back to it…finally.

after a brief hiatus, i've resurrected the blog.

haha. "brief hiatus." understatement of the century, don't you think?

ok, so it's been nearly a year since my last post. why the prolonged absence?

a lot has happened in the last year; none of it very good. in a nutshell (with just a pinch of drama thrown in for effect), i had my heart wrenched from my chest; my emotions twisted and contorted into unrecognizable permutations of their former selves. i wandered through a vast desert of emptiness, void of feeling and hope; adrift in a cold sea of bitterness, confusion, and indifference. (you were warned…)

coaxing every last drop of motivation in me just to get myself out of bed in the morning was a battle of wills tantamount to the physical effort that must have been required to haul the giant boulders of stonehenge from their origin to their final resting place at that famous monument. needless to say, with an internal struggle like that, blogging fell to the bottom of the "things to do today" list.

and then came winter. i abhor winter. everything's dead. i look out my windows and all i see is death. the trees are bare and lifeless, the grass is cold and brown. and i'm freezing all the time. i'm cold in my house, i'm cold at work. so in addition to the emotional deadness weighing me down, i have the deadness of winter pressing its enormous, lifeless mass down on me.

but sometimes, in the midst of the chaos and turmoil, all you need is to see an old friend (or at least someone that resembles and old friend) to stir the passion back up from the mire in which it stagnated for so long. the friend i'm referring to, of course, is shakespeare, the barred owl.

however, this is most likely not shakespeare. so if it's not shakespeare, then it's a heretofore unnamed owl…and we just can't have that. so…



meet lilly.
yes, i realize that this could very well be a male…hear me out. since this one is smaller than shakespeare, it is "lilliputian" in comparison, hence the name "lilly."
(ok, so i just thought of that now. hey, whatever works.)

actually, the name "lilly" just popped into my head as i was talking to her/him. (yes, i talk to the birds i stalk.) the conversation went something like this:
me: "you're not shakespeare. so who are you?"
owl: …
me: "we need to call you something. you need a name. i like my friends to have names."
owl: … blink, blink …
me: "i'll call you 'lilly'. what do you think of that?"
owl: *yawn*

and so it came to be, the owl-that-looked-like-shakespeare-but-wasn't finally had its very own name.

beautiful. it never fails to take my breath away.