Hanging out in my basement, of all places, has proven to be a creative space. It’s an old house basement with old house smells of damp walls and spider dust. I’ve made several passes at it with a shop vac. There is still a lot of cob web and egg sack to suck up. The basement is an open box; four walls, a couple posts, three small windows, the stairs, a brick chimney base, plumbing pipes, wires, the furnace, and some shelves I put up. After rearranging the upstairs and eliminating the place I had my day bed, which is where I sleep when the girls are here, I set up my bed in the basement with a table, some light, and a place to read. It was remarkably comfortable and loft like. I started considering making the entire basement a big bedroom, writing, reading, and loud music place. I have a powerful electric guitar amplifier that I can play my little CD player through. It gets as loud as I want. I tested the obnoxiousness of it by cranking it very loud and going outside around the house to see just how bad it is. Not bad. I am very isolated here. As loud as I can stand is not a problem with neighbors. Just another little aspect of the perfectness of this house for my circumstances. Night time is lighting time. Small lamps, candles, ambiance of quazi medieval retro hippie funk. I am what I am. It has been a very long journey for me to pass through the valley of the shadow of a tortured marriage. A journey of self-loosing. Of giving up aspects of innate characteristic for a cherished outcome that was always a fantasy. I am beginning, a year and a half out, to unfurl a bit. I image myself as a tree that was potted up in a big vessel and stuck in some commercial location as decoration. And now I am suddenly and unexpectedly transplanted in to a place of fertile soil. My roots are all tangled in on themselves and bound up tight in a ball. But they are starting to discover that there is room to grow. There is a rush of creative possibility. A growing sense that I am still here, Still discovering, still imagining, and unexpectedly, organically, alive.