It's not like I didn't eat a bunch of food today, but I think it's my generally higher level of training that has me hungry a bit more. I think I might be losing weight again or something--the massage guy at my chiropractor hadn't seen me in many months and asked if I've been training more. One thing I've tried to do with the hunger is eat stuff that I can process more easily: for example, cookies leave me full, sleepy, and logy (lazy and kinda down). However, ice cream, fruit, and frozen fruit bars don't. I started eating apples last fall as a way to manage the sugar cravings and eat fewer cookies. I had to eat a lot more apples (and often enough I will eat two or three frozen fruit bars), and it still never hits the spot quite the way cookies do, but I feel better. Same with the non-sugar foods: my life has changed since I stopped routinely eating huge piles of starch for dinner.

I've been noticing how I get close to people, the different ways in which I've made friends and lovers. One of my closest friends once told me, "You know your friends immediately", as happened with us. There's a lot to that, and it's important, but there's this other path that I've seen and been down. You start out wary of each other, perhaps disinterested, perhaps even adversarial...and then there's a shift, like water has been rising behind a dam and that dam suddenly cracks a bit and you start to really see and appreciate each other calmly and clearly, which you get a bit of a leg up on, not having been very interested in each other to start with. That moment comes and there's a breath and a relaxation, and you begin to enjoy each other's company, and having pushed through the disinterest, maybe out of boredom, maybe on a hunch, pays off. I've heard of more than one marriage starting this way; the lesson being, I guess, that getting to know people is often neither the easiest nor the most obvious choice.

Spending last week as a hermit seems to have been a good idea, and I feel ready to engage with people again. I've had these large projects going on at work and aikido, and I'm ready for things to move on a bit, which they will after my test in early September. I've been working on it for five months, which is a very long time. Work is settling a bit, as I start catching up on all the stuff I've missed by fighting fires the past couple of months. The season is turning; the days are shorter and I can feel it in my bones. We've had a couple of cloudy days already, bringing joy to my geographically displaced heart. It's been very mild, and soon it will turn windy, then darker and cloudier, and eventually the rains will come again, to reward me for making it through another summer. The wind has started to come in, fresh winds off the bay, or escaping over the hills from the ocean; telling me change is coming.