Maybe to blog more often is to give myself permission to matter on some.
(Ha — Autocorrect wisdom? I meant to say “natter on some”).
Just wore Finn out so I can happily leave him while I go to writing class. The striping shadows of trees pleased me to a ridiculous degree. Look at the colors! Purple, plumbago blue, lavender, and grey. A regular festival for the eyes. And the soul.
It is coming down really fast and may turn to freezing rain. Plowing is slower than ideal. Still, it’s just a snowstorm and I don’t quite understand the emergency reverse 911 calls, constant reports, and all the rest.
We walked early and had a hard fetch session at the upper field and then played out back just now too, before I shoveled (arg – is the snow heavy!) I’m down for the count, as my father used to say. Finn would prefer otherwise.
It’s a good day to make revisions to text (today, a chapter covering the hours before the Stono Rebellion, 1739, from the perspective of a bondman) and maybe also to see if I can stomach last night’s recorded CNN special about Putin. For now, eating leftovers and about to watch “Nashville” (she said sheepishly).
Two or three inches fell. It felt like a surprise but it shouldn’t have.
It was a week of honoring my basic preferences and screwing up the courage to say ‘no’ in order to do so. One small ‘no’ helped me say a much bigger ‘no’ a few days later.
Both refusals created a feeling of spaciousness and relief. Confirming feelings.
Itchy ambivalence can usually be resolved in favor of one’s own need, experience, and felt sense of the world. To not do so is to stay itchy.
Pretty basic, especially for a sixty year old, but it’s amazing (and common?) how quickly clarity can be clouded by others’ needs or by anxiety about self assertion.
I don’t need to say more now. Just this: it was a week to remember that I bought my first book from Shambala press in 1973. I still have that volume (by Chogyam Trungpa) 43 years later, which is really saying something — do you know how many books didn’t make the cut?
What happens to you when you don’t honor your basic preferences and how do you course correct?
Bitterly cold here again today and I hear that more snow is on the way.
Have a great weekend!
It’s a fluttering, gusty wind out there right now. Not remotely hurricane-like, but noticeable and vigorous. As the light faded, we ate lobster outside to celebrate C’s degree afterall. A really big blast of wind nearly launched the umbrella off the deck. Rain spattered a few times, but we are waiting, waiting, waiting for a drenching downpour. They said Saturday. They said Sunday. Here it is Labor Day and still no rain.
I’m not complaining. The Vineyard is largely without power. Parts of Nantucket and the South Shore, too. No, I’m just waiting for the rain.
The weekend is nearly over and I somehow feel that it will be hard to get oriented to the new week, the new month, the new season. I hope not. With both K and C traveling this month and my schedule with my sister in flux, the real ballast will be writing.
Writing, writing, and more writing! And trying to stick to my weight loss or maintenance program. The honeymoon is definitely over.
Been living as if in a cocoon. The AC on. The surreal RNC. The pumped up DNC. Some watched live, some delayed. Constant watering of the garden and things wilting anyhow. Dog walks in heat blasted air, crossing from one side of the street to the other trying to afford poor Finn’s paws the most shadowed route. Writing daily.
The heat’s broken and maybe this thick silence too.
A couple lunches out and one trip to the Museum of Fine Arts. I won’t tell you how many things fucked up while K. was in Korea (think: wiring and plumbing) or all the things I am worrying about. Let me just say, I am glad to have this body and this life.
