A, a (relatively) new infatuation, gave me an original painting this past Saturday. It's dark, featuring a layer of newspaper with a photo from Berlin after the Russians entered it. In the right bottom corner is a little girl wrapped in a 20 Euro note. The rest is a smear of grey, with a flash of red peeking through. The slate found on a curb, broken, appears on top and bottom right. In describing why those colors, A explained that since I wear a lot of black, and it was being painted for me, darker was probably better. I can't argue: it fits perfectly over one of my black bookcases. "Places in Picturebooks" is written on the back, along with A's signature.

We got together on Friday as well, downtown. There, I ran into the closest friend I've got at work. Turns out he knows A to some extent. I met the friends of both, joked around for awhile, and then we went back to A's for a movie.

The week before, A and I had gone for a walk in a park I'd known existed but had never been in. It was gorgeous, and I lost myself in the details. We hovered near the spring, or at least we assumed it was a spring, since we couldn't see the source for sure. We watched things on the bottom of the streambed, through the clear water. We examined the ivy overtaking trees, and the magnificent twists it made on its way up, and the interlocking of its wooded base. A identified the trees that stood far above the rest of the greenery (which of course I forget the name of now), amazed that things could be dredged out of a started-then-abandoned undergrad in Forestry. We paused on every bridge to take in everything in minute detail. It made me miss the macro photography series I'd worked on for a year. During that walk, as well, I noticed that I pretty much forget my nose in the winter, but something along there--a purple flower of varying intensity, I think--smelled amazing. It's kind of strange to suddenly have something to smell outside again. But I like it.