I am housesitting in Stone Ridge, New York. My friends Matt and Alyssa left for Lake Ontario with their one-year-old Julie. They left me their home, and their cats, as my own.

I am floating.
Not listless but wistful, I stand before two weeks of possible solitude. Ride my bike. Strech. Breathe.

I read an ancient Chinese prescription for healthy living: begin every cleansing with a ten day diet of brown rice.

Beginning August 9th I will ingest only brown rice until I feel normal.

let's ride bikes.

So what is this? What's going on?
I'll tell you.
Yes, we are older. Of course. No reserve of youthful energy can slow the frantic pacing of modern time. And life, it is always everpresent and always everchanging and we just have to deal with it. Really.
We are little bodies. Look at the stars! The first dream of flying came from one organized batch of cellular tissue, one brain, infinitely smaller than the idea itself. But beyond the tissue, what then? Was the dream an incidental chemical exchange? This is the realm of the mind, our only key to accessing the present moment.

Cities make me sad.
Maybe I just hear too much. Do you believe some of the things you catch slipping off strangers' tongues? Or the people who have so much fear, so much they want hidden, all you pass on the sidewalk are candy-wrapper people; even what is inside (if they ever let you see) might still rot your teeth.
But then again, you know, maybe I'm just the fucked up one. I need to jumpstart my career! Time to get materialistic! Don't shy away from want, it's what keeps old Atlas from shrugging! Why walk down the street and feel sadness? Let's go shopping!

Let sadness come.
Let sadness pass.
Breathe.

I have built a fortress of red earth, myself made of clay, and I stand inside it and it inside me and I am the fortress, but what do I do? Do I hole myself up inside, shaking--no! I play and smile on the ramparts! I scream and laugh for all to see, and the great oaken doors to my fortress are open!

Stretching

Stretching is always good. Spread those muscle fibres apart and let the blood flow in, oxygenate those cells. Breathe deep, fill up your belly like a decanter with red wine then pour from the bottom out.
I stand between two trees every morning and join them. I plant myself in the ground, two feet at first then only one foot is needed and I breathe in the wind and sway with my breath and reach up, look up, catch the sun dancing through the pin oak canopy, and exhale. The trees breathe in.
My upraised arms form a canopy above my head and I respire with the trees.



P.P.: NEW SUMMER HOTNESS = Gold Bond in yer undies!

OK GO

So now it's officially hot out. I don't usually complain about the heat, either. In fact I remember the exact moment that my ambient-temperature-tolerance flipped polarities. It was Tennessee mid-July that did it. One moment I was complaining about the moisture and heat bonding denim to my inner thigh, the next I was embracing it. Oh, it just couldn't get sticky and wet enough down there!
In Tennessee.
You know the point where something wears you down enough that your mind fools itself into thinking it a good thing? Think cigarette advertisements and teen-aged peers.
Well, the sun is almost that relentless. And all it really means is a great excuse to take your clothes off and jump into something wet.

So

People ask me all the time, "Joshua, how is it you have your life so together?" Well, let me tell you, oh missy! I just live it and love it all the time! and--woah, wow--here I am all grown up and on my own in my own little world spinnin' ever so fast.

So.

People say to me all they time, "Oh hey, Josh, how have you been?" and, I say, I'll tell you: I should have been born a scythe, and laid bare all the world as a field of wild grasses.

So!

Which describes how you're feeling all the time:

I'm fine.