I had the best dream last night.  I was at my childhood home and both my parents were alive.

(The lava was of the “a’a” variety, slow moving and crusty, accompanied by some minor pyroclastic flows. Evacuation went smoothly. We were surprised, because it had remained dormant for decades.)

New Year, new sketchbook.  I’m not sure why it’s important.  I used to be very particular about the size and shape, and by carrying it around everywhere they’d develop individual personalities. Now I tear the pages out, scan them and they gradually end up empty. A couple of sad, floppy dust covers with nothing in between.

They closed off the downward lanes of one of the mountain accesses before Christmas. Driving over the overpass, looking at that steep expanse of packed ice and snow I can’t help but imagine taking a sled to it.  I’m sure the fines would be heavy but that’s 2 km of perfect toboggan paradise right there.

Earlier I found myself trying to remember the specific taste of a lemonade they used to give us at summer camp. It came in little milk cartons and had a medicinal quality to it, lemon, plastic, the waxy cardboard, served lukewarm in the skunky undergrowth of stinging nettles and wild onion.  Childhood tastes weird.

I am sitting in a pub called the Pheasant Plucker waiting for a friend and watching bubbles rise in my glass. The waitress likes one of the tattoos on my forearm because it reminds her of one her dad has, she says.

My friend and I play the kind of chess that only perfectly-matched players can. A risky game that relies on surprise as much as strategy because much depends on luck. The odds of winning each game are decided by fractions of a percent.

The Mulberry Cafe somehow manages to serve a latte hot enough to need patience before the initial sip.  My friend and I have not seen each other in two years and it may be two more before we see each other again. Drinking coffee underscores the momentary absence of loneliness, but neither he nor I decide to mention it.

It’s a classic rock afternoon to mediate the effects of seasonal holiday favorites.  Tales of Brave Ulysses, by Cream (penned by visual artist Martin Sharp during a Greek vacation) contains a line about wanting to take a mermaid to “the hard land of the winter”, which I always thought was a wonderfully evocative lyric.   Then I realized that Martin Sharp was an Australian who lived in London, and probably had no real idea about how hard winter’s land can be.   Mermaids here have it tough.