Oh drear.

I'm teaching this week on Vancouver Island in Victoria, at the southeastern most tip. You can't quite see on this image that we're below the 49th Parallel which divides the U.S. and Canada, or that you can all but moon Washington State from here. Squarely in the Pacific Northwest and all its calming, natural beauty. Alas, it's also wet and grey, a plodding pace. To top it off, I'm teaching in a building of government workers. I'm feeling all of it.

A waitress I saw yesterday gave me a smile like an Irish grandmother's fist, a gesture no more potent than one imagines or remembers it. The silver-haired gentlemen who secured my visitor's badge, he moves me too. He lifts his elbows as he walks, as if getting up some invisible gangplank. One of the hotel maids in the hallway, I meant to ask her her name. A slender, well-maintained Indian woman with expressive eyes. Too alive for housekeeping, that's my thought. I suspect there is a past; this sleepy downtown hotel hallway, it belongs to a story she is not thinking to tell.

I'm looking for any excuse to keep moving. Without due care, energy like this will bring you down in a hurry.