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Lightly Child, Lightly

March 17, 2023 by 24 Comments

Finally day breaks over things that I can’t predict, as I cannot predict myself. Only a stone, a celestial body, a fool can, sometimes, be predictable. Finally day breaks over a circumstantial, differentiated, risky, improbable world, as concrete, multicolored, unexpected, and, yes, beautiful as the one I see, feel, touch, admire.

— Michel Serres, in Italo Calvino’s from “Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La Nouvelle Alliance” in “The Written World and the Unwritten World: Essays. Translated by Ann Goldstein. (Mariner Books Classics, January 17, 2023) 

Notes:

  • Photo: Daybreak. 29° F, feels like 21° F.  6:00 to 7:00 am. March 16, 2023. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. See more photos from yesterday’s daybreak walk here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.
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Sunday Morning

October 30, 2022 by 41 Comments

Some day I will figure out how to edit videos.  Meanwhile, here’s DK’s Rough Cut of the Sunrise at Spruce Swamp Pond adjacent to Calf Pasture Beach, Norwalk, CT. More photos from this morning’s walk here.

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Walking. With Sully. (Part 1.)

October 10, 2022 by 52 Comments

4:45 a.m. Here we go again.  Cove Island Park Morning Walk.  Well, not exactly.  Sully and I are driving Susan to the airport, and then we’re off to the park.

The House will be cleared out. For an entire week!  Sully’s parents are on Honeymoon.  Sully’s Grandma is going to visit her Mother. It’s now just the Boys, batching it for a week. Nobody nagging us on excessive treat consumption. Or our roughhouse play. No need to pick up our toys.  Just the Boys, Home Alone.

We’re five miles from home on our return from the airport.  I glance to my right, and Sully doesn’t look right. He’s staring up at me, his big brown eyes signaling distress. Oh, no, Sully.  Not here. Not now.  We’re on I-95, no exit for three miles.  Sully, please, just hold on. We’re almost home.

Sully now has the dry heaves.

We’re two miles out.

Sully, good Boy that he is, jumps down into the footwell, because he’s done this before, got yelled at, and he’s learned you just can’t puke on the car seat.  Footwell is ok, but not on the seat.

I’m watching him and keeping an eye on I-95.  He’s trying to get his footing, the car is moving 65 mph, his Grandpa is racing to get home.

One mile out.

Out comes the vomit, a thick stream of a white foamy, chunky substance, which begins to ooze up and down the floor mat. Thank God this is Susan’s Car.

Sully gently lifts one foot and then the other as the vomit coats his little foot pads.

He looks up to the car seat, and then to me, preparing to jump back up onto the seat.

No! You stay right where you are.

Sully turns his attention to the vomit. Sniffs it. Paws it. And then sniffs it again.

No! Don’t you dare eat it.

He’s frozen in place, as we take the exit ramp home.

Home Alone.

Boys’ Week.

Batching it.

Right.

DK Photo: Sully on Breakwall. 46° F. 6:30 am. October 10, 2022. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.

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A rare experience of a moment at daybreak, when something in nature seems to reveal all consciousness…

October 9, 2022 by 26 Comments

Notes:

  • Daybreak. 36° F. 6:15 am. October 9, 2022. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.
  • Post Title: Charles Ives, “Essays Before a Sonata“
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Nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding / Than this deepest affinity between your eyes and the world.

September 17, 2022 by 36 Comments

Notes:

  • Post Title: From Mary Oliver’s “Terns” (Thank you Make Believe Boutique)
  • DK Photos: 6:15 to 6:40. 60° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.
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A lovely September Day — tender —

September 10, 2022 by 28 Comments

 

Notes:

  • Photos: DK @ Daybreak, Cove Island Park. 6:00-6:15 a.m. on September 10, 2022.  More photos from a glorious morning here.
  • Post Title: Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary (Mariner Books; March 31, 2003)
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Feeding on all of Earth’s beauty, making everything of its light*

September 9, 2022 by 18 Comments

Notes:

  • Post Title from: Maddie Mortimer’s Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies (Picador; March 31, 2022). * Modified from the original “Feeding on all of Earth’s beauty, making nothing of its light.”
  • Other photos from this morning’s walk here.
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Walking. With Ennui.

