As January sinks into the sea...

I wonder where the day began. It feels as if yesterday never ended. The two just ran together. That's how the days often are. Paints swirling into that nameless grey goop that happens when distinction gives way to the blend. There are things I may remember about today. But I may forget why the memory of them lingers. I often feel as if I live in a roiling soup of déjà vu. Synapses, firing and misfiring, call up flashes of recollection that can easily be confused with premonition. I ask myself what that's from. When it happened. Why it feels as if I've felt it before. Whether all the other brains work like this.

There were words -- several of them -- that made a difference today. I could hear them without wondering if I was taking too great a leap in understanding their meaning. Or what was intended. There were moments that felt like progress. And I realized how new things are. Always. But also for the first time. It is all so new. I am not the same. I embrace what I once would have set fire to. I lean in instead of away. I accept. I do not know if it is a survival technique or a bandage or a form of magnificent denial. Whatever it is, I can sense its difference from what came before. I can scarcely remember the lure of old comforts. Old deceptions read clear and true. Old addresses. Old phone numbers. Stacking up like a great and useless math problem. Who even does long division anymore? There is room to laugh about it all. That's what calculators are for.

When someone else tells a story with magic in it, I find myself listening with great release. I am eager to hear something new. And quiet enough inside to not try and jump ahead to how it all ends. I used to listen to stories like they were a guessing game or a mystery to solve. I am no longer as interested in who done it. I am suddenly more intrigued by how it was done.