do I look familiar (we were just larkspur and leaves, we were strung through the tethers)

Tonight, I finished up my main run with still some energy to burn, so I took Sven to an out-of-the-way path, pulled up some shitty trip hop on my phone, dropped the leash, and let him just fly with me. I'm a good runner, but I can't run as quickly as him even when I'm sprinting. It's incredible how fast he can go, and he has one setting he likes to run at: as fast as he possibly can. When he feels me pulling level, he pushes harder. I've seen him lose control of his speed and go cartwheeling, but he's utterly heedless, and he loves it like I do. When he's off leash, we can race without him having to slow up or measure his pace, and it's a fucking headlong rush.

We ended in a field, and I threw myself down in the grass. It was mostly dark, but not completely, dusk settling down from the trees. I thought I saw a firefly in the evergreens. Sven noticed I was down, and looped back in a zooming arc, slamming into my chest like he did the first day I met him, that first moment I knew we belonged together. We lay in the gloaming, watching the stars come out, and it was just right.

*

A few pictures from my home trip last weekend. Everything is going by so quickly, and I meant to tell stories about the visit here, but somehow I just didn't get to it. I'll have to put these in as placeholders.

I like walking through the woods in my hometown. There aren't much left, but I know what remains well. I spent a good deal of time picking my way through them: barefoot, silent, and alone. I'm never so silent in the woods out here, because I don't ever want to surprise a bear. But when I'm walking up in NoVa forest, I feel half a ghost.

The creek very up.

Mandy, my wicked-eyed old girl.

Me too, though.

*

I had kind of a weird moment earlier today, which has been a generally sort of emotional, wound-up day. In a situation, I started up one of my classic narratives of paranoid anxiety and dread, like happens sometimes in the warzone that is occasionally my head. And then I just thought "wait, that's not actually real. I just made that idea up and started believing it. It's not true." And I just ...didn't go down that road, like I normally do. It was really nice.

I guess that's probably what most people do, instead of concocting increasingly complex fictions about the greater web of failure and betrayal that has spun up a situation. But for me it felt good, more like the person I used to be rather than the suspicious, guarded thing I've become. I was thankful for it: a small gift for a Tuesday.