September 1, 2022 by 50 Comments

5:25 a.m. Here we go again. 849 consecutive (almost) days on my Daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I gather my camera gear, sleep walking through the ritual now. Insomnia rages, 6 days running. No, I haven’t taken your suggested witches’ potions — that is, banana before bed, tonic water, melatonin, magnesium, and all that other voodoo shit that I can’t seem to even try. What’s the definition of insanity? Doing the same shit over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, here we are. On the 5:30 am Insanity Bus to Cove Island Park.

I get out of the car. I reposition the pack on my back, then the camera, all of it, heavy, unsettled, unsettling.

I walk.

I’m woozy, stewing in a brew of vertigo and fatigue. Brew…Brew…feelings brewing. I’m at the opening of Maddie Mortimer’s Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies: “Feeling brews itself in different locations, depending on the body. A man’s most honest impulses may begin in his hands or his heart, his toes, throat, fingers or thighs. Lia felt most things first in her stomach.” There’s nothing spectacular going on in this body right now. Spent immediately comes to mind. I slow my pace to get a grip.

I walk.

Mortimer goes on to use the word “ennui“, a Lori-word. I had to look it up…a feeling of utter weariness and discontent…world-weary sensation…soul-destroying fiend.”

I walk.

Adding to the ennui is an “off day” for photo taking. We’ve got the 3 impeding elements: (1) No cloud cover of any type. (2) High tide and (3) Humans. With sun rising later, the tourists are out. In force.

I walk.

I turn off the shoreline, finding nothing enlightening, and move to the walk path.

Man, tourist, adult, not a regular at Cheers here on the Daybreak walks, approaches. He’s shouting into the speaker of his smartphone. He’s FaceTiming. The participant on the other side of the call shouts back. And the back and forth continues, shattering the silence of daybreak.

I move left on the path directly in his lane, thinking this may jog him in lifting the receiver to his ear, or better yet, ending the call. No such thing happens. He shifts to the other side of the path to avoid me. I glare at him, he smiles back and continues his conversation. Idiot, oblivious to the world around him.

My irritation bleeds off, and I walk.

[Read more…]

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Walking. With Buechner.

August 20, 2022 by 28 Comments

5:10 a.m. No. I didn’t sleep in. And No, I didn’t take magnesium before bed. Or drink a cup of Tonic Water. Or eat a banana. Or take melatonin. Why? Who the Hell knows? Maybe it gives me something to bitch about.

I walk.

It been 837 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. That’s 2 years, 3 months, 15 days, like in a row.

There’s a thin sheen of cloud cover over the moon. Even God found at Ōita couldn’t get a clear shot at this. Elsewhere overhead, the cloud cover is heavy and near complete. It’s dark.

It feels like a “down” day. Too much cloud. Too many people. Too much high tide. Sigh. 837 days, and you’re going to have an off day. The odds are such.

I approach the location in the photograph up top. A scene that I, and you, have seen many times.

I can make out the fisherman’s silhouette, but nothing else. Something pulls me to lift the camera up and look through the viewfinder…WTH is that? I stare through the viewfinder, a Kaleidoscope.

I take the camera away and look out again. It’s dark. I see nothing of what I see in the viewfinder. I lift the camera, and do over. God, no. It can’t be my eyes deteriorating further.

I lift the camera again, and sure as sh*t, it’s there. God found at Ōita has returned. The pink hue watercolors are airbrushed on the water, the sky, the low hanging clouds and the horizon.

It’s dark, and yet it’s not. What I see. What I want to see. What I can see. What I don’t see. What I feel.

This string of babble pulls me back to my early morning papers.

Frederick Buechner died this week. David Brooks, in his must-read essay titled “The Man Who Found His Inner Depths” described Buechner’s faith as “personal, unpretentious and accessible. ‘Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat. Faith is less a position on than a movement toward.’ It is sensing a presence, not buying an argument.”

