I seem to have forgotten yesterday, October 31. I had some internal (not physical but psychic) problems going on and I had to assimilate them. I think I have regained my focus and equilibrium now and we can go on not as we were but as we will be, as we continue to try to be. That's a royal "we", quite deliberate. We all have problems to acknowledge and absorb.

Which brings us to today, the first of November. I miss my former lake home on a day like today: rusty leaves clinging to the trees, reflected in the cold, open water of the lake, grey sky the same colour as the lake, cool air inviting hibernation by the fire. That's what I miss: fire. In my own fireplace. I go to Ste. Anne's Spa every winter, not for the "treatments" with their vicious assaults on one's face and body, but for nodding by the fire ("old and gray and full of sleep"). I book one of the few rooms with a fireplace and I warn them I will burn up all their profits. (As if!)

I do have silence. Even though I am across the Valley Road from Bloor Street, it's quiet on an early Sunday morning and this morning the time has receded an hour. People are either confused or revelling in an extra hour of sleep. So it's quiet. I used to comment, at the lake, when I listened to the silence, that the loudest noise was the sliding of my pen on paper and that I could hear my thoughts sticking to the roof of my mouth. Now, here, the loudest noise is the gentle thumping of my fingers on the laptop keyboard. As for my thoughts, they are being very insistent today, demanding my attention to make up for lost time (no blog!),

So we'll go no more a'roving; "the heart must pause to breathe."

(Please note; I hereby acknowledge my quotations from W.B. Yeats and Lord Byron.)