Reading comes to us in phases now. It's like craving a piece of chocolate cake. Once you see it, you gotta have it. No other dessert would do.  But when you've had it, you can go for months on end without it.

Because life distracts and deprives us of this pleasure, it comes with full force. Binge reading.
We lie in bed for days with curtains wide open and legs entwined under the same blanket. We read. Book after book. Dylan more than me. The man can really get through books like I can get through a box of peanuts.

Sometimes we read multiple books at a time. Kind of how you'd watch the first episode of different shows to see which one you want to binge first or binge properly.

Sometimes I could let some books go. I don't take to everything. But Dylan rarely ever does that. Sure he'd have plenty of half read books. Marked by his quirky bookmarks, but you bet he'll finish them sooner or later.

The first thing the man does when he goes to any bookstore is look through the jar of those old $1 bookmarks and picks out a few. The last thing he does at any gift shop is the same. He'll spend a good 10 minutes before checkout in front of one of those rotating kiosks neatly stacked with postcards and magnets and bookmarks and carefully decides on this pick.

But the poor bookmarks never make it to his books. I know he has every intention to use them when he buys them. But it never works out. I do not know the fate of these bookmarks because I rarely see them again. And I have learned to not pick this battle with him. (Husbands could have far worse habits than bookmark hoarding).

Instead you'll find old receipts, train tickets, clothes tags, tissue papers, dried leaves (that were fresh leaves when first used for this purpose) and even airplane plane boarding passes being used as bookmarks. That's how you can tell my books apart from Dylan'. Mine are neatly decorated with vintage bookmarks, colorful, magnetic, stick on bookmarks, bookmarks with tassels, and bookmarks the point to the exact line of the text. He'll have the entire world's crap in his books marking his pages except a real bookmark. I used to offer him mine but after they met the same fate as his own, I not only stopped offering, I actively started protecting mine from him.

During our binge reading days, you'll find books everywhere. Half open, half closed, upside down. By our legs on the bed, snuggling by the arms, stray ones on top of the sheets, and finally the lucky one in our hands.

Our cat would come from time to time to check on us. Sometimes she would sit for hours on the other side of the bed giving us judgmental looks, sometimes carefully balancing herself on top of a book ensuring that her entire body including her tail sits within the four corners of that book. The lucky book would be her chosen throne for the day, which means it would be very inaccessible to us. Dylan says she's reading by osmosis. I think she's just telling us who's the boss.

Sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night with something jamming into my ribs. It would be a book I'd forget to put away before falling asleep. An aftermath of staying up several nights, bingeing. 

It's been so many things. Through time and space. I don't always think about it, but I know this affair runs deep. My first memory of it was of dad drinking it, on cozy winter nights. It would have a lot of froth, and Beatles would always be playing in the background. For years later, every time I looked at coffee, Beatles would start playing in my head. Coffee had its own soundtrack. And the smell, oh the smell was heavenly - nothing more intoxicating than that cup, lying on the table in my dad's study with its own soundtrack, while he read from an old book. I wasn't allowed to drink coffee because "you are too young and it is an adult beverage" but sometimes, dad would give me a sip, and knowing fully well how awful it would taste, I'd fall for the offer every time, perhaps secretly hoping that it would taste better this time. But my baby taste-buds were not ready for it. I absolutely hated the taste of coffee! And I recall spending hours trying to figure out how something can smell so amazing yet taste so horrid.

My dad would be utterly amused.

It wasn't until the first year of college that I really started drinking it. Everyday on my way to class at exactly 8:50am, I would walk into the campus coffee shop, and Jeremy would know what to make. That cup was warm in the winters and soothing in the summers. Coffee kept me awake in class, gave me company through some very dark nights and many cheery afternoons. It has never been just a drink, but an experience. It's Beatles and my father's study. It's loneliness through the woods, it's happiness in the mornings, it's a reason to take a walk, and coffee is also love. Knowing fully well that I would never say no, Dylan still asks me questions like, Do you want some coffee? Why don't we go to a coffee shop? Let me make you some coffee? Will coffee make you feel better? I found a new coffee shop, do you want to check it out?  And he'll make it, and he'll take me, and he'll taste it, and he'll give funny names to all the different types of coffee I like.

Perhaps I'll have a study one day and I will read, old, utterly complicated books late at night and listen to the Beatles, and my coffee would taste horrid to someone else.

