First day of school always fills me with giddy energy. I always loved school, loved university, loved learning and I am grateful to relieve the excitement of going back to school through my kids. I wonder why I never ever considered to become a teacher. Maybe because I grew up in Ukraine in the 1990s, during the times when we were freezing in school in winter and our teachers were either starving or hustling to survive (mine were mostly hustling).

During my walk tonight, I saw a spider weaving her web. I could have looked at her forever, how delicately she was pulling her barely visible thread, how even she made every section, how she alternated her long legs. It was magic. I looked at the surface of the lake, where from time to time the had or the back of some fish broke the surface and made circles run through the water.

I continue listening to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower – it is beautiful, but I wasn’t prepared to the amount of violence and gore and try hard not to let it get to me. I keep listening, hoping that at some point there will be some ethereal wisdom that will make it all worth it.