My dear friend Bev reminded me that gratefulness can often break a self-pitying mood, so here I go. A list of things to be grateful for:

Multiple coffee shops at short distance in Lincoln
Cicadas--the ORIGINAL "Sounds of Summer" (take that, Beach Boys)
People who wish to feed me and carry things for me
My family
Old friends and old jokes
Jessica, and our jokes (an entirely different category)
The comfort of books
The Internet (!)
A new air-conditioner
Not being forced to contract my labor out to various campuses across Michigan
The entire soundtrack of The Sound of Music
A big, comfy, fluffy bed
Not being attacked in my sleep by crazy people who may or may not live in my building
A new orange kitten named Dwight K. Schrute (didn't name him, but do approve)
All the bad choices I could have made in my life, but didn't
All the bad choices I did make, like cheating my way through various math classes, that didn't end in disaster
Buffy's entirely unmerited adoration and faithful friendship
A new oak drop-leaf table and walnut chairs (on sale! Only 101.35! For a limited time only!)
All my teachers ever
All my Wells-Fargo bank tellers ever
Sabbath, even on a Tuesday
Punctuation--It makes so many things possible. To punctuation, and my mother, I dedicate this Oscar . . .

Please feel free to tell me your own reasons to be grateful, or maybe your own reasons why I should be grateful. :D

***Warning: Sudden bout of sentimentality and self-reflectiveness, brought on by sitting in a coffee shop listening to R.E.M.'s "Everybody Hurts."***

Mark Robison once compared Toni Morrison's books to a spira mirabilis (also known as a Bernoullian, or logorithmic, spiral: thank you, Daniel), where with each rotation of the spiral, it gets progressively smaller. As Morrison's books progress, the reader comes back to the same point in the story again and again, but sees it from a different perspective, or gathers new information.

I feel like my life is a spira mirabilis, only most of the time I don't see that it's all that mirabilis. I keep coming back to the same places in my life, either geographically or situationally. Here I am again, living alone with a cat in a big city (okay, big is relative; Lincoln is much bigger than Berrien, and much smaller than Seoul). Here I am again, near old friends whose lives have gone on without me, negotiating those relationships at a closer distance. Here I am again, far from people I love, where my heart currently resides. Here I am again, at Union, only on the other side of the desk.

Gosh, sometimes I get sick of finding myself in the same places. I weary of having to re-learn the same lessons. My heart is ready for something bigger, something new. But cliches are always truer than we realize. "Wherever you go, there you are," and "You can never go home again" are both applicable in this case.