halcyon days

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Long emails to others (friends, contacts, the New York Times—Ha!—can be so fruitful. The relationship is evincive—often more than an anonymous audience of standard writing.

But the result isn’t easily transposed to blog postings, because directly shared context can avoid the kind of explication that writing to the ether needs to consider.

And long streams of thought and allusive reference to the other’s streams of thought can easily go on and on, as if in a trance.

Afterward, transposing that for a public feels invasive, if not exploitive.

But I love it. New ideas can emerge as easily as they do on daily walks, which are recorded on a pocket notebook, then later transposed and elaborated on apt project pages.

These days are delicious—especially when students leave town for spring break, and the neighborhood is quiet.

Actually, writing to no one specifically, with no intent to post it, is best of all: creativity for its own sake.

Today, by Strawberry Creek on campus, standing next to young tree branches, the red squirrel who expects almonds from me every day got the courage to climb onto my jacketed arm. Its normal routine is to cause nearby branches to become a nuisance, then it runs back on the thicker part of the branch, looks at me, and if don’t go out to the sidewalk spot where I always place two nuts, it soon runs back to bother me—at eye level: almost literally in my face. (I have photos.)

It’s so cute you want to pet its nose—which might be biting for the relationshp.

But, today, it got very trusting... “Be nuts with adoration, but don’t touch, or else the relationship is over.”

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