It's such a pretty day. The running season has begun again (I don't go in the winter when it' really cold) and I forget how high I feel afterward, how ideas descend on my like birds. How full and awake and transcendent running makes me feel.

The other night, I went running alone, as the sun was going down. I ran down along the waterfront, and geese were taking off from the water as if in slow motion like they do in dramatic National Geographic movies. All the trees looked old and weary, but in a beautiful way. Beautiful because you know spring is coming and so it is a redemptive kind of weariness.

Every winter's end, I have to shake off all my own weariness. Things accumulate over those cold months, and by the end of the first good, long run, they're gone, and I am weightless again.

As I was running, the sun fell behind the mountains. Sunsets in the prairies always seem to take forever. The sun sinks slowly toward the horizon, the colors start a good long time before the light is gone, and they linger a long time afterward. But here, I live at the base of a mountain. All you have to do is blink, and the sun has fallen behind it, and that is that. Everything is in shadow. You have to savor it a little more.

After the run, I went and sat on Greg's steps. I'll explain. Greg is the guy who lives next door, but he's never there much. I want to buy his house. So I've taken to sitting on his steps, pretending it's mine. His yard is surrounded by roses in the summer, and there's a big Magnolia tree in the middle of the yard, which will soon be covered in stunning, pink flowers. It's a little old house, with tiny bedrooms upstairs and slanted ceilings. There's a porch in the back overlooking the rose garden.

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I haven't written much lately, because things are changing dramatically inside me. There are no words yet. I'm finding them, but they're still not here.

All I know is I'm grateful. I'm grateful for all of this and the sun right now against the trees and that spring always comes, in a metaphorical sense as well, and there is that glorious feeling of something blooming.

"Ever since Love heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you." ~Hafiz