A Monday like any other Monday.

Winter solstice is about six weeks away (the planning begins now!). Solstice - the mark that the sun is returning to warm things up again, the turning point, the shortest day of the year.

It makes me think: enough now. Enough gloom and doom. The world has seen civilizations rise and fall, and there are still forests and mountains and beaches and sunshine and moonlight. Enough fear and stress. Dictators have come and gone, and the tide still rushes in every evening and birds still sing every morning. Enough rage, enough grief, enough fury. The universe knows what it's doing, and you've always believed that. That collective energy that holds everything together, that we all feed and that feeds us in turn - it is always there, no matter what any one man, or any hundred men, or any million men might do. Yes, lives may be at stake. Yes, freedom may be at stake. Yes, the sky may shake with the horrors mankind contemplates in its strange animal-denying-its-animal-nature way. And yes, I believe the universe will take care of me, that I can be an instrument of change, that those who commit horrors will have it revisited upon them in this life or the next.

It will all work out all right. I don't know how, it just will.

Enough.

I feel the need for a list. To whit:

1. Today my fingernails are blue. And not in a "heart attack imminent" kinda way....I painted them and they're all pretty-like.

2. I need to update my website, since voting for Kerry is no longer possible and my latest news is woefully out of date....but I almost want to leave it for awhile, and hold onto the way I felt the last time I updated it, before my nephew passed, before the election...you know, happier, hopeful.

3. New lyrics from the Mayer:

Hold onto whatever you want, baby
Hold onto whatever will get you through
Don't know how much longer I'll e around, baby
'Cause I don't trust myself when I'm loving you

Damn. It's like he has one of those cold-war-era red phones to my heart....boy, that line sounded good in my head before I typed it out. Aren't you glad I left it in anyway?

4. More illumination from the Mayer: "I am severely full of shit 18 out of 24 hours." Amen.

5. Fuck me, I am restless today. Well, okay, I'm restless abut 60% of the time, but today I'm feeling it. The thought of selling everything I own but my guitar and my favorite boots and my blue jeans and my ugly red cowboy hat.....and just getting out, just leaving, just going out wandering....goddamn, it appeals to me today. I love so many parts of the life I've built for myself here in Chicago, and I'm committed to meeting the challenges I have set myself, but the road is in my blood, and every now and then it reminds me. I can hear it out there, leading somewhere, keeping its secrets for whoever tops the hill first...AAAAAARGH!!! Why am I cursed? I'm going to have to go home and rearrange my furniture!

6. My cats have determined that I should get no sleep. They've spent the past few nights running circles around me, taking turns curling up beside my head and purring at the top of their....whatever it is that purrs on a cat, and sneak-attacking my toes whenever they pop out of the blanket. It's hell. And before you suggest I close them out of my bedroom...tried it. The meows were just as bad...maybe worse. Ugh. I love them, and I know it's because I've been gone so much lately....but still. A girl needs her damn sleep!

Okay, enough whining for today.