starting 2:56 p.m.

today went really fast.

one of my co-workers brought in some cherries to share with all of us, and it's funny because i have no idea whether it's cherry season here or not. i asked him if he has cherry trees. i saw on the internet that mid may to june is cherry season in california... and it's quite a different clime here on the east coast. i don't even know if cherries can grow around here.

at my dad's farm, we used to have 2 cherry trees. they'd produce a good number of cherries, and it was nice to just pick them off the tree and eat them. unfortunately, both trees had some manner of illness in them and one of them died. my dad cut down the other one before it had a chance to die on its own. it seemed like a very sad thing to lose those trees, even though it completely opened up the view from the kitchen window out across the hayfield toward the woods.

i love that view. my grandma has a similar one from her house next door, and when i visit, i can hardly take my eyes off of the view across the field. when my dad had animals, the horse and sheep would dot the pasture between the house and the trees. it's all so very... slow. just looking out there makes things happen more slowly.

i always wanted to live somewhere where i could see the horizon. we were in colorado when i started to remember things, and there were the mountains. then in ohio, there were always trees between the land and the sky. now in new york, there are buildings and bridges in between. am i the only one who dreams of a place like kansas or dakota where the grass waves like ocean from here to eternity? it's probably not as romantic in real life as it is in my mind.

kathleen norris writes about the beauty of dakota. things sound slow there. of course, because of the limited population and the nature of people, folks tend to be closed off from "outsiders" there. she says it makes it terribly difficult for someone new to become part of the culture of the plains.

reading kathleen norris always made me want to be a monk.