I have come down with a cold. It's a strange kind of cold. Usually everything with a cold is supposed to be fuzzy and spaced out. But my mind has been functioning fairly reasonably as my body has gone weaker and weaker. I know I just need rest, and I’ll be okay. Perhaps these seasonal colds are reminder from nature to just slow down.

Dylan has been making me coffee and tea, and getting me soup and making sure I take all the medication on time. I have been alone for so long that I had almost forgotten how its liked to be taken care of. His incessant nagging and making sure I don’t move reminds me of my childhood and how it was like to be sick.

Do you remember it? How your mom would make a big fuss over a sore throat. How, before you even knew it, there would be a cold washcloth on your head? Somehow that washcloth is every mother’s remedy to every sickness. Do you recall the taste of that grape/cherry/orange cough syrup that came with its own plastic spoon? That was the worse. Do you remember your stuffy nose and your heavy eyes? Do you recall your family begging you to eat something and somehow everything they offered was just not up to par.

There was always an upside to it though – no school. And the off day came with zero guilt. You had a good justification to stay at home when everyone else had to go, and something about staying at home smack in the middle of the week makes the whole day looks so different, even if it through your heavy eyes. Do you remember lying on the couch all day watching VHS of Disney cartoons one after another? And realizing that its only noon even after the 12th movie, because time just seemed to slow down. Do you remember walking around the house in a blankie? Everything is acceptable when you are sick. I mostly recall passing out at the couch in the living room and waking up tucked in bed. If that didn’t make it all okay, I wouldn’t know what would.

It’s good to be sick sometime. Between the non-stop coughing and the pitiful groans, its good to know that at some point in your life, you were taken care of and if you are lucky, someone is taking care of you right now.

It’s cloudy outside and the house is quiet today. I make myself mocha and sit in the sunroom but don't hear a single sound. No neighbors, no traffic, not even the wind. It rained all night and now its just still. Still and wet. There is no sun in the sunroom, but what it has is my favorite light. That perfect-for-photography diffused light marred by the green trees that surround the room. It reminds me of the time when Dylan and I sat at 12,000 foot peak of Mammoth Mountain, eating energy bars and grasping the magnificent view of the Sierra Nevada Range at our feet. There was such stillness in the air, except that my eyes could not adjust to the layer after layer of mountains.

I rarely got a chance to sit in the sunroom this year. We were rarely home. We have counted eleven road trips so far and that doesn’t even include the air travel. I love it. I love it because I always have something to look forward to – driving through the coastal mist of the Pacific in the spring, and wading through buckets of snow of the Midwest in early summer, and driving by the Great Lakes for hours in July, and getting lost in the windy roads of Appalachia in August – has been incredible, and we are still only halfway through the year. It’s been intense and sometimes it is nice to just be back home and be still, but I am glad I have allowed myself to take advantage of the opportunities that life offered.

I am glad I didn’t wait. We wait for so long to go somewhere, to witness the world and life, and go to see friends and family we love. But we never really do it. The days pass us by and we think more days will come and while they do, they too pass on. I want to experience as much life as I can as soon as I can, because there will still be more life to witness. This world and its people are so expansive and vast that we cannot possibly see and experience everything in one lifetime.  Perhaps it is arrogant of me to assume that it has all been put on earth for me, but while I am around, I’d be damned if I don’t travel from coast to coast just to gush over a tiny waterfall in the heart of the Cascades.  Because what’s the point. What’s the point if we don’t enjoy the house we live in, the neighborhood we call our own, and the people we have cherished. What’s the point when all the nieces and nephew grow up and we only see them once a year, when we have no idea what’s happened to the best friend we once loved so much.  What’s the point when the world’s most beautiful mountain ranges and the most awe-inspiring beaches are your neighborhood, and you never get to see them.

I am young, and I am full of zeal for this life, and this ever-changing world. I am not going to waste a minute of it not doing things I love, and not bearing witness to this world.

It has been a long while, and I never meant it to be. I had hoped to fill these pages with life and her wonderfulness, because there is so much of it. I hope to do so shortly but for now I must just write what my heart is asking me to write. But know dear friends, if you are still here, that I have an incredible life and all these past months have been filled with happiness.

It's a bit fragmented now though. We are everywhere being pulled in all directions. It is temporary, like all things are, and soon I will be able to balance it. So, I can't complain.