I look over the Cove, it’s lighter out now, twilight is lifting. Now that I see, I believe.

But damn it if I’m not sensing Something out there.

Something ethereal, Lori’s magic word def. adj. //əˈTHirēəl/ extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world.

No, this brick-head isn’t buying ‘jack’ yet, but he’s out Shopping, and Something is there.

He can feel it.

DK Photo @ 5:30 a.m. August 20, 2022. 8-° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.

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T.G.I.F. Now. And Now. And Now.

August 5, 2022 by 25 Comments

Stony silence as we cross the bridge into Manhattan [Cove Island Park] and the streets [paths] begin slipping past. Every moment of your life brings you to the moment you’re experiencing now. And now. And now. I’ve never have been on the streets [paths] this early [many times], predawn, and the driver [DK] agrees that it’s eerie and perfect.

— Jo Ann Beard, Festival Days (Little, Brown & Company, March 16, 2021) (DK-EDITED)

Photos: DK @ Daybreak. 5:04 & 5:15 am, August 5, 2022. 76° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Other photos from this morning here (landscape) and here (swans).

 

 

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Sunday Morning (Images that stick)

June 26, 2022 by 17 Comments

Notes:

  • Backstory on Human Sleeping on Bench: “Walking. With Moment that Sticks“.
  • Geese swimming in a row. (“Ducks in a Row“)
  • Last Photo Inspiration: “I want to believe that if humans really leaned into this impulse to mother one another, it would be stronger than the impulse to tear one another apart.” —  Mary Laura Philpott, Bomb Shelter: Love, Time, and Other Explosives (Atria Books, April 12, 2022)
  • Photos: DK @ Daybreak. 4:40 to 5:07 am, June 26, 2022. 67° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
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Walking. With Frost’s Road Not Taken.

June 18, 2022 by 21 Comments

4:16 a.m. Day #774, consecutive (almost) daybreak walks at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

I’m on I-95 heading North, mixing it up this morning and heading to Calf Pasture Beach.  It’s a big deal for this Plow Horse to shift one step to the left, or shift one step to the right, the plow cutting the same furrow deeper. No chance of surprises when one is going straight, and straight down.

Back to I-95. It’s me, the Truckers, and hopefully not the drunks.  I’m in the speed lane, a giant tandem tractor-trailer to my right, driver has his window open taking in the cool morning breeze.  I glance over. I do everything in my power not to pump my fist in the air with the trucker salute to prompt a blast of his air horn.  Apparently it’s a dying tradition. Jesus, how old are you. And for all I know, it could be mistaken for a proposition. Keep your bloody hands down.

I approach the parking lot, it’s full, and cars line the shoulder.  And this being 4:29 a.m.  Irritated. WTH is this?

I pull up on the sidewalk, shut down the ignition, and watch. High School. Graduation parties. Sunrise. God, how long ago was that for me? OK. This wasn’t meant to be.  Just go home. No, you came this far. Come on. Just take a few shots and then you can go.

I watch kids pour out of their cars. Boomboxes blaring Rap. Peaceful easy feeling. (Not.)

I walk down the street and around the crowd that’s building on the shoreline.  I take one shot. That one above, and head back to the car. Not interested in tangling with some drunk, testosterone raging teen. Just like the smart-a** idiot you were then.

I’m in the car and back on the road, and the mood sinks. Road less taken, turns to be a bust. Let’s go home. Eat half a dozen glazed donuts. That’ll bring some joy for a moment. Palahniuk: “A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection. You wake up, and that’s enough.” And then the mountain of regret torpedos you for the rest of the day. [Read more…]

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TGIF: Come Collect Me

June 17, 2022 by 14 Comments

I think the trees are firework taxidermy.
A steady reminder of celebration and light.
How quiet. I’m a collaps-
ing house. Come collect me.

