over think it, save it as a draft, obsess about it, and hit backspace when you make an error. i actually just typed my first letter on my new (really old) typewriter. it has no erase button. it actually doesn't even have a 1 button. either way, writing a letter is like writing a poem, its thinking freely and sharing a moment of your life with someone who you assume actually wants to hear about your life. i like the honesty of it. i like the freedom of thought it provides.

so i wrote this bit to my friends in Maine and wanted to share it, because its been a while since my honesty has been cloaked in so much clarity.

"I have been reading and writing and staring blankly out the window consumed with thoughts about the South - warmer weather, winds that blow the scent of honeysuckles and cow shit through the pastures (both are scents I am very fond of), hills that i know well and miss a lot, sitting on porches, sipping single-barrel Kentucky bourbon and talking of things that have little to do with assessing my value or capability...the end is in sight my friends and I can't quite explain the feelings that this end is ushering in with it. they are mixed, uncertain. i am trying to embrace that uncertainty, trying to think of it more as possibility and wondering what the universe will bring me. i'm not sure what it will be, but i am sure that i want it to fill my heart with joy. i am hoping too that whatever it may be it will consist of new skills, hard labor, and lots of time outside...i wish i could just set forth on an adventure - and then another and all the while be filled with love and the presence of loved ones. Have you guys every moved away from home? It is a strange experience. it is like a dislocation of a limb, or maybe more like losing one. you remember that you had it, you remember how natural it felt to have it and how it made you feel like a whole person. losing it - moving away from the south - the strength of that memory never fades. i feel like my soul is napping under a tree in the mountains of north carolina still..."

see? this all just came out of me. honest. uninhibited. all of these things i've been thinking just tiptoed onto the page for my friends to have. to keep.

my niece is also my pen pal - i write monosyllabic words to her to help her learn to read and write and ask her questions about happiness and her environment to help her think about the luck of life, the joy of being young.