The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky.

– Henry Thoreau

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.

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

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.

The lone bench just off the crumbling sidewalk means we’ve arrived. The bench’s back slats read Centralia – 17927. The streets are laid out like a town, but almost every lot is empty. Intersections are marked with four-way stop signs, but no traffic. You might heed the signs out of habit, but their new purpose is to allow you to ground yourself in this ghost town. Stop. Look around. We walk up a gravel path to the area where the mine fire started. In all directions, steam can be seen rising out of the ground in noxious wisps. At the top of the hill is the town cemetery, but buried farther below and ignored like a corpse is the Problem. Every now and then people like us stop to pay their respects. We travel down the fractured highway on foot, quietly board the bus, and leave the mine fire behind.

When I finished Tranceport, my iPod shuffled to Sufjan Stevens’ Seven Swans, an album so hinged on his delicate vocals and banjo plucking that it must be the complete opposite of trance; not ecstatic but measured and careful, and the perfect music to bring me down. Now the sky has lightened and I can hear the first birds reveling in their morning ecstasy, the way humans can’t or won’t. And I can’t go back to sleep. All I can think is how grateful I am for music.

Today: A clump of downy feathers where the crows were, but no crows and no explanation. It is too hot. The first fallen walnut of the season, small like a green olive, lands near the horseshoe pitch. Its acrid odor stays on my fingers, and I carry it with me as I walk around the yard sipping whiskey and water from a coffee mug. It is Saturday and my friends are far away.

This is the summer of the crow.

While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust that nothing can make life a burden to me. The gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in the house today is not drear and melancholy, but good for me too. Though it prevents my hoeing them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands, it would still be good for the grass on the uplands, and, being good for the grass, it would be good for me.

– from Walden by Henry David Thoreau

Tonight I turned my computer off for a little while so my room was completely silent. Again, the soft patter of rain outside was the most calming thing I could imagine. I have been on edge recently with so much to do. Tonight I’m worried about my nonfiction essay, which I’ve left untouched for far too long. Instead of writing, though, I sat in bed with my ear to the open window and only the light of my desklamp keeping me awake. Just listening was beneficial.

The rain adds another dimension to the way I perceive distance. Instead of a car passing, I hear a car splashing through a film of water on the road, and passing under raindrops which drum on its roof and smack the ground in all directions. The rain is loudest close-at-hand, singing more and more softly with the distance. The layers paint a blurry aural picture in my mind: the physical plant, the river, the highway, and home – nothing seems far away. The world is fuller when it rains, and the connection between all life is more obvious. Everything benefits from rain: the birds and the squirrels and the feral cats and the grass and my jade and me. I am less lonely now.

Later: Cherry Coke to keep my synapses firing. Latin homework, Latin take-home exam. Songs blur together and fade into the background and eventually the music stops. I don’t notice. All I want is sleep. Eventually, with work left undone, I give in.

Later still: A shrill alarm. My heart thuds in my chest; I am terrified until I realize what the noise is. I stumble out of bed and, with an intimation of regret, hit the snooze button. I find my bed again and turn my back to the soft light of the desk-lamp. Nine minutes later: repeat. And again, and again, each time startled into consciousness, heart racing. Finally, I stay awake, knowing I have more work to do. Work gets done, a new day starts, and, slowly, being conscious gets easier.

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.