Vermont

You try to speak of creativity and writing but fall back into the torrent of current events, time and again. What can we do? he says, and paints dreams of a future in Vermont, of a life where his love life and ideas may remain legal, both. All we can do is keep writing, I say, and we remember the last time around, how we made magic in the oppression, how we were daring in the dangers. 

The war is darker now, the woods more tangled. But there are sprouts in the ground, sunlight through the thicket, there isn't a path but a place to plant your next footstep, we never know what's around the bend, we only know we have to keep moving. Wrap these tendrils around you, build a mountain of stepping stones, make the path by walking it. Tie ribbons along the way, make the journey clear behind you, offer others a way to the exit if you can find it. 

The war is darker now, the woods more tangled. 

But even woods have to end, somewhere.