final stretch

these next two weeks will test me in many ways. i am planning on sending off my packet of stuff for grad school tomorrow. next tuesday i take my GRE exam. i am supposed to be grading 32 papers of high school persuasive essays and prepare to head south - finally - for the winter. it's like i'm migrating or something

maybe i am. maybe we should take our living and movements from the birds. they move on instinct. they move when it's time to move. i like watching bodies of birds fly. in the city, it's an interesting thing to watch. the high buildings create this kind of circular air, and sometimes, you'll find the birds moving and switching left and right, gliding and switching between the buildings above the streets. they turn and turn and don't run into each other. they turn and turn and at some point there is a movement and they fly out and on and still together, still in formation.

or like how they know when to go south when the north gets rough, and so on. they just know. they don't have books and timetables to follow. they can't get weather forecasts on their mobile devices. they just feel it, in the air. and they move accordingly.

i used to say my own movement was like a dandelion spur/spore. the kind when the dandelion changes to the white ball of seeds. i used to make wishes on them. i don't remember any of the wishes, but i knew that if you picked one up and blew it and could blow the whole thing off in one breath, your wish would come true. my life was one of those spores blown into the world by someone else's wishes, i used to think. but now, i like the idea of the birds and their intuition. their movement...how the gull comes inland when a storm approaches. how they pick up disparate parts to build their nest. innovative and knowing. they do it by feeling.

i would like to live less calculated like that. just feeling my way through.