I am sitting by a marsh, breaking my long silence in Winter Light.

I asked myself, what could I write that was worth reading? I still do not know, but I write now to record a moment.

Darkness has lain heavily on me, but here there is no darkness. I am sitting in winter light-- a cold, clear half-light that can never satisfy. I wonder why I always come here in winter, when it is so brown and dead. I guess I come here in the summer, too, but my feeling of acute longing for the place isn't the same.

I will confess my worries to the trees:

Health, which always submits to the passage of time.

Mortality, so transient. Death, intangible.

Purpose, which will drive me to madness.

Age, which is only imaginary.

Love, which will break me again and again.

I don't know-- I don't understand what it is you do. But I am here, and as soon as I find the way to you I will be there. Even though I don't understand anything-- not why life must be this way, why things fall as they do.

The wind is cold. The leaves are brown. The ground is wet, but this is no ball gown I'm wearing.

This is the place that has been made today. Tomorrow it won't be the same. Perhaps there will never be a marsh that looks like this again. That is the way the wetlands are.

But now I believe that everything is possible. I can feel the shadows of past places and I am there now, and I am the same. This is not me, but the girl who wandered woods who is fortunate enough to have a Treo in her hands to record her thoughts instantaneously to the world.

The lady is wandering the woods. I can smell the smoke from a travelling caravan. I can feel the restless excitement of the travellers. I want to be with them, not wandering in the woods alone.

What will I sell?

I want to sell my talents, not my patience. Not my hours of sunlight. Not my pride. I want something to want the craft wrought with these hands. I want to belong to myself every moment of every day.

I am telling you these secrets, trees. What should I do now?

There's no magazine I've ever revered so much as Victoria. Like everything else I treasured in my teenaged years it disappeared around the year 2000. However, I was too distracted with school and other issues even to notice. In fact, I had stopped buying it.

In October I found all my old issues at my mother's house and when I started reading them again, the old magic returned to me-- all my dreams of how I would dress and decorate my home "when I grew up." Well, I now know how unfeasible it is to serve my sugar lumps with silver tongs and wear lace-covered blouses everyday, not to mention trying their recipes, which call for things like artichokes and truffles, yet I think my home and person still do a good job in preserving the Romanticism of Victoria.

I have a little under two years' worth of Victoria issues. I am going back and re-reading them, on the correct month. Not only can I remember all I felt and all I did at that time, I become overwhelmed with the same romantic optimism and desire to make myself and my home beautiful.

In the words of Victoria, I did take a "jaunt" last night. I was blessed with two precious hours of daylight. I didn't waste any time getting to the wetlands. That is what I'm missing. That's what makes the winter months so hard for me this year. I took in the low-angle sun with pleasure. I studied the brown and gray world it has become. It's amazing how in spring, a number of ponds will appear in those barren grassy basins, and ducks and frogs will show up like they were always there. The cattails will spring up. There is nothing I love more than sitting by the marsh; that would be a fantastic place to be bitten by a snake, however.

Adieu, I'm going to read Victoria and finish my PG Tips.