cottage life, and not a moment too soon. The city is grinding into september mode, the internet is full of sadness and ugly hate, and canadian elections are stressing me out with their promise of more of the same. So i'm better out in the forest where i can pretend none of it exists.

i do have my laptop here (and open) because i am "working" from the cottage to get an extra couple of days of lake gazing. If i get 4 hours in today i will count it as a victory. Last night was records on the stereo (a nice mix from old country and western to david lee roth to beirut to the new thurston moore. i can't complain). A bottle of wine, loons on the lake, and roasting marshmallows in the fireplace. More of this please?

11:37 a.m. - 2015-09-04

This afternoon heading off with an old friend and some sort-of-new-friends to a cottage in northern VT, for probably the last lake-swim of the summer. Already the light is changing and the energy in the city makes me feel like i should go pick up fresh notebooks and a new backpack. I usually love the crispness of the fall but the looming onset of this one is making me feel really down. Like, 'Oh. Another year finished? Again? We just did this. Must we?' Time feels like it's speeding up and I have no interest in what is coming.

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Reading Miriam T0ews' novel that's heavily based on her experience of the suicides of her sister and father and despite the humour throughout (really! somehow! she is incredible), it is almost unbearable. I can read only a paragraph at a time and then i feel the compulsion to call my sister and father. It is all so painful that my elbows and knees start to feel weak and shivery. I need to go find something to offset it, like Roald Dahl or something similarly dark-funny. Witches and child-mice and no one quite lives happily ever after but it's good enough.

6:54 a.m. - 2015-09-03