—  Dalton Day, from “Stepping Out of Sorrow,” published in Souvenir: a Journal. Fall 2015

Notes:

  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 4:43 a.m. 68° F. June 17, 2022. Other pictures from this morning’s walk here.
  • Poem via The Vale of Soul-Making)
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Walking. In Strawberries.

June 16, 2022 by 31 Comments

4:23 a.m., or so.  Yesterday morning.

It’s been 772 consecutive (almost) days on my daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

And, I’m walking.

This is after moon shots at 1:43 am, 3:35 am, and now – – all posted yesterday in Let us taste the Strawberry Moon.  Why, am I still up? Because Christie told me about the Strawberry Moon. And when my WordPress friends tell me to do something, I do it. So I chased her.

Who’s Christie? Mimi from her post last night: “There are people who I have followed (or who have followed me) on WordPress for years. Never met them, never spoke to them, and would likely not recognize them if we passed on the street. And yet, they are my friends…We commiserate in comment sections, check in with each other on email, rail at times, commiserate other times and occasionally marvel at our common ground. Ground that we walk in figurative step, covering invisible miles through the ether, yet as firm under my feet as the street. There is wonder in this.”

There is wonder in this. I’m nodding my head in agreement. Yet another awesome Human who can put into words, what I can’t, and so beautifully.

I walk. Bleary-eyed. Bone tired. Exhaustion fully set in.

I can see her out of the corner of my eye. She’s Giant, my Strawberry Moon, hovering, and whisper quiet as she hangs overhead, illuminating the earth in her warm glow.  All, I’m sure, to protect me from taking a header as I make my way to the North point of the park.

I walk.

I twist my Air Pod snugly into my right ear, and then my left.  I cue up a Chill playlist, randomly selected by another giant fruit, Apple.

I walk. My feet are moving under their own propulsion, on the same track that I have now passed hundreds of times.  “Siri, turn up the volume.”  Henry Green in “Shift” …I feel movements under my skin…” [Read more…]

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Lightly Child, Lightly

June 16, 2022 by 14 Comments

The classical elements are earth, water, air and fire, and this old idea feels right at a sensory level. I start to think that a combination of two is primal and powerful: rain on soil, fire in the wind, sunlight on stone. A combination of three is poetry: the sea washing the moonlight into the cliff, a rainbow.

— Amy Liptrot, The Instant (Canongate Books, March 3, 2022)

Notes:

  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak. ~5:00 am, June 12, 2022. 60° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. Other pictures from Sunday morning here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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Lightly Child, Lightly

June 9, 2022 by 23 Comments

I dream through a wordless, familiar place.
The small boat of the day sails into morning,
past the postman with his modest haul, the full trees
which sound like the sea, leaving my hands free
to remember. Moments of grace. Like this.

— Carol Ann Duffy, from Moments of Grace in “Mean Time” (Pan Macmillan; January 1, 2018)

Notes:

  • Photo: DK @ Daybreak.  Cove Island Park. June, 4, 2022. 5:34 a.m.
  • Poem: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels)
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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Sunday Morning

May 29, 2022 by 30 Comments

George & Grace @ Daybreak. 5:40 am, May 29, 2022. 59° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here and here.

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Lightly Child, Lightly

May 26, 2022 by 20 Comments

Notes:

  • Video: DK, Cove Island Park, May 25, 2022 @ Twilight. 5:03 am.  More photos from yesterday morning here.
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.”
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Like the moon in the morning — all firmament, beautiful, about to vanish.

May 20, 2022 by 29 Comments

Notes:

  • Post Title: “The way a deer emerges from a thicket is the opposite of a wound. Like the moon in the morning — all firmament, beautiful, about to vanish. Each morning I walk out my apartment & wonder what is going to become of me.” — Devin Kelly, “Deer on the Side of an American Highway,” published in drDOCTOR
  • DK @ Daybreak. 4:58 am, May 20, 2022. 52° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this mornings walk here.
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Sunday Morning

April 3, 2022 by 21 Comments

DK @ Daybreak. 6:44 am, April 3, 2022. 38° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.

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