What would you choose to do, if you knew you could not fail?
How would you spend moments, make memories, and move forward? What would you do?
Archive for the ‘Reflections on the everyday’ Category
Old Question, New Day
Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged time, transition on April 10, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Making bread
Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged making bread, winter afternoons on February 28, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Outside cold, clear sun shines on snow. Half-way down the sky, angled light streams in a western window. This is when I make bread.
I sing to wake the yeast, wait until it foams, mix and stir by hand until shaggy. As the sun slides over my left shoulder I turn the dough out to knead.
Kneading bread takes some time, a little strength. After I got the cast off my broken wrist last year, kneading was painful, but helped me regain flexibility.
Somewhere in the kneading, time falls out, sun falls in. I work the prima materia. Iteration into simple, edible elegance.
Better bakers than me speak to the meditative quality of working a clump of ingredients into a smooth living form.
Like people, once worked, bread must rest to rise. Later, when hot and fresh, it will sidle up to thick-noodled chicken soup.
A little light on the subject, when sun comes in the window, I make bread.
A Statement on life
Posted in Reflections on the everyday on February 21, 2015| Leave a Comment »
In a recent editorial in the New York Times, neurologist, writer and professor Oliver Sacks discusses his outlook on life and death. At 81, Dr. Sacks was recently diagnosed with incurable cancer. The short essay is well worth reading.
Heart of the Forest
Posted in Reflections on the everyday, tagged Valentine's Day on February 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Driving up the highway yesterday, the kind with a long stretch. Undeveloped scrub and greenbelt punctuate older strip malls, a bar, a run-on sentence between here and there.
More terrain, cars pass me due to my preference for the speed limit. An aged sign looms, “Antiques & Collectibles.” A-frame building from decades ago, an arcade of sought and unsought items, once loved, moved on. The building itself a reliquary. The energy and contents of such places interest me, for many reasons.
But today I am passing through. On the approach, I notice large cut-out hearts affixed on the tall sign. Closer still, small and large hearts stuck across the storefront. Hearts on the door, and down the length of the building. A gesture of the Valentine season I admire.
Better yet, the hearts carry on, as hearts do, into the scrub and the forest. One or two per tree stretching some ways behind the building. Unnecessary except to make a point that someone within took the job personally.
I appreciate that.
To you, yours, and the Big World, Happy Valentine’s Day.
Persistent
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged berries in snow, blowing snow, wind on January 9, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Red berries persist on trees standing deep in glistening, blowing snow.
Sunny wind-whipped frost could as easily be ocean spray.
Wave after wave, while we persist.
Traction
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged Snow, walking snowy streets on January 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »
Snowy day on Walkabout.
Snow plows push through, leaving streets that are sheets of ice. Easier for cars, harder for pedestrians.
Walking the route twice this time, I find snowfall eased the slick. Erased the bald ice and laid down enough texture to get a foothold.
Good intention sometimes makes things tough. Traction. Given the chance, Nature finds ways to get you through.
Gimme Shelter
Posted in Psycho-Bubbles, Reflections on the everyday, tagged New Years Eve on January 1, 2015| 1 Comment »
Eternal moments or endless hours, it is a serious understatement to say time is relative.
Time is precious though. A human-made construct to waste, or use, as we see fit.
For me, this year finally saw the end of five years of divorce and custody litigation. Muscular legal effort is the only remedy to a high conflict character. A great deal of wasted time and money to reach the obvious, and satisfactory, conclusion.
Souls were born, souls passed on, this year brought grief and joy for times had no longer.
In the meantime, the world writhed in its brutality, and its beauty.
Time. It is all we have – while we have it. Goodbye 2014.
May we find peace, health and happiness in the coming year.
Worth a thousand words?
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, The Garden, Uncategorized, tagged photographs on November 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Home movies
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged autumn colour, memory on November 1, 2014| Leave a Comment »
From a window, afternoon light filters through shifting, still-clinging autumn leaves onto a laundry room wall. Dazzling, real-time projection. Viewed but unrecorded by anything other than my memory. Home movies.
Wish you were here
Posted in Nature, Reflections on the everyday, tagged autumn, autumn colour, on grief, twilight on October 18, 2014| Leave a Comment »
Can you see through my eyes?
Fall leaves gold into green
Sun after clouds
Limitless blur of blue sky
Seasons slipping by me
A raucous jay, dimming light
Backlit gold into red
Rise and fall in the breathing wind
Years getting by me
I have seen too much
Nightfall
How I wish you were here
