Forward motion

Five weeks through the semester and we students have gained a rhythm. We know what to expect from our classes, and what our profs expect from us. First semester is behind us, we've readjusted and hit our proverbial stride.

Literal, too. In walking to and from the academic campus from (and to) our little flat here at the outskirts, my stride has become quick, strong, automatic. It's a ten-minute walk one way. Some days I make the round trip twice. Back in Newberg, I loved to walk, but then there was no hurry and there were no hills. (I've learned to mince as well: black ice was a real danger for a couple weeks.)

The other strides I've learned to take happen in my brain. Weeknights, Ben and I generally study from about seven to midnight. A great amount of that time, for me, is spent writing. My fiction writing class is the centerpiece of my attention, my dedication, and by far the greatest eater of my time. Unlike poetry writing class which requires a poem a week, fiction class demands short exercises of original writing three times a week.

I have never been a fiction writer. I have wanted to learn how, read about the process, feared that when I finally gave it a try I'd flop.

But now I have no time to think about that, I simply have to sit down and write something every day. At first I stayed close to home, retold events from my life very slightly altered. Now I've begun to stray more into actual fiction.

I seek out an idea, then sit down and begin to write, and find I don't freeze up, I don't fall down: just like when I step out the door and my legs take off, so does my mind and my fingers on the keyboard. It is a satisfying experience. I suspect it would be thrilling, if I could stop to think about it. And weren't so tired.

When I walk, I find myself mentally describing things I pass. (At least, early in the week. By Fridays I'm half asleep on the sidewalk.) Yesterday, I pulled out my phone and used its voice recording function to narrate a paragraph of story as I strode home. That was immensely fun!

Speaking of noticing and naming details, I wish on my walks I knew where to look for future blooms. Back home I'd be checking the crocus shoots every day, looking for hints of purple, gold and white. Do they grow crocuses here? Hope so. I suspect this high up they bloom late. Like me.

Back home.

Like a guest who won't go home

 The snow is slowly wearing off and lifting away, threadbare on lawns, sunken into roots of trees. Where the plows have pushed it, lumpy heaps linger, dirty laundry piles nobody wants to deal with. Maybe this is the vision of snow some people wrap around themselves when they say, incredibly enough, "I hate snow."

Most everyone here at U of I seems to either love it or hate it. I wonder about those who don't voice their opinions: Is the snow almost miraculous to them still, a child's gleeland? Or do they secretly loathe it, but don't want to admit how grown-up and weary of cold complication they've become? Or, most interestingly, are there those who fear they're losing their wonder? Am I one of them?

I'm a Willamette Valley woman. Every day I step outside and think, "Oh look. It's still here! Huh." It's a new feeling: snow's novelty evaporating. Oh, each morning the white land is a little different. Wavy edgings retreat, melted and refrozen, smashed grass gets unsmothered. On my walk to class, the sunshine blinks off thousands of large ice crystals formed over the remaining snowfields. Wonder changes shape. And I think, with our next snowfall, the wonder and joy will start afresh. I hope so.

Ugh. But necessary. Actually, these guys are totally on the ball.

That's better. From McCall's Winter Carnival. I want to go, don't you?