Never flinch.

In the days when I thought I was going to become a medievalist, a professor of mine used to reassure me, when I had papers due and was terrified that I would fail miserably, by quoting Julian of Norwich: "All will be well, and all manner of things will be well." From start to finish today, I rang changes on those lines. Sometimes, they were as simple as simply saying please, breathing cool air through the nose, listening to rain on top of the umbrella and slipping a little in the saturated ground. Occasionally the refrain turned to why. More often it was simply a reminder of how much I can do, when the day requires. And it's requiring, and I am exhausted. But yesterday, there was this branch, and something about it was simply so there, so irreducibly present in itself. And today, I thought of the branch. And I too am still irreducibly present, still taking my lessons from Barrett Browning. Never flinch. I am still finding my unscrupulously epic way.