Taken By Trees - "Highest High". "This - this I call 'loafing,'" she said. She stood in the middle of the room with one leg forward and one leg back, like she was mid-lunge. But she wasn't lunging - she was just standing, legs apart, in black leggings and a blue t-shirt, happy as I'd ever seen her. Her happiness felt almost athletic. The breeze through the windows was putting air in the houseplants' leaves. A record had just finished playing. From my chair, I asked her if "loafing" was really the best word for the way she was feeling. "Yes," she said. "'Loafing' is very deliberate. This is loafing. Today is loafing. We've just been happily loafing. Haven't we?" We had been doing something very happily, I admitted, but I wasn't sure it was "loafing." Loafing evoked loaves: logs and rounds and bricks of bread. A doughy kind of lazing around - heavier and stickier than anything I was feeling that afternoon. "We're 'chilling,'" I proposed. "'Hanging loose.'" "Nope," she declared. "We're loafing." She dragged one foot forward and one foot backward, reversing the lunge, lifting curls of static electricity from the carpet; her eyes didn't leave mine as she moved - like she was receiving an important transmission, like she couldn't afford to look away for even one second.

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(photo by Laura Williams)