initiate

I dreamed that my sister was getting married and I was talking to my dad right before the wedding, trying to convince him that spending tens of thousands on this wedding was stupid because she'd only met her boyfriend a month before. My dad was in high spirits and wouldn't listen; the boyfriend was a good Christian and that was all that mattered. The wedding procession continued down the street, my sister and the groom riding a big bay horse and my dad leading the way, me at his side begging, "Don't do it!"

I remembered last night the time my sister and I almost got lost in the rocky mountains in winter. In retrospect our situation was never precisely dire, but we (probably around age 9 and 7) wandered away from my mom while hiking a familiar path. Our mood was exploratory until attempts to get back down the mountain led us further from our originating point. It was getting dark and my sister and I were wading through snow up to our waists and it felt like we were so, so alone on that mountain, and abstract concepts such as "freezing to death" which don't generally trouble middle-class little american girls started solidifying. I told her not to cry and helped her, we made it down a steep embankment to a path that led us back.

I was surprisingly not loathe to walk to class through the snow this morning. I was still steaming with residual shower heat and swaddled tightly, if unstylishly. There is something calming about this drastic morphing of the world, it is so extreme that prosaic acceptance of it precludes other worries and restlessness. My body says to my self, we are walking through the snow, feel your feet lengthen and arch, becoming lycanthropic to assist you. Everything pushes forward; we bound on our toes and the snow doesn't care.