i sit here on a recliner in the corner of a decent size family room which i generally have to myself. my half of it is a living room with two couches and a fireplace beside me; the other half is a kind of sitting room with furniture removed temporarily. on that half is the windows to the front, on broad street; i can see it from here but mostly look out, to the side, at the corner of broad and mary. the dogs often get up on the couch and bark at whatever is out there on broad or mary, or at the house next door, which is on the corner. this is our little world.

but on the computer, my facebook takes me around the world. from clicking "like" on pictures from switzerland and norway, i get a lot of switzerland and norway in my feed; i also get pictures from all my friends and the various places they go. one friend lives on the beach in southern mexico. another lives in qatar but travels to exotic countries regularly. my facebook is no end of stunning pictures, and there's a lot of history too: history of baseball, history of the usa, history of native americans.

i took a break from reading recently. i had one pretty good book but its main character was a wishy washy woman who had affairs going with both a german officer and a french resistance outlaw; yet she was wishy-washy and nonpolitical, and while the writing was good, being inside her mind was driving me nuts. so i put that one down for a while, and finished a number of others which i didn't even feel like reviewing and which are therefore still on my table. the last day or two i haven't felt like reading at all, and that's unusual for me, so i backed off from reading a little and just did some other stuff. i wrote a few disney stories. i did some other kinds of marketing. i put time into just keeping this house up; i mowed the lawn.

fall is turning here; the peak, i think, was a day or two ago and now it's turning to its browns. a spectacular tree that was obviously a bright red had dropped leaves that were rapidly drying out and turning an off-pink, and i found that quite spectacular but didn't have my camera on me while i was walking. i had a good walk earlier and for that reason may not take the dogs, though it's supposed to rain soon and it would probably be good if they both went out for a bit.

i think sometimes whether i'd rather be somewhere else, where i could get more work done, unimpeded by my frustration with the way things are working out here, and my lack of control over it. i want things to happen just so, and they're not; i want my writing to get a little more off the ground, and it's difficult. i thought maybe if i had an office or a place to go to, that would solve the problem. but it may be that it wouldn't. and i'm not sure that we should get another place to keep up, when i have trouble keeping this one up. maybe a better idea would be to move to the attic, or the basement.

in any case, i'm not feeling trapped. i can open my facebook and be in switzerland, or norway, or even new mexico or mexico, with no trouble at all. and because i've been to some of those places i have no problem looking at a picture and imagining myself being there. i can save all that trouble traveling, finding lodging, spending a fortune, etc., just by calmly flipping through my facebook and enjoying where it takes me. my dogs are in agreement. they are perfectly happy here in this living room, guarding me against any action on mary street, tucked up near me and taking a huge snooze. they don't need the sights either although they wouldn't mind a good walk. rain or no rain, they like to go out and smell what's going on along the city's sidewalks.

and so the sun sets on another peaceful galesburg evening, a warm, late-october one. this town is nice to be in and if it takes people a while to meet us or get to know us i'm ok with that, as there's something to be said for the security of a small town without the knowledge of everyone's personal feuds and such. some people have trouble just getting by, and for them this isn't exactly a peaceful town or even a gentle, forgiving one. for us, if i spend a while longer in this chair, struggling with what i'm trying to do and finish, it will probably not be so bad.