Day 3:
It was almost dead when I brought it home.
Leftovers from a plant exchange at a Farmer’s Market.
I have never grown a daisy before. Can you imagine the excitement in my heart? My first daisy.
I think I will leave at that today.
My heart is full.
Day 2:
There was more rain in the forecast. A deluge in fact.
Rain is very pretty here, removed. And neat. Even the puddled paths in the woods, though muddy, are picturesque and walkable without being too messy.
I miss the rains of India though. They are so gritty and immediate. They flow everywhere and get into everything. It rains incessantly for a month in the town I grew up in. The clothes on the line take days to dry. Everything is damp and moist. Everything smells of water and soil. But every leaf and bush is green and vibrant, washed clean of the grime of heat and dust. Over the constant hiss of the rain, everything comes alive quietly and urgently. People huddle under umbrellas and walk swiftly, ducking under canopies when it gets to be too much, cars swish by honking and splashing water on the pedestrians and bikers…but then suddenly, it will stop for a moment and outside the window all you will hear is the soft and slightly eerie sound of droplets falling from leaf to leaf to leaf – tap tap tap – and a weak sun will make a brief appearance only to disappear again just as quickly forsaking the citizens to their damp and rainy lives. Rains in India are invasive and messy but also so very beautiful if you know where to look.
01:
The grass is still wet under my feet from yesterday’s soaking. It rained all day after a long time. How happy the trees must be. How lush the leaves.
Sunlight is but a sheen across the still muddy clouds. I see glimpses of blue, but they are intermittent. There must be more rain in the forecast.
There is a bird somewhere in the woods that has been trying to say something incessantly. I wish I knew what it was trying to say. I haven’t noticed any hawks skimming the skies.
Close to finishing a book. Trying to gauge what I should read next. Something magical?
Speaking of magic, Cursed on Netflix! It is a bit cheesy, but cool story telling. And the last bit in the last episode with Merlin – jaw dropping-ly cool!! Wow!
I am trying out water colours. It’s been fun!
There is that other side of me that craves otherness.
To be an absolute stranger in Paris, in the streets of Italy, Venice, what have you.
To be lost in translation and laugh at all the gaffs but secretly make a connection that goes beyond words.
To step into that cool reverent shadow inside a holy place that is older than civilization as we know it and feel the pull of something that is beyond time and measure. To feel it ride your body and leave you feeling breathless and conquered. Feeling as though the truth, the whole entire truth of your being is writ large right across the aisle all the way up to the altar where you throw yourself in supplication: Show me the way, please! What will you have me do?
There is a poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Flying’:
Sometimes,
on a plane,
you see a stranger.
He is so beautiful!
His nose
Going down in the
old Greek way,
or his smile
a wild Mexican fiesta.
You want to say:
do you know how beautiful you are?
You leap up
into the aisle,
you can’t let him go
until he has touched you
shyly, until you have rubbed him,
oh, lightly,
like a coin
you find on the earth somewhere
shining and unexpected and,
without thinking,
reach for. You stand there
shaken
by the strangeness,
the splash of his touch.
When he’s gone
you stare like an animal into
the blinding clouds
with the snapped chain of your life,
the life you know:
the deeply affectionate earth,
the familiar landscapes
slowly turning
thousands of feet below.
The poem is about a stranger on a plane, but it could very well be about a place.
Like Italy, Venice, Paris…..what have you…
The guardian of the lake.
One foot they call him.
Standing still for hours on end, on an outcrop, or at the edge of the lake, looking deep into the water, at the shadows that mingle there in a chorus of silvery, flashing bodies.
Lord knows what he is thinking of, if anything. He is that still.
But if you are lucky, and happen to be walking by the lake at dawn, you can see him glide like a vision from a haiku over the silver lake.
This was to be a home to a Robin family. But when the big storm blew through, it broke the tree in half, shattering with it a dream.
I say a dream because I watched the Robin flutter from limb to limb for two whole days. From dawn till dusk he carried on, outside this tiny circle filled with light and possibilities, puffing out his chest, thrilling his feathers and trilling more notes than are possible in this Universe until, at dusk on the second day, in flew his mate from a nearby tree, chittering-chattering nineteen to the dozen at him and began cleaning it up. How glad his little heart must have been, how happy!
But it wasn’t to be. At least not on this tree.
But I am sure they have built a nest close by because I can still hear a beak chittering-chattering nineteen to the dozen and a little heart beating with fierce love.
As for this limb, it is soon to be a bird feeder and who knows, but it might have tiny little russet chested chickadees feeding and chattering at it some day.
….somebody up there cares….
I had just been writing about not seeing the sun for days and days on end when the clouds allowed it to bleed through, finally, if only for a moment. It wasn’t even long enough to get a decent shot, but that is alright. It peeked through. I felt it’s rays. I took a deep, sun filled breath. And it was all alright. And that is all for today. A simple moment filled with light and pure joy.
Anything for some sunlight. Rain and snow and sleet for what feels like weeks now. January has been dark and dank. February seems to be following close behind.
Anything for some sunlight.
I am going old school. Reading The Count of Monte Cristo again. Re-living that adventure. I don’t know when and why I walked away from all these stories that flowed so abundantly through my childhood. Robinson Crusoe, Kidnapped, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Around the World in Eighty Days, Time Machine, Alice in Wonderland…..
Feels good to be a swashbuckler again, albeit vicariously. I can almost forget that there has been no sun for a long while. Well, almost.
What are you reading currently?
Across these fallow lands, these seeds of summer. They have been carried, they have been flung, they have been sown. And I for one cannot wait to see the tender shoots. Spring, I await thee with hungry eyes.
