o far small-town living suits me. Yesterday after spending the day working in my new office, I took Virgil exploring down our street. It had just rained and the redwoods smelled incredible. There's a little foot bridge that leads into town, about a ten-minute walk. It spits you out on a tiny little street, and when you turn around you can't even see where you came from, like a secret passage. From there I walked a couple blocks to the farmer's market and bought a Belgian waffle from a food truck, happily getting powdered sugar all over my black clothes.

Rhythm is something I try to attune to, because I've found it to be very important. Murshid writes about it a lot too, drawing analogies between music and life. A steady rhythm is all I need to be productive, to be happy, to do a little at a time even when the task seems completely overwhelming (i.e. moving). I still haven't gotten it down completely here, but the pace is slower and gentler than my former city life. M. seems impatient to complete all the house projects as soon as possible, but I'm starting to enjoy the process as it comes, one piece at a time. Yes, it's a mess, but it won't be that way forever.

And in the meantime, there are neighbors to greet and walks to take and vegetables to buy. The children of Fairfax are running a homemade media campaign to promote slow driving, their magic marker posters hung all over town. Normally I'd be more cynical about this type of thing, but in this case I'd say it's good advice.