And this, today, will be the benediction.

It's been a month now, and the apartment is still pretty bare and I haven't been on a hike or walked barefoot on soil for a long time now. The city is always raging and shining in a sickly orange light. Billboards shriek right into our living room windows. The train conductors are always grumpy and yelling, and nobody smiles when you catch their eye.

I have been feeling quite disheartened. My life has experienced a complete reversal so abruptly: from playing music in the sunshine or writing in a redwood cabin near the Pacific all day to an 8-5 nonstop professional curriculum, two train rides a day, a tiny dusty apartment in a huge aging building with no plot of grass to rest my bones to speak of. And no way of getting out of the city. None at all. I am now the opposite of directionless, and I am feeling robust and healthy, but not particularly peaceful. I am seeking that, now. I am so unaccustomed to this dense, busy energy. I miss the sweetness which has burrowed within it.

I read and write a lot now, but not poetry. Mostly anatomy and clinical papers. I get up early, but have no time to enjoy breakfast. There are no parks on my way to school. I failed to find a house for us to live in. I have to remind myself that this is the best time in my life to do professional training even if I am hesitant about it, that this is not an irreversible commitment, that the clinical profession allows for flexibility, that I will earn a good salary which will allow me to take time off to travel, and build a nice home, and garden, and maybe start a family and ensure that they will have the things that they need. I try to remain always thankful and peaceful inside, even when the tests are piling up and I start thinking that maybe I myself am going to have a stroke since I learn about so many people that do, and how vulnerable the brain is to its own unimaginable complexity. And then I refuse to take anything for granted, I remember that I may not even be alive tomorrow, that two years is a long time to wait for the dream to start rolling again. And then, finally, I look at the two plants on my windowsill, at the slanted light in which somewhere not too far away -"the slippage in the sky"-, a patch of giant sunflowers is swaying, I look at the book a beautiful friend sent from Kentucky, I think of the long rest we are given at the end of each day, I think of the man who is on his way home, and the leaves that are just beginning to redden, and the ancient stone churches in this city that are so quiet and fragrant, and grace unfolds anew.

And I am always thankful. This is what I want to do, and this is what I have been given. I just miss the West Coast, is all. Most things about it, not the driving, or the aimlessness, or how much of an ordeal it is to get food at night. Everything is just new, and filled with enormous responsibility. This is a good evening.