Love and more love.

When you don't hear from me, it doesn't mean I don't love you. I find myself wishing I could say that to so many people I know, while I keep trying, over here, to figure out how to start getting life in order.

I did my best tonight, as I walked from the grocery store (where I tried broadening my range to include not just food for dinner but also some nice things to eat tomorrow morning), to send out as much hope and affection as I could to the couples in restaurant windows, the women carrying bouquets of flowers, the men and women heading home alone. If people could actually see my fervent hoping as I go walking around here, I would be nothing but a thin tall pillar of flame.

Late in the day, I find myself gravitating to Björk as this holiday's tutelary genius. I'm revisiting a good old favorite; it's a song I didn't know until my beloved friend Nick put it on a mix CD he gave me for Christmas one year when I really, really needed it. And that one, in turn, sends me here (where there's nothing much to see, simply because the official video horrifies me). Which sends me here. I oscillate between those last songs: I haven't met you yet. As much as I definitely enjoy solitude / I wouldn't mind, perhaps, spending little time with you / sometimes, sometimes...  I know by now / that you'll arrive. Where's the love you promised me? / Where is it?

And then I remember: I'll bring back the goods / but I don't know when.

And then YouTube gives me a Valentine's present, in the forms of PJ Harvey and Björk just rocking the fuck out. Thanks, YouTube. And thanks, women. Someday I might even get to turn to another part of the songbook.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone.

Further down the coast.

Bright and early this morning, most of us set off for Lyme Regis, which you may know from Persuasion and/or The French Lieutenant's Woman and/or that time you drove a carload of twenty-year-old students there in 1996. Some of us arrived a little later than others. But all of us arrived to this weather, of all possible weathers.

After finally remembering to take a group picture, even if it only had 10 of my 14 in it, I happened upon a way that I could get most of us and me in the picture--so there we are and those of you keeping score at home know which one I am:

I had high hopes of finding fossils of my own on the beach, but, as has often been the case this year, travelling with this many people made it difficult for me to get myself zeroed in the way I know I would need to be in order to have a chance at finding any ammonites. But I will try again next weekend. In the meantime, I caught some views, including my favorite seabird, the cormorant:

some excellent sunset-stained seaweed:

the Cobb at late light:

and of course, the sea its inimitable self:

Seaward jaunt.

It seemed to me that if the rosehips on my way into town looked this good at midday, Exmouth would look even better at sunset, so after lunch I bought an extra ticket. Coming back from Exeter, I showed my pass and my ticket: I'm continuing, going farther south.

I got there just in time.

I fully intend to say more about the trip. For now, it simply seemed churlish to keep the pictures to myself.