This time last year:

I was burned out, and I went on a day-trip to Toronto wherein most magical objects, scents, foods crossed my path. Red sunglasses, tiny disco balls, chocolate ice cream, margaritas, fish tacos and pico de gallo, blue cheese burgers, smooth jazz performed by old men in smoky bars, sandalwood incense, shrimp dumplings, gold slippers, washed up seaweed, sand, pavement, the slow waft of jerk chicken, pussy cat dolls booming, French, Chinese and Chinese movies.

Yesterday in street harassment:

Some dude wearing diamond studded stunna shades and carrying a takeout menu in one hand found it necessary to virtually stop in the middle of the street, pose like a member of Boyz 2 Men (leaneeed back), and brush my arm, slow and deep, with his hand/menu, as we crossed paths. I didn't even know what to do/say. I kept walking with my head down and felt ashamed.

I have been thinking a lot about street harassment and what to do about it. In other places I have lived, I have been fortunate never to have people invade my physical space. Here, it happens. When it does, even relatively innocuously (like this), my immediate response is fear that if I do anything except keep going I'll incite something more sinister. I have to find a better solution. Fuck rape culture.

 In other news: Things on the future employment front are still tenuous, but less so. Things on the current employment front are frantic, but I don't want to leave so I'm glad to be doing a lot. I have a little less than one month left.

Everything is beautiful all the time. It's not constant flowers bursting everywhere anymore but the sun and the green and the slight warm/cool and the ten o'clock twilights are incredible. There has been a lot of porch and garden time. I rarely want to be anywhere but my house. The other night we had the most incredible family dinner by candlelight. Mark made pizzas, goat cheese/pesto/prosciutto and a vegetable one, and Jesse made orzo/sausage/yellow pepper salad, and Ryne made tabouleh with harissa, and Julia made asparagus and mushrooms with huge chunks of ginger, and I made avocado red pepper egg salad, and we drank beers and played a game called "Red Ball."

As usual this time of year, I am doing a strange combo of living extremely in the moment and missing everywhere else with summer significance. Buffalo, Wisconsin, Montana, Minnesota, Amsterdam, especially. I started writing a long piece about Buffalo living, for me and in general, the summer and threading back to other times of my life, and that has been good and hard. I don't know what format it will end up in or where, quite, it is going yet.

I am feeling, finally, sneaks of healed enough to be supportive to people I care about in my real life, not just in my work life, and to make human connections beyond the glimpse. It has taken since last July for me to get there.

I have a new Internet love. It's a place to do all my image archiving and particularly begin my hand archiving, which is my next seed of art thought.

I love Phillies and cheesesteaks, I love records when the beat breaks, I love school when the heat breaks, Fire hydrants makin' street dates...