.

Most of the time I think of us, humanity, as being properly sized, neither too big or too small, and then every once in a while, (as I hope most people do,) I think of us in comparison to the world we live in. Aren't we tiny? It isn't such a problem that we are around 1/5280th or whatever of the height of the sky (I can't remember the exact numbers anymore), or that we forget how small we are, but how hopelessly lateral we are. At least, that's what bothers me. We make great expansion all over the surface of the earth, and goodly expansion, too, and move all around at great speeds. But our whole existence is parallel to the ground, and we have no concept, or very little, of the perpendicular. We go up in airplanes, but only to move parallel at a greater distance from the surface. Even our loftiest, most impressive sky scraping feats of architecture are about as close to scraping as dipping your finger into a full jar of peanut butter for a quick taste is scraping. You step back from a city renowned for it's tall buildings and view the horizon and receive a reinforced impression of how flat our lives are. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, but I do think we should be more aware of the vertical and take breaks from our headlong horizontal dashings to look up at the clouds. (The ones here aren't much today, but I can see beauty in monotony quite easily, if I take the time.)

Thad is away for several days, so I have been enjoying complete solitary confinement, although it hasn't felt like it because of Fabian the cat and because the birds are back on speaking terms with me. It is the height of luxury, I think, to wake up and hear birds singing every morning. I want to make these days alone count, because it seems so much easier to accomplish things when I am by myself, but so far I have succumbed to all the little chores and things, and have gotten no where near my great tasks. Great they are indeed, being to bake bread in bakery proportions to take to our distant neighbors, to reread Emma, to explore the muddy woods, and to finish piecing a quilt top I have had sitting in a cupboard for too long.

Is it tacky to tell you that writing to you was one of my little chores? I'm crossing it off now, and you may take what moral you like from it. I shall be reading Emma.