I do what I can. In the past I’ve struggled with the reality that I am far, far from who I want to be. Somehow from all that self-hate and turmoil, I surfaced with this notion: in order to become the man I want to be, I have to let all my hate and worry and disappointment float away like dry leaves on a creek, forgive myself, and be patient with myself. And so I do. Sometimes it is difficult.

Even as I write my last college essay ever (which, by the way, is making me very glad to be done with school) I am excited for the future – particularly the near future. Tomorrow I start a week-long camping trip with friends to Assateague Island, a barrier island off the coast of Maryland and Virginia. The place looks phenomenally beautiful, and I can’t wait to have some down-time to read, write, draw, and maybe even record the first episode of a podcast that has been slowly taking shape in my mind. After that, I graduate, spend a week or so at home, and make my way up to Burlington, Vermont with my wonderful girlfriend.

It has finally started to hit me that this is the beginning of my real life. I am as free as I have ever been – free to pursue my own interests, free to “live the life that I have imagined” – and I feel like I could explode from joy at any moment. The transition has made me re-evaluate every aspect of my life, including this journal and this domain. I have always enjoyed writing fallen in the river, even if I have never been able to post regularly or give it the attention it deserves – and hopefully that will change in the future. I am going to keep this site alive, because I think it will only get better in the coming months. As for the domain “facedown.org” – it is overly dramatic, morbid, and just not indicative of the person I have become. Also, it’s expiring in a few weeks. In any case, I’m trying to think of a new domain name to register – something more hopeful, greener, closer to the earth and to god. When I make a decision, you (whoever you are) will be the first to know.

It has been raining for hours now, after a day of brooding skies and cool winds that swept the new leaves as they passed. All day I felt something of the expectation that Thoreau felt on this day in 1854, but the rain has come and I still feel it.

While at the Falls, I feel the air cooled and hear the mutterings of distant thunder in the northwest and see a dark cloud in that direction indistinctly through the wood. That distant thunder-shower very much cools our atmosphere. And I make haste through the woods homeward via Hubbard’s Close. Hear the evergreen-forest note. The true poet will ever live aloof from society, wild to it, as the finest singer is the wood thrush, a forest bird. The shower is apparently going by on the north. There is a low, dark, blue-black arch, crescent-like, in the horizon, sweeping the distant earth there with a dusky, rainy brush, and all men, like the earth, seem to wear an aspect of expectation. There is an uncommon stillness here, disturbed only by a rush of the wind from time to time. In the village I meet men making haste to their homes, for, though the heavy cloud has gone quite by, the shower will probably strike us with its tail. Rock maple keys, etc., now two inches long, probably been out some days. Those by the path on Common not out at all. Now I have got home there is at last a still cooler wind with a rush, and at last a smart shower, slanting to the ground, without thunder.

Precepts: Keep it simple. Appreciate beauty and create beauty, but know that the life you lead is your greatest creation.

Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.

- Henry Thoreau

And the motion of the body comes
from the spirit like a waterwheel
that’s held in a stream.

- Rumi

Walking through the grove this morning, the wind whipped through the trees, paused, and changed direction. It reminded me of those Butler Island mornings when the choppy lake sends waves beating on the shore at regular intervals, and the sound is omnipresent. The predictable whoosh of those waves or of this wind soothes me like the patter of rain.

What a blessing, to be transported to that little island on Lake Champlain by a sound and a memory. Peace. I let the feeling wash over me and fill me up.

It is a good moment just before the water boils, when I can hear the chaotic beating of a summer thunderstorm. Then, for a few seconds, the steam rises and the water rolls until I switch off the electric kettle and lift it carefully, and pour the scalding water over two helpless tea bags.

At home for Thanksgiving break, I wrote the following:

Across the road, the ridge is the horizon, visible now because all the leaves have fallen. Between the shaking fingers of the trees, the sky rises up orange and gray and white and blue like a watercolor painting. Much to be thankful for.

I am thankful for family and friends, of course, but also for the little things that keep me going from one day to the next: Tea when I’m alone. James Bond movies. Girls with glasses. Dim lamplight. Interpol. “When I Heard at the Close of the Day” by Walt Whitman. Walden. Pablo Neruda. Clouds and leafless trees.

I have much to be thankful for.

I know this at great cost,
that all life is not outward
nor all death within,
and that the age writes letters
with water and stone for no one,
so that no one knows,
so that no one understands anything.

- Pablo Neruda, from To the Traveler