A pale ginger cat - almost camel coloured - with topaz eyes, played with the Man and I today.
Doves, a pigeon and five starlings squeezed side by side on a half-broken television aerial. The only reason I can think of is that the view must be great from up there.
My office-plant has burst into glorious, glossy, emerald leaf. Thank you, C., for the passing mention of crushed eggshells.


It's now more than a week since my return from India. I'm slowly settling. But not quite. And I wonder if I ever will really settle.  So much of my life has now been spent split in two.

I feel alternately blessed and cursed by the fact of my having two lives. One here, full of tiny pleasures and hard work. And one thousands of miles away, full of big questions of life, death and everything in between. And I feel mostly cursed by the fact of my having to choose between them.  Not yet, not right now, but ultimately. And I struggle - I struggle - with this. With the choice and with the process of making one - every day. I decide one way, then the other. I feel calm, then tortured, then calm again.  I feel anxious, and scared that I'm leaving it too late (how much time does my father have?) I feel alternately full of courage and a total coward.  I feel like I could move forward if I knew what the challenge was - that's 90% of the battle. And through all this, I feel like if I just knew enough, I could make a choice. Move, one way or another.  Feel at peace.

And then yesterday, I thought: Maybe I do not have a choice. Whether this is the ultimate recourse the weak, the surrender to choicelessness, or not, is a different debate, and largely an irrelevant one for the moment. But I digress: Maybe I do not have a choice. Maybe I could reconcile myself to knowing just this: That I am here, because I am meant to be here, right now. Maybe that is the best thing for me and everyone around me. Even my Father.
Maybe when it is the best thing for everybody, a path will open up that leads me back home - to that home.
Right now, I do not see such a path.
And so, I should stop wondering which hypothetical fork to take, and just follow the road I'm on.

A feeling of immense relief washes over me when I think this.
But I only think it after torturing myself for days.
Then it lasts for a few days.
And then I go back to wondering about whether to turn right or left and what each turn means for me (and crushingly, about me).
And it's all downhill from there. Until the next tiny glimmer of insight. Until the next baby step.
On and on and on. Up and down, up and down, backwards and forwards and nowhere.

Thanks for listening.