I have had some of the loveliest moments and experiences this past winter and spring and they helped me move forward and witness new adventures. I have traveled so much. I have witnessed fire in the sky and fallen asleep to the owl's hoots in the fields, and I have waded through rivers to reach the corners of the continent. I sat with the mountain goats and let the moon roll me over. I have encountered strange creatures and found myself stranger still. I wonder if you'd be interested in hearing travel stories.

Thinking of you all, and grateful that you are here.

I was cleaning my stuff from the basement of my parent's house that had been sitting there for probably six years. I haven't lived in this house for the last eight years but it's amazing how every time I go back, I find more of my things than I'd like to accept. Most of them are books, old memorabilia, old clothes, knick knacks, and what not, and some things that my mother has just saved from my childhood, like my drawings and writings and published articles. But those don't count because she has made it abundantly clear that's her property and not mine. I am okay with that. Less things for me to clean.

I used to be the one for holding on to stuff. Perhaps that's why I have so many things sitting in this basement. I don't  know when it changed, but I could really care less about a lot of things now. What should have been a road down memory lane, seemed more like looking at someone else's life. When I looked at those things, it was as if I was looking at them for the first time. Term papers from high school, journals with emotions poured on them that I don't remember existed, paintings I am certain drawn by someone else, photos of a girl that looks nothing like me, with people I barely remember. Training manuals and textbooks I learned nothing from. Perhaps the only thing I remembered and saved were cards and letters and some books. Perhaps those were the only things that really mattered. That ever really matter.

Dylan who was helping me, on the other hand, was utterly fascinated with everything. Reading every paper I wrote, and smiling at every silly journal entry, and simultaneously being horrified at how quickly I was putting paper through the shredder. At one point we almost got into an argument over which things should be thrown and which shouldn't. I am still quite certain that he hid a few things from me, which may surface later.  It's amazing how our silly lives we don't even remember can be so fascinating to others.

I am not saying that the part of my life contained in this basement was a waste or was a bad time in my life. No. None of that. It was just ordinary with it's ups and downs. I held on to things because I thought that years from now I will somehow look back at this time so fondly and somehow nostalgia will be so comforting. But the truth is, its not. It's either full of regrets, or full of longing or in my case, it's full of, really, nothing. The fact is, I have forgotten. I don't feel the emotions looking back at my high school days I was hoping to feel when I was in high school. Things aren't as important. Things aren't even as complicated. All I have now is a basement full of crap and a day full of cleaning that I could have spent doing something else. Lighten your loads, people. The important memories, you'll always remember. You won't need reminders for that.

It’s really not that I do not want to write. Or that I no longer have anything to say. It’s just that before I know it, it’s been a month since I have last written. It always surprises me how quickly time is passing, because I keep thinking that it’s been just a week or two that I last posted here. We keep thinking that once we settle down life will become calmer and slower, because you know, the words “settle down” kind of implies that. But it’s such a lie. It doesn’t get calmer, but it doesn’t necessarily get crazier either. It gets blurrier. Before you know it, you don’t really know where your days go. They just go somewhere.

I should keep track now. Of the sips of coffee I take in the mornings, and the cookies I bake in the evenings and the flowers I water in the afternoons and the trails I hike on Saturdays and the books I manage to finish in a month (which, sadly, is a very low number). I must keep track or I will have nothing that’ll flash before my eyes when it all ends. I must remember the letter I wrote sitting at dining table this afternoon, and the lemon scented candle I lit this evening, and the friend I spoke to after ages, and the squirrels that came to the patio, and the little sparrows that crowded the street this afternoon eating god knows what on the ground (they even stopped traffic).

If there is anything I am learning, it’s this: If we don’t make conscious efforts to make our lives matter to ourselves, it won’t. It won’t matter to us and it wont matter to anyone else. We must hold on to moments we have, grasp on to life’s little joys while we can. Because if we don’t, we wont even know when a month has passed by, and then another, and then another until there are no more months left.

Sigh. I hope you are with me dear readers. Because I do hope that I write, and I do hope that I come back before the month is over.

You know, even if I am in a corner, dying (unless I am already dead!) I would write for my dear October. My old friend is here again and as always it has been a lovely and much awaited reunion. Unlike last year, this year I am walking a lot in October. Embracing every bit of it and that excites me immensely. I greet it in the mornings with its soothing mist and damp grass. I meet it in the afternoons with its not so-hot-and-not-so-cold but just-right, breeze. I hear it from the window during the nights with its orchestra of the swaying branches mixed in with a special melody by the crickets.

