I have been away. I think I may be coming back.

Late last year I took over the little café space in our local library, and I’ve been going in every day to make salads and soup and coffee. Monday through Friday, six hours a day. Off on weekends. It’s strange to know the days of the week once again, and I’m not sure how I feel about that, but it’s given me a daily-ness that was lacking. Also, it’s put me out into the world again, which is not my natural inclination, though I realize (sometimes) that I need it.

I’ve come to think I probably need this, too. This scribbling that goes out into the world. It’s another sort of daily-ness.

A while back I participated in a local alternatives-to-school forum and came away reinvigorated by the interest and support of those in attendance. So many young parents are looking for alternatives to conventional k-12 compulsory schooling. They sense a closing in of the walls as their children approach “school age.” They know there is something more out there, some alternative to a system they don’t entirely trust, something different, something (dare they hope?) better.

School systems. Health care systems, food systems, justice systems, economic systems… there is something out there, something different, something better.

Maya Angelou says, “When you know better, you do better.” But it isn’t axiomatic. We know better and still do terrible things, stupid things, wasteful, hurtful things, or just regular, normal, daily things that end up harming us, and hurting our world, and cutting it a little deeper.

I get tired of the cutting. 

So, anyway. The writing. I don’t know what it wants to tell me, what direction it will take. I suppose I’ll find out soon enough.