I'm an indisguisable shade of twilight.

It feels like a waste to use that line (from Gillian Welch's "I Dream a Highway," part of Time (The Revelator), to which I've just been introduced by a visitor to Gambier) on a night when I actually don't feel like a shade of twilight, indisguisable or not. Goodness knows that that feeling will return. But the line is too good not to put up while it's still tingling my ear.

Today seemed like as good a day as any not only to finish Oliver Twist, that ongoing reading project, but also to fire up my old photo printer and get some of 2006 onto paper. Because the photo printer didn't seem to be compatible with my work computer, this printing process required many steps, all of them worthwhile: I have been burning backup CDs and transferring them to my home desktop machine for hours. And then, in the process of sorting through what had gone to the desktop, I picked out my favorites for printing. I've discovered things that I know you all know: when I take pictures, my eye follows birds, flowers, and barns. I am currently surrounded by 4"x6" images of barns; the flowers are all in the dining room, spread out on the table. I'm not sure what to do with all of these photographs; it's been a long time since I've seen a photo album I really liked, and to frame a lot of small pictures seems as though it would be unnecessarily cluttered and cluttering. But it's surprisingly pleasant (though also a little poignant; our flowers really were beautiful in April) to see this particular marker of the year's passage in hard copy.

I am about thirty-six hours out from my next Urban Adventure, about which I am so excited as to be borderline breathless. The early afternoon found me curled up with guidebooks, tasting the names of bookstores and cafés and museums and bars, hatching plans, dreaming schemes. I love my little village, as you all know. But I've found that cities have taken on a different role in my life since I've been so far from them (Ithaca and Rochester felt so much closer to New York City, for instance, largely because I didn't have to drive an hour to get to an airport when I lived in each of those places). And so I find myself looking forward to Sight-Seeing but also to buying notebooks and good bagels, to riding subways and watching people in a sidelong and surreptitious way, to eavesdropping and striding, to prowling and perhaps even doing some roof-visiting/observing/sitting. And there is, as always, the perennial hope that somewhere, somehow, will appear the small beautiful thing that will change my life in some small beautiful way. And upon my return, I will have gifted myself new eyes for this strange, lovely place where I step and stride my days.

So now you've been warned: we're on the move in a couple of days. I'm taking you with me.