Life has been mostly good... and quiet. Quiet is good. Quiet is always good. Don't ever not be grateful for the quiet, because chaos is always lurking beneath and it's only just looking for an opportunity.

So yes, life has been good. My daily struggles involve changing bandages on my feet (because no matter what shoe I wear, it just wouldn't become friends with my feet), and fighting with a spider. There is a spider that made her home outside my gate, by the mailbox, and she just wouldn't leave. Her web looks ugly, and makes it seem as if I don't care for my home.  So giving into my vanity, I have destroyed her home multiple times but she builds it right back up, sometimes within hours. Tough little gal. So there you have it, these days I have been losing to a tiny spider. Sigh.  I may have to call it a truce. I may just give it a name and see what happens. Like Charlotte… (or Aragog?). It looks like we are spending the winter together.

Sometimes we should. Sometimes we should stop fighting and let things run their course. Autumn teaches me that every year. Let go. You can't stop the leaves from changing the colors, dying and disappearing, you can either enjoy the destructive beauty or you can fight it. You'll fight it and you'll lose. Because things have to run their course. And sometimes when we give into the stubbornness, we lose sight of what we are fighting for or fighting with.  For instance,  no matter how I look at it, my vanity is not more important than that poor spider's life. But if I continue at it, soon it will become a matter of pride and I’ll lose sight of the fact that I am about to kill a living thing, for really no reason at all.

~Short Story~

We had been coming here at Kay's beach house ever since we were in college. Every spring. Every year. All of us would be here. Significant others changed through the years but we remained. The five of us. After college, I would see all of them during the year except perhaps Sam. We saw less and less of each other with each passing year. And then just only at the beach house.  One year he showed up wearing a bow tie. Looked like a compete idiot. Not many men can pull off bow ties, some shouldn't even try. Another year he was supporting a full bushy beard. His brownish-blond beard. Very unruly and unkempt. I wanted to run my fingers through it. I stopped myself from doing that.

While so many things changed, some things remained constant. Every year on the third night, I'll come out of the beach house around 2 a.m. when everyone else is asleep. I;d walk up to the shore and find him sitting there among the rocks, smoking. We never talked about it, never planned to meet, but it always happened that way. He kept coming back to the beach in the middle of the night, so did I. Perhaps to just remind ourselves of the life we once inhaled among the rocks, when the roaring inside us, the thrashing life, could easily drown the roaring of the ocean. Now there was just silence, except the mockery of the waves.

I sat next to him. He looked at me like he always did, with longing for something you've once had and then lost. He touched my bare feet with his hands. I let him. His hands were warm. My feet were cold. I could see him through the dark. His eyes were always bright bringing me to life.  He touched my head. I closed my eyes. I didn't need to see him after that, I knew I wouldn't be able to feel him much longer.

For a moment, it felt exactly how it used to feel when we were in college - all reckless and thinking that life was full of possibilities. Now we were old. We had learned to live with the voids in our hearts. We weren't even sad anymore. Now we are mature enough, and scarred enough to know when to surrender our happiness.

Sometimes when I am lying in the bed or on the couch, I stretch as if I am trying to reach for something. But there is nothing there except the wall of my imagination. Have I reached it, I wonder. What if I can’t indulge myself in my fantasies anymore. What if this is it. This life. These early mornings and late nights. These chaotic afternoons and silent evenings.

Sometimes I find myself humming a tune, reliving a moment and feeling a tickle in my heart. Sometimes I wonder if I have just conjured it up and it can’t possibly be real. What I felt and feel and touched was nothing but a figment of my overly dramatic fascination with this life and this love. I waited for something and then something died. It was over but then it begun. It’s a funny game.

This makes no sense - what I wrote above. Just like life sometimes. But you have to witness it and write it as best as you can hoping that someday it will give you an end that you’ll weave into a tapestry you always imagined.

I can whistle. I just can't whistle to an actual tune. I wish I could. There is something about whistling that speaks to me. When I hear Dylan whistle, for just a split second I pause, like time stops for a fraction of a second and starts again. I listen and even ask for more sometimes. There is something soothing about listening to the "Dock of the Bay" being whistled in the kitchen. Makes me realize all over again the difference little things make. That's what we need in life. More whistling.  I need more of you whistling.