The swift passing of January, and the nigh-apocalyptic Super Bowl victory of the New England Patriots, reminds me of an urgency that perhaps I have lost to watching too much television. Not a panicked sort of urgency, but remembering that time is limited and there's a world worth exploring, although it's difficult to keep occupied sometimes.
They found themselves standing on the very edge of the Wild Wood. Rocks and brambles and tree roots behind them, confusedly heaped and tangled; in front, a great space of quiet fields, hemmed by lines of hedges black on the snow, and, far ahead, a glint of the familiar old river, while the wintry sun hung red and low on the horizon. The Otter, as knowing all the paths, took charge of the party and they trailed out on a beeline for a distant stile. Pausing there a moment and looking back, they saw the whole mass of the Wild Wood, dense, menacing, compact, grimly set in vast white surroundings; simultaneously they turned and made swiftly for home, for firelight and the familiar things it played on, for the voice, sounding cheerily outside their window, of the river that they knew and trusted in all its moods, that never made them afraid with any amazement.
As he hurried along, eagerly anticipating the moment when he would be at home again among the things he knew and liked, the Mole saw clearly that he was an animal of tilled field and hedgerow, linked to the plowed furrow, the frequented pasture, the lane of evening lingerings, the cultivated garden plot. For others the asperities, the stubborn endurance, or the clash of actual conflict, that went with Nature in the rough; he must be wise, must keep to the pleasant places in which his lines were laid and which held adventure enough, in their way, to last for a lifetime.
I remembered on Sunday, as I fancied one or two of the women lurking about, that in general women won't actually make an advance on a guy, and if there's someone I like I really need to go ahead and try to do something about it, or it's likely to just pass by. I'm trying to go at this in a matter-of-fact way: that if I feel so moved around someone I like, I go forth and do the charming, respectful equivalent of saying, "Hey, nice boots". There's really no point in being nervous about it.
What am I doing here, again?