the new year has come and gone, and a thick fog has settled on the town as the workers take down the christmas decorations from the lampposts. i went to the post office this morning to send three things: books to my sister, pamphlets to chicago, and a kind of a tool (my present) to my son, who couldn't bring it on the plane. the post office was efficient. i was in and out of there in minutes.

in galesburg the big question is whether you'll make it to the center of town without being interrupted by a train, and then, if you do, whether you'll make it back. my luck was with me. the cars around me all took their time going across the tracks - i think you do that, here. i'm a little leery because i'm only hearing out of one ear (have to go to the audiologist also, sometime today). making sure no train either way, i cross the tracks gingerly.

one is supposed to have new year's resolutions. i have many, most involving my willingness to go forward without adequate preparation or skill, for example in zoom meetings, or in sending out pamphlets. with the pamphlets there's a question of whether cardstock pamphlets can qualify as media mail; most people think so, but one post office worker in ruidoso said no, they had to be bound. i've actually brought this up with the quakers as it's kind of a moral question whether i should just go in there, say media mail, let them take it if they do, but let them refuse me if they don't. today it was no issue. media mail was cheap. they let me. it was no problem.

on the read marketing i actually backed off for a while, trying to get other things organized, like christmas, that needed tending to. i'd gotten a little obsessive about it, reading all kinds of stuff, some of which i had no real passion for, and i sometimes find myself wondering if life isn't just a little too short to be reading stuff you have no business reading. at the moment, for example, i'm reading a book about a woman who, following instruction of her husband, gets drawn into a camp of wild orgies and sexual dominance, in return someone is reading my 3487 haiku from my traveling experience. this, happening in england, is making that book hot on the haiku market in england, which is a pretty easy category to master. in other words, the mere fact that i've put my haiku out there to some degree has risen me to the top of the haiku world, both here and in england, and i enjoy having a category that i'm all over, although, no sooner do you rise to the top of it, you start your inevitable fall back into obscurity.

the town, i've come to realize, is saturated with awareness of the train - whether it's raining, foggy, whatever, people are always figuring when it will come by, and figuring how to go around it when it does. the bridges to some extent have made it all a game of going around, when, in the past, there was no going around. they're big. they're loud. they're marked with art that most of us can't understand. and they're totally ours to own and glorify in.