Liu Xiaobo, 'I Have No Enemies'

"I am an insensate stone in the wilderness, whipped by fierce wind and torrential rain, so cold that no one dares touch me. But my love is solid and sharp, capable of piercing through any obstacle. Even if I were crushed into powder, I would still use my ashes to embrace you."
---Liu Xiaobo, 'I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement' (Nobel Lecture)

Died on 13th July 2017

Round and Round: a sweater

I'm working on a new sweater pattern, going about the construction differently -- working from the bottom up, and starting with sleeves. I needed a new perspective on everything, I think. The recent bout of headaches, fatigue, and (irony-deficiency-induced?) illness left me on the edge of cranky. The only remedy was a new point of view.

Today I'm starting on the second sleeve, working in Woolstok cast iron. If the prototype goes well, I'll tweak it as an Actual Pattern and keep it in the repertoire.

It took about five hours of knitting to make the first sleeve. I have some driving and waiting time next week, so a portable project sounds Just Right.

Another LM Dream

Inside, at my Writing desk, I got up to get a cup of tea. When I turned out of the doorway, I was in the hallway in Rivendell, heading towards the meditation room, and Robert was there, tending the fire in the small woodstove. I asked how I got here, and he asked what made me come this way. I said I was following the smell of woodsmoke, on my way to make tea. He smiled and said the kitchen was the other way, that I had turned right instead of left again, and that I was welcome to use the water on the kettle he had started keeping in the meditation room since I always turn this way.

We made tea from the cast iron pot on the woodstove, then took our mugs to sit on the Sun Porch before evening meditation. My study was on the left as I passed, as though it had always been there, notebook open to the page where I had been writing down the Druid dream from 2016. It was weird to have a dream reference in the dream, and I wondered (in the dream) if I was at Light Morning for real. I had ink on the side of my middle finger from filling my pen, and Robert mentioned that it was taking a lot of pages to write this one down, and he was glad I was doing it.

We took our tea to the sun porch, sitting in comfortable quiet when I heard voices, you and your brother coming up the road from your place down the hill. The late afternoon light caught in your brother's hair as you walked into sight, making your way in for Second Sit before dinner. Little Dog was running up and back around you as you walked, and you scooped him up, nestled him in the crook of your arm. There was pigment on your forearm from mixing glazes in the pottery studio behind the old house. The mug was warm in my hand.

Supplemental illnesses

I need someone in my life who reminds me that there will never be an iron supplement that doesn't make me sicker than a dog.

Ugh.

Five Things

• I'm sorry.
• I was wrong.
• I don't know.
• Thank you.
• I love you.

Irony? Nope, we don't do that anymore

From my journal this morning:

"Irony has been dead, its ashes scattered to the Four Winds, since Ace of Base sued Lady Gaga for being derivative."

Today I am

Today I am

Content to be

Only exhausted from being

Tired