Walking in the woods, I see a field of pink phlox. A giant swallowtail butterfly pumps her wings beside a stream. As I swat mosquitos, signs along the path encourage me to consider this landscape in geological time, its current form molded by the glacier sheet that retreated some 12,000 years ago.
Time to contemplate time: 12,000 years, a moment to our 4.5-billion-year-old planet, yet an unfathomable ocean compared to my few droplets of decades.
Continue readingDriving to and from Bloomington, where I go to my office at Indiana University three days a week, the interstate unfurls and my mind can travel along with my body.
I see the land grow hilly and wooded as I go south. From my start date in September to December, I watch autumn advance. Days shorten: I set out before dawn and return around sundown. Leaves inflame, then drop. I like the morning drives best when mist pools in the dells of cornfields.
Reading through the archives of this blog, which I started in 2013 to document my life in Haifa, Israel, I am struck by the changing of life phases. My commitments were few when I arrived in Haifa fresh out of college—no spouse, no career. The job I held there, a secretarial position that mostly entailed cataloguing things, left me creative energy to write and do the occasional art project.
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Layli Maria Miron 