Walking. With Franzen.

~ Live & Learn

6:45 a.m. – ish this morning. I’m walking Cove Island Beach. I reach the breakwall, and pause. It’s hard not to look out into this and not feel Small. The gentle breeze off the ocean. The lapping of the waves on the shoreline. The cloud formations. The warmth in early October. The thin strip of sunlight on the horizon.

Mark Oliver Everett: Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you. 

And this beauty, the landscape in front, and the words from Audible being pumped into my head from Jonathan Franzen’s new novel, Crossroads, made me feel exactly that: Just too beautiful.

Memories of my 2014 post Lit Boy come flushing through.  50 years from now, when I’m long gone, during some Good Books undergraduate class, this book will be on the reading list for the Fall Semester. An American Classic.  Hyperbole? I think not. It’s that good.

522 Days — now, no longer consecutive days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park.  500+ days of moving through this remarkable pasture of mine, and not finding a single morning, or a single moment to stop and to sit.

But for today.

It was all too much.  The weight just too heavy. An Oliver-Everett morning. Just too much to handle.

I placed the camera on the bench. Then I moved to unshackle the backpack, and set that down too.

I stared at the bench for a moment, taking a deep breath —

and Sat down.

Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:45 am, October 7, 2021. 57° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25 on Instagram)

34 thoughts on “Walking. With Franzen.”

  3. How did it feel to stop and breathe? To acknowledge that such beauty can be too much for a brief pause, that words can accompany an image so perfectly that it is only right to give them their due.

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  6. Finally! I am every so happy that you were brought to your bum (brought to your knees just wasn’t appropriate, here) to stop and take it all in.
    And I ordered the damn book 😉 It’s in my Kindle, up next after Crome Yellow (Also your fault through someone else in the comments.) I can’t keep up.

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      1. Crome, no ‘h’. It’s the name of a town in England. It was Aldous Huxley’s first book. So far, I am enjoying it. Though I got a tad confused in the beginning. You know when you read but you realise pages later that you didn’t pay attention? Went back and sorted myself out!

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      1. Well I was the slowest. 🐢 It took me years to understand that stillness gave me peace. Never be hard on yourself. Just lead yourself into experiences that expand your energy each day. 🌿🌈

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