Greetings from the Handshake of the Earth! Let me describe for you the landscape of my heart right now. It’s an impossible labyrinth. Which is good, I think. If I were to stop and look at what’s going on in there right now, I might overheat and concuss.

But this oh this. Earlier in the week we all slept at the waterfront. Alastair’s come back and he asked me how I was doing, how I am adapting to this clusterfuck of new habits and processes (not his words) and I said oh man I love it, my peers are my teachers, people are honest, I live a door down from my best friend, and I’m at the precipice of some of the most important work I’ll ever do in my life. How are you?

Yesterday we had like a 3-hour climbing block at the high ropes course. Joe, whose title I’m still not totally sure of but I definitely understand he’s in charge of us interns in some way, dared me to run up the pole of one of the elements without touching the first rung. The element is this tall pole with metal rungs and once you’re at the top, you gotta climb across these dangling steps that spin around if you’re not careful. And I did it, kind of shimmying up the thing but also pulling myself up. So yes. Fuck yes.

In sum: I wrote a long email to my parents about all this. I said “these are my halcyon days” and I’m pretty sure I used that wrong, halcyon mostly meaning something happening in the past looked on as idyllic. But that makes sense, doesn’t it? These are my halcyon days, my salad days, and the poop is beaten gold.

My dad wrote back: “sounds good, love dad.”