Yesterday morning, on my daily walk to the train station, I saw a flock of geese flying South. I was walking across the Market St. bridge over the Schuylkill river, and the sun had been up for about half an hour. I assume they took off from the river; I’ve frequently seen geese chillin’ (you know, just chillin’, like geese do) along the banks by the Riverwalk and the Art Museum.

They started out as a line, rather than a traditional V. They were low in the sky, so you could tell that they had just taken off, but as they rose higher some of them broke off and migrated over to the other side, to form the other flank of the V. I wonder how they knew to do that, and how they decided which ones and how many of them to move, and how much of it was instinct and how much (if any) “thought”? I always wonder that about animals, how much they remember and how much they can think, and how much self-consciousness they have, if any.

Anyways, that really brought home to me that Autumn is here for good now, even though we’ve had an indian summer of late. But today was cooler again, and the leaves have color and are starting to flame, fire becoming visual rather than felt. The sun comes up later, too, and it’s dark when I have to get out of bed. Which makes it tough, and it will only get tougher with time, although the time change will bring a little bit of relief.

I’m not looking forward to the days when I leave home in the dark and return in the dark, and basically never see daylight at all. Times like that make me want to curl up with a blanket, a friend, a fire, and a good book or ten, and just not move for a couple of weeks.

Hello there!

Welcome to my new blog site. Some of you may have come here through links I’ve sent out, in early attempts at self-promotion; others of you may have stumbled upon the site randomly, and may be wandering around scratching your heads, going, “Where am I? Fishing for what? And who is this Bri person anyway?”

Well, in answer to the first question: I’ve kept a blog (of sorts) for several years on LiveJournal. However, now that I’m out of college and I have more time and resources (i.e. money to pay for web hosting), I’ve decided that it would be good to establish a “real blog”. I want to practice writing things that are interesting to read, even to people who don’t actually know me! (Whereas I used LiveJournal more as a social networking tool, to keep up with friends from high school and whatnot.)

The site will include more than just the blog, eventually; I plan to add galleries to show off some of my art experiments, including my undergrad honors thesis in Electronic Literature.

About the name? The impulse behind “fishing for water” was the idea that trying to blog — or to write anything, really — is like fishing for water. You might catch a few drops that fall off of the line, but it’s nothing compared to all that’s left in the sea. Also, it was the name of my LiveJournal, and I just like it. And finally, I’m a vegetarian, so what the heck else am I going to fish for?

Note: I’ve imported a couple of recent entries from my LiveJournal, just to get things kicked off on this site. So those are the posts you see below. But this is the first post made directly to this new site.