muse-dust

I've been turning so many things around in my head over the past few days...we'll see how many of them I can remember.

Church made me intensely melancholy, this morning...things occurred to me that never quite have before, aspects of growing up and yet staying in town and next year and the years rolling afterward...I never before sat there and realized I will not be one of the new members on stage. I knew all this in the back of my head already, and gave it up long ago, but -- it never clicked quite like it did today.

And they are such dear people...Mrs. Schutte is all worried about my appointment on Tuesday, and offers advice with motherly, worried eyebrows. Mr. Moesner and I laugh over food service stories while I pat the barking, blond head of his three-year-old "puppy," Joseph. Eventually I abandon waiting for James, who promised to take me home early because the fever makes me wobbly -- he finally was able to carry off two-month-old Katie and now sits on the other side of the sanctuary, holding Katie and listening to her sister Eva prattle. The room is filled with noise, voices building and relaxing, baby laughter, murmured agreement. I am the only one alone, as I stand in the doorway, and that by choice. Such a happy family...I will miss them, I think.

We drive home, James and Joel and I, underneath pied clouds. The old station wagon, talking itself senile, muddles in and out of their shadows across the road. It's only three roads to take us all the way home. I've never been good with directions, but I know every foot of this bit of Evansville, counted the houses in the new subdivisions as they appeared and watched the farmers plow and seed their fields. The full moon is always low over the passenger's side on the way home at night, and when I was little I could talk myself into believing that it rode faster than we did. Today I ran much faster, faster than the clouds and the fields and all the city. Too fast. It's sinking in, I think.

I have been in such a rabid word-mood, lately...for nine months I haven't wanted to write, save what was necessary for school, and that grudgingly. But just in the last few weeks it's come back...I did get another volume of Fitzgerald at the library, but that was after the fit set in. *grins* (For the innocent souls whom the mad Katharine hasn't battered to pieces already, I am quite in awe of the way F. Scott Fitzgerald uses the English language. His story lines are not breathtaking, but his pen is more deft than any other I've met.) I suppose this would be an acceptable place to insert an apology to those who used to receive the bulk of my writing; without you, I barely have enough life to breathe on, much less throw to the winds. And chances are that I'll fall back into the languor after another few weeks, but for the moment -- oh, I do hope I can get everything down before then...

But not this afternoon. No, not this time...