1.  My friend/boss Katie’s son died over the weekend, and the idea of loss bloomed into a more fully-fleshed reality of loss as I ran errands today.  Returning a book to the library, crying at the stoplights, wondering why we can’t say goodbye to ones we loved, like the animals seem to do so easily.  At the stop signs, seeing the sky flat as a trapdoor into the next universe, the Lost Property Cupboard, the place where all lost things are kept until we come with the key.  And we are coming with the key, coming.

2.  The next year as a year-at-school is lost, churning up the possibilities of a year-of-new-connections.  At the Old North Abbey cookout last night, we discovered the relief of finding gentle people, finding friends, and left as the sun went down, fireflies glimmering in the bushes.  Mary is a poet, and I have needed one.  Maybe she is someone I need, just as Josh B may be someone Marshall needs.  Just as we all are people we all need.  In my mind I extrapolate the tiniest of hesitant ties among us, flashing with the gentleness of firelies.

3.  If something would change, I would become an unblocked artist.  Reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, images of energy sent hurling from the tips of wands come to mind.  Reading the New Testament, images of the fully-human Christ fully risen come to mind.  If something would change, I would become an unblocked artist.