I forgot that I lived in Florida for a minute

I didn't miss central air conditioning as much as I miss central heat. We have three space heaters to nine hundred square feet, and this ratio is not working as well as I had hoped it would for my blue toes and poor circulation. I feel every particle of air getting in, through the cracks in the windows, the small gaps in the floor, the pinprick holes in the wall. I feel the 1954-ness of here.

I went into Chamblin's Bookmine the other day, my first time, despite living in Jacksonville for three years. Besides getting a bunch of books for R. and my brother for the yuletide holiday time, I found a book of Rainer Maria Rilke's poetry, the original German and translated English versions. I am thinking of, as perhaps a New Years resolution, attempting to speak it again, inspired in part by the beauty of Rilke's words that don't transfer well into English but also by the surprising amount of German customers that I speak with at the grocery store I work at in Mandarin. Here is my favorite poem of Rilke's thus far:

Du meine heilige Einsamkeit,
du bist so reich und rein und weit
wie ein erwachender Garten.
Meine heilige Einsamkeit du -
halte die goldenen Türen zu,
vor denen die wünsche warten.