To the good end with the gold lining.

{One of several new collaborative collages, from the series Caught in the Light, made with Louise for our forthcoming zine with Hila. The Glimmer of Armour will be an actual zine very soon, and the companion to It's the Dusty Hour.}

I found a post in drafts, buried almost. It was about longing to move house and it seemed odd, reading it now, to think I ever wanted to move. Things have changed since then, as they are want to do, and I am happy this is so. These last spring days (whilst running too fast for my liking--why always the gallop to the end of year?) find the whole house humming with light buzz. The sun streams in through the coloured glass in the windows. Yellow. Red. Pink. And through a scavenged door (commandeered by a renovating pair across the street), faint purple and green flecks tickle piles of clothes folded and ready to be put away. Looking at the door that was otherwise destined to be discarded, I’m glad we brought it home with us and patched it up with mismatched glass panels, putty, and a lick of paint on the damaged side. It may be beaten up, irregular in size, but with today’s eyes, the door fits the feel of our house well. The neighbours next door may still a bother supreme to tranquility be, but I’m not thinking of them. Instead, I’m thinking of our neighbour two doors down who helped us, along with her dog, Tiny, in our recent search for Percy when he was missing. She kept her front gate ajar the night Percy went missing just in case he came home in search of safe bunker during the night. She tells me she kept an ear out for him and worried we’d never find out what happened to the wanderer now known as Pesky Percy. When her dogs barked in the early morning, she hoped it was at Percy’s return to local patch. Such things cannot but make you happy to live where you do. So, too, the tweets, retweets, emails, comments, messages, and calls from people near and far. One big embrace. One timely reminder, a little faith restoration to round the angles of a rough week. It is hard to fathom that the very week I tweeted, 'Swimming against the current' and 'Today, I am a dark stormy cloud,' ended up being one in which I received a wallop of love. (Things sure are moving fast.) The amount of Percy love and concern shared was such a comfort. It’s a reassuring thing indeed to pop your head up and yelp about a beloved missing pet and to have those very yelps responded to by family, friends, and people I’ve never before met. Lovers of the happy ending, people stopped to say, 'Thank goodness,' as we took down our no longer needed Lost Dog posters.

Yes, thank goodness.