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I bought some blackberries today as an indulgence. I feel like I was spoiled as a child because I had that garden next to the house where mum painstakingly and lovingly cultivated a single Himalayan blackberry vine to give us glorious fat blackberries every year. These ones, while tasty, will never hold a candle to the flavour of those sun-warm berries that went straight from vine to mouth. They are, however, enough to evoke the nostalgia of those days. I think this single memory; the garden next to the house where we could find fresh lettuce, basil, berries – is the main reason I ever wanted to own a house.

Saturday was Lindsie’s birthday, so we celebrated by eating a lot and drinking wine. I mean what better way to celebrate a birthday? We exchanged gifties (both BTS themed, of course) because she brought me a treat from her family adventure to New York. I was so full when I got home!

Yesterday was one of those rare bright spring days that still have the bite of winter in them. (I thought the weather change from the drizzly grey mess that was yesterday would have triggered a migraine, but I seem to have escaped!) Even though the equinox has come and gone, the nights are still cold and there is still a chill in the wind. Oona and I talked a bit about how our summers have definitely changed – last year we didn’t have much of one – not heat dome the likes of which we had in recent years, which also meant less beach time. But we still had little to no rain – which to me marks the fifth year of drought – and the accompanying wildfires. In fact there is at least one fire that is still burning from the summer, just beneath the earth, along the root paths of the trees. How horrifying is that? Fitting that I found the word “weltenschmerz” (an all-encompassing kind of melancholic pain that affects the human being as a result of the deplorable state of the world itself) today in my incessant internet rabbit holes.

Speaking of rabbit holes, I also dug out some of my old class notes from my classes at UVIC. My desire to return to poetry has highlighted the fact that I’ve let my skills get a bit rusty, so it was kind of fun to see the formal approach to it again. All the notebooks have *read more poetry* written in the margins. That is excellent advice for many of us. I feel like poetry is a genre that gets overlooked quite a bit – I mean it’s not as accessible as a lot of other art forms. You have to think. You have to be willing to let it make you feel things. That’s a lot easier with TV shows and music. Not that either of those things are in any way lesser – gods no! I just think that poetry is capable of things that other genres are not. I think one of my favourite things ever is when you recognize a reference to earlier art/poetry/plays in a current work. I love the referential stuff – like the unapologetic amount of Shakespeare that’s in Star Trek, you know?

There are also various snarks in my margins about how we were once again learning about old dead guys – the classics, of course, are riddled with those and this one class was all about the Romantic Poets. I feel like my next rabbit hole is looming ahead – who are these old dead guy’s contemporaries? Surely there were also women writing? (ah-ha yes! Anna Laetitia Barbauld, and Joanna Baillie to the rescue.) Mr. white rabbit? Have you got the time?

*slips down the rabbit hole*

listening to: Like Crazy – Jimin
reading: Bashō
eating: Blackberries
drinking: ginger ale and pomegranate juice
word count: 1530
headspace: Mare Vaporum