When I'm not here.

I haven't written for over a month.  My life has been in beautiful transition.  A new job, a new internal peace.  Ever since graduation I have felt underemployed and mildly worthless in the working world but I finally have a position that I feel properly reflects my skill.

When you enter a new work environment, even if it's a place you've worked before, there are new faces all over the place--either directly at your office or from other schools or at retirement parties.  My life is full of networking, which I am not skilled at but am working on.  Questions, no matter how simple, tend to catch me off guard.  For example, everyone at one point or another asks some variation of the question What do you do for fun?  

Do you have any hobbies?

What do you do when you're not here?

Many people have a niche, or a go-to answer.  I like to woodwork.  I'm a cellist.  I rock climb.  It so clearly defines them.  What do I say?

When I was younger I took in music like air, surrounded myself with it in a desperate attempt to fill myself with something substantial, something worthy and beautiful but became distracted in college by obligations to the point of suffocation and have since then attempted to be a collector of beauty.  Have you  noticed how the whimpering tremolo at pianissimo of a single violin can fill a concert hall?  Or how vibrantly green the foliage of the rainforest gets after one of many short showers? 

Let me tell you about how there are two different colors of pea that can grow on a climbing vine.  They are green and purple. And how those pea pods come from white and indigo flowers.  Can you believe that sweet mystery of flower producing fruit?  I have seen the pollen from those flowers clinging to the leg of the mumble bee at dusk.  He harvests it and stores it on his tiny hairs.  

This summer I filled my life with dance, a vulnerable art, structured expression from ballet to modern, pointed head turns, sweeping leg motions on the floor, rolling down then shooting up again, reaching toward your reflection, desperate.  

Have you heard the loons calling to each other at night?  Did you know that rabbits literally leap for joy, and hum when they are so spirit-filled?

I run to remind my body to be awake and alive.  This fall we will run from Minneapolis to Saint Paul--can you imagine that?  We will weave with the river toward the sun.  

I love airports and low-flying planes. 

At night I rest on the chaise and look out onto the city with a book in hand as my husband plays Bach.  The rabbit hums.  Does that make me a reader?

What did you want me to say? 

What is a hobby?

"Well I've been really into gardening, lately."