Thirty years ago, I threw out my back and decided I needed to change jobs.

In the spring of 1994, I was working for a local community college as a tutor and adjunct teacher. I was part of a lab system that dealt with students who needed remedial math or language instruction. We were dealing with returning adults, mostly Black, who had been so badly failed by the public school system that they could barely read on a third-grade level or write a complete simple sentence with no errors, but they had been passed through from grade to grade and allowed to graduate high school. Our task, our mission impossible, was to try to bring these people to a point where they were ready to take on introductory college-level work.

It was, of course, impossible, for so many reasons. There were people who wanted new careers, better jobs, but had to show proficiency in basic academic stuff in order to grapple with the requirements of learning nursing or social work. There were immigrants coping with English as a second language whose written work was often good, while their speaking skills lagged behind. They all needed more specialized and more intensive help than we were able to give them, and at the same time, they wanted, reasonably, to be treated like adults, not like sullen children. Every one of my co-workers was overworked, stressed, and aware of the moral dilemma of the college taking the students’ money and promising them an education it could not deliver.

One morning I was getting ready for work when I had the bad luck to sneeze violently while I was bent to pick up my tissue off the floor. A wash of pain went through my back that should have told me to stop everything and lie down. However, like a good wage slave, I continued to get dressed. I think I had one sock on and one foot still bare when it hit me: My lower back contracted into a mass of pain.

I went out this morning into pleasant sunshine, a breeze, heat without much humidity, to pick up some refills from my pharmacy. I walked into a little street festival: two and a half blocks of thrift and vintage clothes, neighborhood restaurants offering specials, ceramics, teas, perfumes, jewelry, stones and crystals… in short, a delightful mix of stuff I like.

After picking up my meds, I went wandering up and down the street, looking at stuff, some things from a distance and others up close. I didn’t bother looking too closely at all the clothing vendors, as they weren’t likely to have plus-sized items; besides, I have to be in a rare and unique headspace to feel like shopping for clothes, and that only occurs a few times a year. But every booth that had “crystals” seemed to call to me, whether or not I could tell what they were selling from a distance; I admired a lot of pottery; and I bought a small ring, gold set with a sphere of fluorite. It’s been well over ten years since I wore a ring on either hand.

I finally bought a couple of incredible-looking pastries and went home, and apologized to my bird Sunny for taking longer than I had anticipated. But it was a wonderful experience, good for my stupid mental health, as we say on Tumblr, and eating the pastries (a croissant with creme filling and a chocolate chip cookie) practically gave me a religious experience.

In Robert Frost's famous poem "The Death of the Hired Man", Warren the farmer says the oft-quoted lines, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there,/They have to take you in." His wife Mary replies, "I should have called it/Something you somehow haven’t to deserve." Old Silas the hired man has come to their farm to die because, inexplicable as it seems, their place is his only home; not his wealthy brother's house, but the farm folks who hired him to do the haying, year after year.

Do you know where your home is? Not just the place you leave from in the morning and come back to after work, the place where you eat and sleep. Do you know where or what is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in? I see people online speak of "unhoused people" rather than "the homeless", but a man sleeping over a sidewalk vent, a knapsack for a pillow and one dirty blanket over him for cover, must surely have no place to go where they have to take him in.

I have rented my current apartment for five years. I've been a good tenant, and I am content here; my neighbors are okay, and the building is near my work, pharmacy, clinic, bank, bus lines. But there is little necessity to my being here. The building owners don't have to let me stay. I don't own anything, my refrigerator, my stove, the washers and dryers in the basement laundry room.

It's been a rough week, folks, so today's newsletter is another old trick I remember from my Livejournal days: the current round-up.

Currently reading or just finished:

• Child of the Sun, an obscure novel from the year of my birth about the short-lived Roman emperor who became known after his assassination as Elagabalus, after Elah-gabal, the Syrian sun god for whom he was the hereditary high priest. I read this gem of mediocrity for the sole reason that I discovered it in my mother's possession when I was a kid and peeked into it, certain that she would not want me to read it. It is definitely not as spicy as I remember it, and rather dull considering its subject. Elagabalus was notoriously decadent in his tastes, fanatical in his religious devotion, and effeminate in his ways, perhaps even what we would now understand as transgender.

