Mein liebster feind

Though my week felt uncomfortable and unsettled, my weekend has been very nice. There have been some important milestones since I came back here. For one thing, I harvested and ate my first wild mushroom all on my own, and it was only about a half a mile from my doorstep! It was a lovely lobster mushroom, poking its fiery tail out of the dark earth at me. I made two batches of fruit kimchi. Moonshine is getting happily settled here - he likes to watch birds. And I have been through one week of school. It often feels like a frenzy of information exposure, but hopefully I will learn to organize it well.

Yesterday I spent some time walking around good old White River Junction, probably tied with Fellow's Balls as my favorite VT town. There is a new all ages pool hall and the man in charge, in faded yellow suspenders decorated with tools, spent a long time showing me around the place. They have Atari arcade games and a player piano and their flyers say, "White River Junction - An Oasis in the Crumbing Empire." Then I stopped by the Center for Cartoon Studies but it was closed so I went to the COVER store which is like a thrift store and found a little present for one of my Jophet-flowers, the Bomb in Gilead one. Next, I went to the clothing store and donated a fur lined wool coat made in Pampa, Texas that had been given to me by the original owner, herself in Pampa bred and born and bred. They should be able to fetch a pretty penny for it. Then I went to the yoga studio and found myself behind a two children and a man. He said, "Is she in there? Is it this way? All right, I'll follow you." and the little ones wended their way down corridors and around corners until they saw a woman behind a desk. They all lit up when they saw each other and ran into each others' arms. The woman was so happy it almost seemed like she would cry with joy. She said, "I didn't think I would get to see you!" All of these things made me feel very very good about the town.

Later I watched My Best Fiend. So much integrity, alongside the most intense open childlike mad driving desire for love. There is something about the people who are trusted by butterflies.