I can't sleep…
Home at last, I haul in the grocery bags, swallow a couple of extra-strength Tylenol, put the entire Van Morrison play list on the stereo, and spend the afternoon roasting vegetables and making pasta sauce, salad, and a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. Outside, the rain comes down in sheets. I am singing “Days Like This,” belting out the song. The kitchen fills with good smells.
~ Katrina Kenison, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment
Notes: Related posts: Katrina Kenison
It’s a beautiful thing
to have lungs that allow you to breathe air
and legs that allow you to climb mountains,
and it’s a shame that sometimes
we don’t realize that that’s enough.
– honalie
Notes:
When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign, is Solitude.
How potent a mere image of her sway;
Most potent when impressed upon the mind
With an appropriate human centre – hermit,
Deep in the bosom of the wilderness; […]
Kneeling at prayers; or watchman on top
Of lighthouse, beaten by Atlantic waves; […]
When, for the night deserted, it assumes
A character of quiet more profound
Than pathless wastes.
— William Wordsworth, “The Prelude”
Credits: Photo: Nini Poppins. Quote: Google Books via whyallcaps.us
Wednesday. 5:07 am to Grand Central.
I lift my briefcase to store it on the overhead rack and I jam my Oxford into the steel girder under the seat. I look down to assess the damage. A thin sheaf of leather dangles from the toe cap. Expensive miss. Damn it!
I take my seat. I wiggle the toes on my right foot triggering a flashback. A tumble back, way back.
I was 14.
The ice rink. It was a Campbell Soup can without the label, rough cut vertically, flipped on its side and dropped on frozen dirt. No insulation.
Fans, mostly parents, sat huddled on one of three wooden benches that circled the rink, standing to stomp their feet and slap their mitts to keep the blood moving. It was cold, always cold.
An oxidized chain link fence protected the fans from the pucks. Players did not have face masks. It was skin to fence. No, better stated, face to fence. Cage matches before cages were a WWF sport. Continue reading “Riding Metro North. With a Legend.”
