Most mornings I get away, slip out
the door before light, set forth on the dim gray
road, letting my feet find a cadence
that softly carries me on. Nobody
is up—all alone my journey begins.
Some days it’s escape: the city is burning
behind me, cars have stalled in their tracks,
and everybody is fleeing like me but some other
direction.
My stride is for life, a far place.
Other days it is hunting: maybe some game will
cross my path
and my stride will follow for hours,
matching
all turns. My breathing has caught the right beat
for endurance; familiar trancelike scenes glide
by.
And sometimes it’s a dream of motion,
streetlights coming near,
passing, shadows that lean before me,
lengthened
then fading, and a sound from a tree: a soul, or
an owl.
These journeys are quiet, They mark my days with
adventure
too precious for anyone else to share, little gems
of darkness, the world going by, and my breath
and the road.
I’m checking this documentary out on PBS this evening. Since snowy owls made their appearance in Kansas last year, I’ve been on the lookout for one. I swore I saw one fly over me when I was out running by the river the other day, but I’m pretty sure it’s too early in the year for that… wishful thinking perhaps. In other owl news, there’s a barred owl that hangs out at night in my front yard. In my own night owl ways, I’ve been awake in the wee hours of the morning for the last few nights and have heard it shrieking and hooting.
“We are driven by self-interest, it’s necessary to survive. But we need wise self-interest that is generous and co-operative, taking others’ interests into account. Co-operation comes from friendship, friendship comes from trust, and trust comes from kind-heartedness. Once you have a genuine sense of concern for others, there’s no room for cheating, bullying or exploitation.” -Dalai Lama (quote of the day from Facebook, no less)
I took a walk downtown to find some dinner and came upon a patch of toadstools on my way. I always imagine myself small enough to sit under one. Kind of like in this paper cutting that I’ve posted here before:
You will never be alone, you hear so deep
a sound when autumn comes. Yellow
pulls across the hills and thrums,
or the silence after lightning before it says
its names – and then the clouds’ wide-mouthed
apologies. You were aimed from birth:
you will never be alone. Rain
will come, a gutter filled, an Amazon,
long aisles – you never heard so deep a sound,
moss on rock, and years. You turn your head –
that’s what the silence meant: you’re not alone.
The whole wide world pours down.
The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly. ~Buddha
Thanks to you folks who placed orders in my Etsy shop over the last couple days. I found out a couple of my prints were featured on the front page of Etsy this weekend, so that was a nice bit of exposure for the art buying world. The pleasant weather this afternoon called me outdoors, so I walked the packages to the post office and stopped for a bit to sit under a tree on my way home.. and made little pictures.
“I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I’m beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn’t pleasant, it’s not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.”
“The things we see,” Pistorius said softly, “are the same things that are within us. There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself. You can be happy that way. But once you know the other interpretation you no longer have the choice of following the crowd. Sinclair, the majority’s path is an easy one, ours is difficult.”
