Clouds and Bees


Issac and I went on a walk today, and I took lots of pictures. I accidentally erased them, though, later. I will never be able to duplicate those pictures exactly as I saw them. Oh well--it was still good for my soul to look through the lens of a camera and frame beauty.

Zhenya, my new roommate, will be moving in tomorrow.

I'm thinking of starting a new blog. As though starting a new blog could somehow refresh my writing, which, to my mind, is suffering from both staleness and lack of risk. I've been chosing to censure what I write. Why? I'm not exactly sure. But I don't like it, and censure is mostly the reason why I haven't been writing, and why, when I have, it hasn't been so fun.

I think a large answer to this question of why I've been censuring myself has a lot to do with the fact that I've been going through some serious introspection lately. Who am I? Who do I want to be? What exactly about myself do I want to reveal?

The truth is, it's becoming hard for me to publicly admit defeat, my shortcomings and fallibilities. Is there something growing in me that wasn't there before, such as a sense of privacy? I've never known this feeling before.

I've had some real adventures these past few months, but I wouldn't whisper them into just anyone's ear. Maybe these stories need time to become less raw, less real. Then I could write about it and say, "I once..." and it will be casual, entertaining, because the happy end, the resolution, will be in sight. Readers will forgive my rashness, naivete, selfishness, or other immoral act that peppers and propels the story. The girl in the story will no longer be the girl telling the story. Nobody will think of me.

The thick storm-clouds I saw on my walk today looked like purple velvet. Still, the sun glowed behind the dark bustles, illuminating the edges, a shining gold foil. The air was damp and the ground smelled earthy. Coming up the lane toward the back-end of our neighbor's farm, we heard a buzzing sound. High up in an oak tree was a hole, filled with swarming bees. They were flocked all over the bark so that the tree looked like it was alive, and there was a cloud of them floating around the branches. I wondered if there was honey in the hole, and thought of Pooh coating himself in mud--"they shall think I am a rain-cloud"--and hoisting himself up to the bees with Christopher Robin's balloon.

I mentioned it to my neighbor, Sally, as we picked blueberries with the kids. She said she would tell her husband to "take care of it--he's allergic to bees." While I don't want him to have an allergic reaction to the bees, it makes me sad to imagine disposing of my little honey-tree. Is nothing sacred anymore? Not even a little honey-bee-tree?