Lightly
The weather’s been perfect here at Lighthaven. It was raining on my arrival and continued for about twenty-four hours, through the day of April 1, but now that seems like entirely intentional foreplay.
Sometimes it’s almost tempting to stare directly into the sun, as if to ask for even more. But I won’t do that. I know what happens.
It can be cold at night. During the talent show I wore three layers. I even drank a small cup of beet juice (for the nitrates) but my frigid limbs wouldn’t have it, and continued to jitter and worm their way inward.
I don’t mean to complain. It was sub-zero and snowing only 3 days before my departure from Montréal.
One evening I struggled to operate one of the gas fire pits. I’m not sure I ever got the gas to even flow. I checked the lines; I tried every position. Nothing. Apparently there’d been a small earthquake on the 2nd which might have tickled it into dysfunction. (I was asleep at the time, and missed out on my share of the fun.)
I didn’t bring it up with the officials. I moved on. It’s not like the flames would’ve been more captivating on that altar, than on any of the others.
I sleep a bit better when it’s cold. Have you noticed the same? It’s a Known Thing, as far as I recall. But memory’s slippery. And I’m not going to ask Claude for confirmation. It lives in the mines and I don’t want to go down there today.
Yesterday I wrote an almost three-thousand-word technical post in about seven hours. That was a surprise. I’m certain I’ve written just as many words in just as short a time before, but this felt cleaner and more consequential somehow. I think my thoughts have been clearing.
I wrote that post in the Glass Room. It’s a bright room; it lets god in through its panes. After having hiked the Stonewall-Panoramic Trail this afternoon, I’m not sure I was as reverent as I could have been, yesterday, my first time writing there.
I went back there today after returning from the hike, but it was too warm. I felt so close to heaven, I almost started to nap. I had to leave, then I drank a small cup of tea out of ‘necessity’. It was only after the tea started working that I realized the problem had been the heat.
Hm. Are there mines in heaven?
I keep referring to myself as autistic in conversations. I should stop doing that.
It’s a hand-wave, something I’ve said when I’ve felt I’ve lacked the time to talk more deeply about myself. But go ahead and ask me. I’ll show you what I am.
“Autism” is a sickness word, isn’t it? Now, before you or anyone else leaps up to smooth that over with platitudes, I want you to see how mostly okay I am. (And what exactly would smoothness serve, if I weren’t already okay? A transient okayness, couched in a larger suffering? At best it would give me some slack.)
I don’t need to see myself as autistic, and I don’t need to see myself as not autistic. It just isn’t that helpful. I guess I’m something more specific.
I’ve started some focaccia dough. It’s rising in the kitchen. I’ve stretched it twice already. I might move it to the glass room in a moment. There’s a poetry reading in two hours and I want it to be ready by then.
Yeast is slow to make its way to the Glass Room, at least on its own, so I help it. It has no trouble with reverence, once it’s there.
I haven’t written about my intentions for Inkhaven yet.
I do want to produce good and even impressive works. I want to say that this might not be one of them (it hasn’t taken much effort) but I’ve been led to believe that my prejudices about which of my words others will most enjoy, are probably wrong.
(Well, are you tickled yet?)
More important than being impressive, though, I want to be healthy. I want my mind to be a kind of smooth (uh oh) like a... like a dolphin in its medium? I want to speak from the edge of unspeakable wonder. I want my words to be something like the trees I passed in the hills today, growing and growing and smelling like fresh basil for some reason. I want to breach the surface of thought, just to fall back in again. I want to be filled with light and warmth.
The clouds have arrived as though to prove something, but the Glass Room will probably stay warm enough for long enough to make a difference in the rise.
I wrote this earlier today, if you’re at Inkhaven and wondering about the chronology of some of the statements about breadmaking.