• Fire from Heaven, the first of Mary Renault's novels of Alexander the Great. I've never read Renault till now, and I'm sorry I waited so long. She is an exquisite stylist, with a spareness to her writing that reminds me of Le Guin, and a real feel for the landscapes and cultures of the ancient Greek world, especially for the differences in mores between their cultures and ours.

• Passions of the Soul by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, a set of brief lectures on the early Christian notion of the passions in spiritual formation. Williams is certainly a fine writer, and I must look into his poetry someday.

Currently listening to:

Happy hump day, dear readers! Starting today, I'm going to try to give you two issues a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The classical public radio host I listen to on weekday mornings likes to exclaim, "It's hump day, by golly!" This makes getting over the hump a little easier for me. (He also frequently plays "Schwanda the bagpiper" on Wednesdays, not sure why.)

This week started out rough with the advent of Daylight Saving Time, an invention which I loathe and despise. Then it got worse when a cooking fire in my building had everyone grabbing their beloved pets and heading down the stairwell, out into the street at about one-twenty a.m. on Tuesday. I did not know there were so many cats in the building, since I never see them out for a walk. One young woman had two cats in carriers and a third small container with two little lizards, geckos if I guessed right. I did a little trick I had read about online: I took a pillowcase and put it over my arm, took hold of my bird Sunny with my hand thus covered, then once I had him, turned the pillowcase inside out. With him gently restrained, I was able to carry him down nine flights to the front door and then tuck him inside my hoodie for warmth once we were all outside.

I left the house today at ten a.m. just as the service was starting at my church. I was running late as usual, but sadly, I can't blame Daylight Saving Time for that: just me and my ADHD. I had not gotten very far before I was hit by a strong gust of wind that pushed my cane out from under me and my skirt up above my knees (a place my skirts are never supposed to go). As we say on Tumblr, it was fucken wimdy.

It was also a lot colder than I had anticipated, and my short-sleeved dress, hoodie, and Crocs with thin sandals were not sufficient coverage. For a couple minutes, as I tried to walk in the gusting winds, I seriously considered turning back home, until I had an inspiration: go to the other church, where the service starts at ten-thirty.

There are, as it happens, two Episcopal churches within walking distance of my home, plus another that is two or three blocks further downtown than my workplace. I could easily catch a single bus and get to the little Episcopal church where I went as a child. But on this very windy and chilly day, I figured I could at least show up and make my communion if I let the wind (or the Spirit) blow me to the nearer church.

If you ever had a Livejournal account, or if you're still active on Dreamwidth, you'll recognize the title of this week's letter as a long-standing LJ/DW meme. When you want to communicate but aren't seized by the Muse, five things make a post.

• My favorite musical artist and limerence object, Hozier, has graced us with new music: a deluxe version of his second album, Wasteland, Baby! on the fifth anniversary of its release. It includes several songs released on EP and two entirely new songs; here's the album version and here's the new acoustic version. While the deluxe album seems to be available only on vinyl at the moment, I hope it will eventually come out in CD format, too. It's hard to overestimate the importance Hozier and his music have had for me over the last ten years; they have consistently and richly fed my soul life.

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• I'm currently in the endnotes of Joy Harjo's Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years. I think it was a Facebook sharing of one of her poems that first got me onto Harjo, although I had heard of her before that. From reading her poetry I went on to read several anthologies of Native poets that she edited or co-edited, covering indigenous peoples from all over North America and including Hawai'i. I highly recommend her work if you haven't read her before.

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• Yesterday my church had a Quiet Morning for Lent which I attended. Morning Prayer at the beginning, Mass at noon to conclude, and three addresses by a visiting priest, Fr. Simon Hoke. I would link to Hoke's web presence, but he seems not to have one. He's a retired priest, old enough to be my dad, who lives in North Carolina and fills in at little churches there, as well as travelling to preach and give retreats. I had not heard him before; he was a genial man with a genuinely fatherly vibe who made us laugh often during his three talks. He also happened to be on the staff of Trinity Church, Wall Street, on that day in 2000 when the World Trade Center towers just across the street were hit by planes, and was treated for cancer resulting from the air pollution. There's a priest who won't be fazed by anything you can do or say. I made my confession to him for the first time in about fifteen years.

• Further on that topic, I've decided I'm settling back into Christian identity and practice. It feels not so much like a decision, really, as a resignation: I found myself wanting to observe Lent, so I guess that means I really am a Christian. The reason, friends, is simple: I have been welcomed in many places, by many people--Pagans, Buddhists, Christians of other traditions--but the Episcopal Church is my home. I am old (well, middle-aged) and tired, and I want to go home. Inexplicably, that means the weird Anglo-Catholic parish where my late ex-husband used to be the organist. It is a much healthier and more functional community under the current rector than it was when my ex worked there, and I am grateful to be a part of it.

• Sunny continues to moult, to grow new feathers, to imitate an onion (especially when he wants a nap), and to be very snuggly when he's in the mood. He is onionating at the moment as Satie's "Gnossiennes" play on the radio.

Today's title is something I saw on a bumper sticker while I was out. It struck me as a very wise and positive sentiment.

It was chillier today than I had expected, but I actually went out twice today: once to get lunch from Subway, and later on for what Tumblr culture calls "a stupid little walk for my stupid mental health". I had some sunshine on my lunchtime errand, but it was pretty well clouded over later on. Still, getting out of the apartment on the weekends is on an ongoing goal. I have set my intention to go to church tomorrow.

It's easy for me to be enthusiastic about church in November and December. I've loved Advent ever since I was a kid and my mother sent to me a little Episcopal church named after the season. Then there is Christmas, which in the absence of a big gift-giving network is mostly about the music for me. But it's easy to slack off during Epiphany, when getting to church becomes one more mandatory expedition into cold weather, and one where I give money instead of getting it. So my weekends have not been including that Sunday morning excursion.

Hello, friends. Here I am at the start of a three-day weekend, and today's priority, determined by my bird Sunny, is going to be: my bird Sunny. He consented to come out of his cage when I got up and gave me a long affectionate serenade. I petted him a little and discovered that his head is full of pinfeathers, the stiff prickly state of new feathers growing in. Birds greatly appreciate the help of a friend, human or avian, in preening those new growths.

I let Sunny out again later and gave him the requested scritches, and I will probably spend some more scritching time with him later today. I might be able to get a few other things done in between.

Meanwhile it is, indeed, at least partly sunny today. I turned off the lamp closest to the birdcage, thinking that there was enough sunshine to save a bit of energy. The sun promptly went behind the clouds. (Which is a very funny thing to say, really; it isn't the sun that moves at a whim, but the clouds.) I turned the lamp on again, and lo, the sunshine returned.

I have it figured out now.

It's a rainy Sunday here, just around sunset as I write. Sunny, my lutino cockatiel, has been cranky today when he hasn't been sleepy, as he is right now. I can't say I blame him; I had a nap earlier myself.

No, I'm not watching the Superbowl. I have never been a sports fan, even though both my mother and my grandmother were when I was a kid. I remember my mother lying in bed in the evening, simultaneously watching a football game on television, listening to a baseball game on her red Panasonic Twist radio, and reading a mystery novel open in her lap. My grandmother had season tickets to our Baltimore Colts; my mother watched bowling, gymnastics, and figure skating as well as football and baseball.

My father was not the least bit interested in any sport, and I take after him. He just drank his coffee and read science fiction while the television blared away.

It's been one of those weekends where I couldn't get anything done, no matter how hard I tried. I gave up trying a few hours ago and took a rather petulant nap. I woke up, apparently, with a fully-formed resolution to start this newsletter. And here I am.