life in the water

Today we worked hard. I cut myself while slicing bread. I felt the knife sink into my thumb and panicked, running from the kitchen. I ran to the bathroom, got toilet paper, and squeezed my thumb until I thought it had stopped bleeding, carefully peeked, and it had. So many times have I cut that thumb doing something stupid--before, it was when I worked at the dining commons in college, and was rushed to the hospital with a white kitchen rag wrapped around that same left thumb, and I can feel the scar when it rains.

I never said my favorite moment in Berkeley was when we saw orange newts and a snake in the water of a shallow pool famed for being a newt habitat. The snake was graceful and slim, with a metalic stripe, and it was emerging from something, emerged completely, then slipped away.

But today we did things like walk, buy rubber cement, pick up a perscription, clean up, make sandwiches for the hike tomorrow. I've been working on one of my traveling journal projects, losing myself in making visual art and new things so stimulating and a perfectly good use of my time that I know I'll miss when I don't have time again beacause of working.