we'll see how brave you are, we'll see how fast you'll be running

I felt a stark peace this morning when I got up into the cloudy snowlight. I've been getting up early these days. I had forgotten how much I love the hours between six and seven, when the world still feels like it's congealing out of fog and light, and everything is so possible, so mercifully quiet. It fills me with purpose. I rode to work looking out the window and thinking. The Valley is ruthless-pretty in snowcover; the sheer scale of everything makes even ordinary barns uncommon pieces of color in a changed landscape. 

*

I've been kind of just chucking bitter rocks all week, wanting to hurt and destroy and burn things down for the sake of burning, but I think I'm coming around to a kind of resignation. It just is what it is. People are just people. People--even ones you respected and admired tremendously--are going to disappoint you. It's never who you think, and it will always hurt. And again and again, you will find your pattern of protecting the ones who smash you up the most. Of all people, I should know that by now. I'm too old to be surprised. And I'm old enough that I should be taking better care of myself.

So what then? Adjust. Swallow hard, call it, go on a little smarter and stronger, a little colder. 

*

This weekend I'll be planting food and flower seeds and climbing a good hard mountain I've never climbed before. I'll run some more, clean, and get my shit in order.