Author: Live & Learn

Walking. Swan-ful.

Live & Learn35 Comments

6:10 a.m.

Dark. 12° F, feels like Nasty.  Wind cuts through all the layers. Shiver.

I’m driving down Weed Avenue, eyes scan The Cove.

When she’s here, even in the blackest of Nights, there’s no missing that White Coat, those 25,000 feathers, that Beacon.

“Sadness, I need your black White wing.” (PN*)

I drive on, now 500 yards from the park.

There!

I pull off the highway, grab the camera, and approach.

I offer her a soft, short whistle.

She pops her head up, “Hey there Mister, All Good Here.”

Then, she tucks her head back under her wing, and back to sleep.

I pause watching her for a moment, and then glance up at Polaris, shimmering overhead.

Yes, O.K. All good here too.

This World can keep on, keep spinning on its axis.

 

Notes:

Sunday Morning

Live & Learn20 Comments

Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me. Something in me still starves. In what is probably the most serious inquiry of my life, I have begun to look past reason, past the provable, in other directions. Now I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the precognition of the spiritual side of the world and, within this recognition, the condition of my own spiritual state.

– Mary Oliver, Winter Hours in “Upstream: Selected Essays”

Notes:

  • There are moments, few moments, during my daybreak walks, when I can feel this spiritual side of the world that I don’t believe in. And this photo was one of those moments —  Feb 2 — Ground Hog Day —  Hump Day —  Something-bigger-than-it-all Day.
  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:36 am, Feb 2, 2022. 30° F, feels like 27° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT
  • Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels

a certain forward-tilting sense of self—the feeling that we are still becoming

Live & Learn22 Comments

Most of us alive today will survive into old age, and although that is a welcome development, the price of experiencing more life is sometimes experiencing less of it, too. So many losses routinely precede the final one now: loss of memory, mobility, autonomy, physical strength, intellectual aptitude, a longtime home, the kind of identity derived from vocation, whole habits of being, and perhaps above all a certain forward-tilting sense of self—the feeling that we are still becoming, that there are things left in this world we may yet do. It is possible to live a long life and experience very few of these changes, and it is possible to experience them all and find in them, or alongside them, meaning and gratitude. But for most of us, they will provoke, at one point or another, the usual gamut of emotions inspired by loss, from mild irritation to genuine grief.

— Kathryn Schulz, Lost & Found: A Memoir (‎Random House; January 11, 2022)

Notes:

Walking. Swan-less.

Live & Learn28 Comments

5:35 a.m.

Dark. Wet. Rain. 43° F. I pan through the hour by hour Weather Channel Forecast:

5 am: “Light rain.”
6 am: “Light rain.”
7 am: “Light rain.”
8 am: “Light rain.”

and so on, hourly until 7 pm.

“Wintry mix likely for the next several hours.”

I sit up in bed. No chance, you are going out in that.  

Mind drifts to my Swan. She’s out there. Rain, raining down on her coat.

I google ‘swans’ to find Biology of Swans. “Swans have about 25,000 feathers on their body – the vast majority of these are tiny, little feathers situated round the head and neck.” 

Somehow this puts me at ease. For a moment.

25,000 feathers must keep her warm, as she dives to feed in the frigid waters of The Cove. She can’t be cold. She can’t be hungry. 25,000 feathers.

I pull the covers up, and close my eyes. Damn it. I need to get to The Cove. Continue reading “Walking. Swan-less.” →

Guess.What.Day.It.Is?

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Notes: