Giving New York some context.

Jess and I took a mental-health-road-trip out to Cheshire, Connecticut today for some apple-picking and deep breathing. We left the skyline behind us so gladly--it's amazing how cluttered your insides feel when you live in such a cluttered city. We drove through small towns and villages with names that sound British. The East Coast structure is so foreign to me! I'm sure I looked as wide-eyed as if I am from another country entirely. But oh, to hear nothing but the cacophony of hundreds of blackbirds in the trees is something so special. To smell nothing but crisp air and (yes, even) rotting apples was something like heaven. (Never, ever, ever breathe through your mouth in New York City, lest you are taken by an awfully unpleasant surprise.) Anyway, it was absolutely wonderful. And the apples are delicious. And I am going to make a pie with a braided crust.

October

5

Look, hasn't my body already felt

like the body of a flower?

6

Look, I want to love this world

as though it's the last chance I'll ever get

to be alive

and know it.

--Mary Oliver

Dead Horse Bay, the first expedition.

This weekend, two friends and I explored a part of the Rockaway Inlet called "Dead Horse Bay". The name comes from its early 19th century use as a site for a glue-making factory (you can still find old horse bones on the beach.) Around the 1920's, it stopped its function as a depository and became more of a landfill. The beach is covered with old glass bottles labeled with unfamiliar alcohol and beauty product companies. When the waves lap at the shore, you hear the tinkling sound that comes from glass shifting against glass on the shore. It is so eerie it give you the goosebumps, especially because you're guaranteed to be one of the only three people on the beach, but it is a treasure hunter's paradise.

One of my favorite finds was an old, olivine Scotch bottle from Scotland; the beach was absolutely covered with blue, green, brown, clear, and milk-glass bottles. I've laid my treasures along my windowsill--when dinnertime comes, I sit in my room and watch the light reflecting through the bottles onto the wall opposite. (Sarah would add here, "It's the little things.")

Water from the heavens! Electricity from the source!

This is an over-confident Seattleite who has finally arrived home after getting caught in a downpour somewhere around 114th & Broadway. (She spent her new student orientation day chuckling to herself as she watched her peers shuffling about under umbrellas in the "rain".) Seattlite is met with sheets of rain and loud, loud thunder. Seattleite embraces her folly, peels her wet clothes off so as not to catch pneumonia. Seattleite reluctantly decides to bite the bullet and buy an umbrella. Seattleite is a little ashamed, but also very impressed.

My goodness, this rain makes me feel at home.

For me. For Mom. For Dad. For anyone else who worries about me.

Psalm 93.

"The Lord reigns, He is clothed

with majesty;

The Lord is clothed,

He has girded Himself with

strength.

Surely the world is established,

so that it cannot be moved.

Your throne is established from

of old;

You are from everlasting.

The floods have lifted up, O Lord,

The floods have lifted up their

voice;

The floods lift up their waves.

The Lord on high is mightier

Than the noise of many waters,

Than the mighty waves of the

sea.

Your testimonies are very sure;

Holiness adorns Your house,

O Lord, forever.