7:15 has come and gone.  I stood up from the bed and stretched to touch the ceiling.  The sky is turquoise, the leaves are yellow-green. I missed sunrise but that’s okay. I hear rumors there will be another one tomorrow.

I bought myself flowers three days ago because I could not walk past them, leave them behind. I was astounded by their outlandish garb: Someone concocted a liquid for the flowers to drink that turned their petals deepest indigo, their tips neon as if lit from within.  I shared one flower with the new mother down the hall, and the rest are in a glass vase next to my wax plant, Zephyr.  Zephyr showed me what a living thing can do that has nothing to do with man. I’ve been watching the new shoot rise up and stretch and change direction hourly. Proof of life, proof that I don’t need to do a thing but watch it go and grow (with a little water and all the sunlight it could want) twisting like a seahorse anchored to its weed. Zephyr discovered the wand that opens and closes the blinds and twined himself about it, and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to stop at the ceiling, he might want to burst through it, for all the energy he shows.  I am in love with indigo flowers and the wax plant on my windowsill.

There are books stacked on the floor, books I ain’t read yet. There is a beautiful linen file box with my important papers on the floor in the bedroom and a wicker box that holds all my printed writing in the living room.  When I first came here I swore myself to a spartan life, swore to disavow clutter and unnecessary things, but then the books arrived…and kept coming.  I bought a printer and it sits on the floor, ridiculous. Finally I bought bookshelves and a small table that need to be assembled.  The table is rough, unfinished, primitive, something a Viking might appreciate, and the horizontal bookshelves are teal.  Teal? Yes. Because shelves don’t have to be black or white or plastic or steel. Books are not clutter, but those receipts I hadn’t shredded for a week sure were. Where was my head?

Steve rescued a horseshoe crab we found yesterday morning.  Mike told me not to touch the puffer fish that expired on the beach last night, they are poisonous. Karen doesn’t photograph every sunset because they are not equal. I stepped outside a shadow and saw color, life, transition, death, and my hands just can’t stop writing.