Transmogrify

I woke shivering. The tip of my nose, where it peeked out of my summer duvet was icy. I could hear the rain from my wide open windows, accompanied by the absurd sound of the street cleaner going past our house.

My toes already planning their protest of the shoes I was going to have to wear. Closed toes, confining.

I'd slept poorly, my mind whirring.

"Nuzzle" was the word that burst to the forefront as soon as my eyes opened. "Remember Nuzzle", my brain was shouting. "Look for Nuzzle".

This is how it is for me when I am writing and the information competes with the other things in the jet stream of my awareness. The journal article pushes all else out of the way, shouting "Nuzzle" like a crazed prophet, as soon as my eyes open.

Knowing my tendency to lose these thoughts, I think "must make a list" as I roll back over to find a warm space in which to try to reenter sleep.

I must go to McGill today, but I don't mind. In a compromise with my toes, I have selected one of the beloved pairs of rainboots to wear.

I have dutifully written a list and emailed it to myself, not trusting it to survive the mess of my bag. Remember to copy this, email this to them, find this book, walk to this building and pick up this form....all the things that must be done but which I know that I will forget if I find something more intriguing or interesting.

It isn't that I have become more inattentive, simply that I find myself able to be captivated by other things.  I will be walking from the main library to the education library and suddenly stop.  Staring at the rock wall. Looking at the patterns of the rain on the stone.  Wondering where the large stones have gone, and pondering the strange beauty of a forgotten spiders web. 

Or the beginnings of a slender smile when I consider what would happen if we started tucking notes of prayer & reverence or supplication into this wall.

Undergraduates part as I stand still, moving around me like water, diverging and then reconnecting on the other side of me, chanting their own rogations. 

I move on, up the hill. I place my books into the car and look up.

I wave off the hopeful driver who thinks I am about to abandon a coveted parking space.  No. Not leaving yet. Another Library to visit, more stacks of books to adore. 

I stand in the gutter, looking up the hill to where the library waits for me.  I let the water wash over my boots, an unexpected sluice in it's path. 

Then I walk on.