Tomorrow is October. It is hard to believe that I started this blog almost a year ago. It was a source of relief for me. Not relief as in, "a sigh of," but more like the relief provided to people who are down on their luck.

I'm not so much down on my luck in the same way that I was. Not that I was unlucky; just the opposite, I was the most fortunate because I was given an opportunity to be utterly lost and practically broken. These are chances that come along everyday but we don't have to choose to let them alter us.

But I did and now I'm simply not the same woman. I've changed. I would say evolved, but I can't say for sure that is really what it is. I am through. Through the tunnel where I felt for my way blindly for a long time. I think Joe Campbell would call it crossing a threshhold and that sounds closest to a right description.

I've enter into a place where the haze has lifted, and though I am not ever totally well, I am better than I was before.

Ok this is really boring. Let me think of a story to tell...

Let me see, ...ok. There is an art show in town every year. It used to be held at the college on the greens under the trees. It's a beautiful place and the sidewalks enter from the south and intercardinal directions, leading to Towers Hall. Along the walkways the vendors and artists set up their tents, crafts and displays. When I was a young girl, I used to love to go there alone, riding my bike most often, and upon arriving, I'd walk along with it beside me as I wandered to see the arts and crafts, or listen to music.

I went there on my own one year after I was married and had the children, but it was a time where I needed more time alone than other years. My husband and I hadn't spoken much in a few months because of something we'd confronted, and I was never certain whether I would stay with him or not. I found respite in the traditions of my town that I knew and that had known me, things that were a mainstay, places of my familiar, constant and true. I gained confidence knowing the town was holding me somehow because every molecule that'd fallen from me at every age lived there; yes, like water, every drop of me that lived there then, had always been there, cycling again and again.

I stopped my bike and parked it behind some bushes by the dorm, I walked over to the grand stage that was really just a large box made of plywood. The band was one I'd seen before and they were playing something that sounded like New Orleans jazz. I sat on the lawn and listened, at home and comfortable.

In a little while I got thirsty and went to the food vendors and bought a snow cone. When I was wandering back down the sidewalk, I was sucking the juice out of the drippy bottom of the snowcone cup. The trumpet player from the band I'd just been listening to walked past me. He smiled and I smiled back. I was holding the snowcone out in front of me so it wouldn't spill down my chest and he watched me curiously and we locked eyes, I caught a drip with my tongue and laughed, then he did, too. We stepped around one another and walked backwards each the opposite way and we watched each other, smiling. He suddenly looked a little startled and pointed down toward my feet where an electric cable ran across the walkway and I hopped backwards over it. I stopped there and waved to him. Knowing I was ok, he grinned and then waved back before disappearing behind the shadow of an old oak tree.