Day 30

Frigid temperatures today, 17F (-8.3).  Ran 2.8km (1.73 miles).  It always amazes me how a body can warm itself so much with exercise.  I ended with just a long-sleeved t-shirt and tracksuit pants, having discarded my big coat, scarf, woolly hat, insulated ski-gloves and my hooded sweater too! 

Winter in New England is black & white, bare trees, snow, colourless grass and blackened humus and my eyes crave colour.  There are tulip buds in the stores and I have given them to quite a few friends, but I think tomorrow I will buy some for our house too.  They are so beautiful, they open their delicate velvet petals as soon they feel themselves in water.  I know that trees need the beauty sleep of winter in order to grow, but I wish it was a little shorter.

I found this cranefly drinking in my bathroom sink the other night, exquisite ethereal creature.

Nick told me about a speaker they had at their school yesterday who left everyone in tears.  The students all exited the auditorium in silence, just a few sniffs here and there.  The man was the father of a 7th grade boy who killed himself as a result of bullying 6 years ago in Vermont.  He has been giving this talk at schools ever since, in the hope that his son's death will not have been completely in vain.  He pointed out that bullying has taken on a new face with all our new technology, and cyber-bullying seems much much worse than regular bullying, because you can never get away from it, it's on Facebook, and AIM, and text-messaging, and this poor boy fell victim to the cruelty of other children.

I wonder if cruelty is the default behaviour in humans, that we learn kindness.  I remember being relentlessly bullied by girls when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade, and just to think of it wounds me with such immediacy still.

This is me as a girl, contemplating in an island of confusion.