A New Year with New Adventures (2023)

Our Start of Year Travels

How New Years come around so quickly, these new years. 2022 was another weirdo, and we look forward to new and very different adventures, and too, very same adventures in 2023.

“If you like to write or draw or dance or sing, do it because it’s so great: as long as we’re playing around like that, we don’t feel lonely, and our hearts warm up.”
–from The Woman Who Killed the Fish by Clarice Lispector 

Søren drawing in his Anselm Sketchbook.	Walter drawing in his Standard-Sized Harper Journal.

This morning I awoke in Florida, but I didn’t just arrive here and wake up and wonder, “where am I?” and discover, “oh, Florida!” No, we’ve been driving for days because cars are on roads with limits and not in the sky making endless paths, swarming around like insects or birds. On a road that should take us from Point A to Point B in 4 hours, took 8 or 12. But we’ve been listening to Tom Hanks read The Dutch House by Ann Patchett – time is suspended and none of us are disgruntled, but we stop the car and stretch and walk and that helps time confuse us all the more.

This morning I crawled out of our camper and into the damp and still dark of Florida. In the morning darkness, which is lighter than nighttime darkness, I spied Spanish Moss above, dripping excess moisture onto me, and welcoming me to this new, strange place. What better way to go into the new year than this? My family sleeping a few feet away, new plants’ hellos. “Hello plants!” I am grateful for this exploration, and for this world of weirdness that is the same, but different, always, and always.