Flat

I'm writing this on my phone, because we're at the lake and my computer refuses to connect. 

We drove up late tonight -- it was a long day of work and company picnics and commutes and packing, and I'm tired. But during the last 30 minutes of the drive, it occurred to me that my lips felt a little weird. I think they're a little swollen.  So now I'm paranoid that the antibiotics I'm taking are going to make my throat swell up and I'll suffocate in my sleep. Natural thought progression. 

But let's put that aside for now. 

Indiana is very flat. That used to bother me, back when I feared I'd left a chunk of myself in the mountains of Georgia. I still feel somehow relieved when we drive south and the land starts to roll, but the flat has grown on me. There's beauty, too, in the long, horizontal lines where sky meets land.

 The road, the grass, the dirt, the corn, the sky, the clouds. On summer visits to Indiana, my cousin and I used to make friendship bracelets of knotted rows, and every year I'd pick the same colors: browns, greens, yellows, blues, white. I was trying to recreate what I see when I drive through Indiana, the sun setting over fields and the blue stretching up into the universe. That view always meant I was going home, whether I was on my way to the lake or coming back. 

So yeah, I miss looking up and seeing pine trees. But it's not so bad to look up and feel covered by sky.