WORDS

The importance of words:

Tonight, after work (and my "late night" at work at that), I found myself driving 47 miles roundtrip over a period of one hour and fifteen minutes to retrieve my winter coat. I had left it at a cabin the day prior where the staff of my workplace had an all-day retreat.

But I didn't drive there and back to simply retrieve my coat. If I had only left my coat there, then I probably would have just bid it adieu. It is a good coat and serves me well, but I would have left it behind.

I wanted what was in its pocket. There lurked my small composition book. It is filled with notes taken at art exhibitions, notes taken during beer tastings, lists of books I have read, lists of books I hope to read, general observations, germs of ideas for poems and prose.

And now it is retrieved and home and safe once more.

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The bonus:

I had the opportunity to stand in the darkness at the edge of a lake peering up at the vast multitudes of stars and galaxies of the winter night sky. Whereas I normally only see a handful of lower magnitude stars due to the washout effect of suburban and urban lighting, I instead saw the sky filled with thousands upon thousands of stars. I felt small and lonely and alive.