My internet here today has been really intermittent. Not time-wise, but site-wise. Some sites I can get to; some remind me of China. I blame the cold. The cold is also hampering the rest of my productivity, hence the lack of interesting posting going on. I do encourage you to read my vagabondscrawl site (or its feed), which has links to things I’m reading at least. My numb little fingers don’t need to work as hard to share stuff as they do to type intelligibly.
But I learned that two of my friends are going back to Nanchong this month. Holly I knew about, but Phil too! This extra incentive means sometime this year I’ll probably end up out there for a visit. Especially since Sean and I didn’t manage to see Phil on our trip to Amerrica this fall. Maybe I’d be able to take the train up to Tibet this time around…
Had a good chat with Holly today. She’s off visiting people in various non-Virginian states, and she said something I understood so much I’m reproducing it here without her consent: “I could feel myself snap into pay-attention mode as soon as we got on the road out of Harrisonburg.” I do so love that feeling, how it happens and you stop foggy living and go into the real stuff.
On a good day I can hit that without going somewhere new. I wrote a story at 3am the other day moments after snapping out of a dream, and I had that feeling. There’s a wall I used to bike past in September and October that at a certain time of day reflected so much warmth at me it always felt like a new thing. Last night walking home from work in the cold a dog got mad at me walking and barked and barked all mad from its confined backyard and I got all those primal goosebumps of fear. There are those moments, but man pay-attention mode is a lot easier to do when you’re somewhere else. And all your calories aren’t going directly into staying warm.
