Work is a slow climb out of a deep ditch; methodical, irksome, tiresome, and always checking your footing. You slip a lot. You do a lot of standing at the bottom with your arms crossed in front of you looking at the rim while silently planning your ascent. You get slightly frustrated with yourself because it really isn't that great of a climb, and yet it completely stifles you. Eventually, you will get out of there with one furious burst of energy. It will almost be an explosion.

Today is another day at the bottom of that ditch. It comes on the heels of a rather pleasant weekend. At least, I believe it was pleasant. Any time spent away from home is good - for the most part. And any time spent in the out-of-doors is time well spent. I don't believe the the climate or the weather mar the experience, really. It can be cold and raining and it is still usually a good experience when you are outside. I tend to believe that the air's fragrance takes on new and wondrous aspects: wet leaves, damp moss, soaked twigs and branches, moist earth, the humus, the god-knows-what, and the this-and-that all adds their odor. Do I want to use the word 'odor'? No. I want the word 'scent.' That has a more benign essence. Or do I want 'essence'? Difficult. English is a wonderful language, sometimes...though, it can hold you up and deter you from finding easy meaning. Either way, a rainy day is as wonderful a day as any.

There was a lot I wanted to write today. Now it leaks out of my mind like water in an old cooper's barrel.

Perhaps I wanted to mention Mt. Hope Cemetery in Rochester with its nearly ancient cobbled paths and crypts and the hillocks and the weird knolls? How it is this maze-like park with strange trees and greenery all over the place? A beautiful park studded with tombstones aged well over 150 years? It is strange...because of their age, it is OK to walk over them and pay them little mind. It is high Victoriana. The crypts and mausoleums and decorated stones. The gated family plots and the stairways curling around knolls. The paths are more like deep-rutted holloways.

It is hard for me to believe that this was the first time I had ever been to this place.
More later.