Tag: feeling

Walking. With skin still porous.

~ Live & Learn ~ 46 Comments

950 consecutive (almost) days. Like in a row. The morning walk @ daybreak at Cove Island Walk.

I’m up. 5 a.m. Grab iPhone, tap Dark Sky app, forecast: 98% overcast, 32° F, feels like 26° F. Too damn cold.

I feel Wally at my feet, it’s warm here in bed. Lay here. Cozy with Wally. Skip today. Skip today. Skip today. But with the 1000th day like right there, there can’t be a break of the chain. Yes, 1000 days, an artificial milestone, no significance vs. 950, 500, 437 or any other damn number.  Alan Burdick, from Why Time Flies: “Only the clock moves, its tick steady, unhurried, relentless. At these moments I have the clearest and most chilling understanding that time moves in one direction only.”

I get up.

I look back at the bed. Susan asleep. Wally under the covers stirring, but even he knows better not to get up at this hour in December.

It had to be around 1 am. I felt him. I was out, 2 Advil PMs out, and felt him crawling up the length of my body. He gets to my head, and tucks his head into the crevice of my neck. He shifts left, right and left to find just the right Wally spot, and he drifts off. I could feel his breath, and hear the soft whistle of his nose. And feel his little heart beat slow. It’s been 1.5 months, and he’s now Family, and he’s taken over the bed. And the moment left me wondering why it took so long to get Wally.

I’m out the door.  Wind gusts up to 25 mph. Goosebumps huddle for warmth on top of each other.

There’s no traffic. No humans out. No sane humans anyway.

Speedometer clocks me at 25 mph, slow for me, a sign that the body, and my foot on the accelerator is resisting, this morning habit of mine that is beginning to fray, and fray me at the edges.

And, right then, out pops Peter Cottontail. The road narrows, no place to swerve. They’re fast. I’m sure he skooched safely to the other side. A near miss. Sigh.

I pull into my parking spot, unreserved, but mine for the last 950 days. I sit in the car, heater running. Go ahead, drop your window, snap a few shots, say you did it and call it a day.

I sit for another minute or so, the heater blowing on my feet, and get out.

I walk. Continue reading “Walking. With skin still porous.” →

Lightly Child, Lightly

~ Live & Learn ~ 18 Comments


I hadn’t known that a light could be a feeling and a sound could be a color and a kiss could be both a question and an answer.

And that heaven could be the ocean or a person or this moment or something else entirely.

—  Megan Miranda, Fracture. (Walker Childrens; January 17, 2012) 

Notes:

  • Quote: Thank you The Vale of Soul-Making)
  • Photo: DK, Cove Island Park, May 6, 2022 @ Twilight. 5:19 am.  More photos from that 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.”

Sunday Morning

~ Live & Learn ~ 16 Comments

  • sit in the sun without anything to do, feel the heat of the rays hit your skin, realize that this sunlight has travelled a very long way to reach you
  • Walk around barefoot and try to feel as much of the ground under your feet as you can, notice every rock and blade of grass
  • Sit quietly for a while and notice the touch of breath in your nostrils, feel how the air gets cooler as you inhale and warmer as you exhale

~ sara, from “ways to start feeling again”

Notes:

Some days I am very raw, as though my outer layers have been peeled away

~ Live & Learn ~ 33 Comments

Some days I am very raw, as though my outer layers have been peeled away, exposing the new parts of myself to the wind and the sea spray… I feel very sensitive to different consistencies of light. The speed of the wind. The pull of my clothes against my arms. Everything has a texture. I had stopped noticing it. I have a new pleasure in holding objects. A cold, round apple is solid in the palm of my hand. I stroke the smooth, hard squares of Scrabble letters. I run my fingers over the rough wooden surface of the table. I wonder if this is how my mother felt when we came here during those long, brooding summers.

~ Jessica Andrews, Saltwater: A Novel (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, January 14, 2020)

I loved it. Recommended for you? Hmmmm. Read a Kindle sample to get a taste.

Notes:

Driving I-95 North. In March, with Summer Breeze.

~ Live & Learn ~ 32 Comments
Yesterday evening. 6:55 p.m. Still at the office.  I shut down my PC, grab the loose papers from my desk and toss them into my brief case. I throw on my coat and step into the hallway. It’s quiet, still. No phones ringing. No printers running. No overhead hum, the HVAC is shut down. Everyone has gone home. The building rests.

I walk to the garage. It’s been a Long week. Unexpected (and serious) issues flare up, soaking up the free oxygen. Yet, you like that don’t you? Good to be needed. Great to be needed. DK, what did you want to be when you grew up? A Firefighter, of course. Superman-DK running into burning buildings, his Cape flapping behind him, carrying out Babies. Like that, sort of, of the Suit Kind.

I’m in the car. Temperature read-out is 49° F. I’m on the tail end of rush hour. Traffic is flowing. Roads are dry. Spring, come, Now.

I slide the window down. The cool wind washes over my face, a light anesthetic, and the moment spins back passages from Sarah McColl’s “Joy Enough“, my new book in flight.

“I felt it first as a space, like a window thrown open and then a breeze through the bedroom.”

And then Sarah rises again:

“There was a breeze that day, and my hair was gathered into a ponytail, I could feel the air move at the nape of my neck.”

And then Sarah one more time:

“There were no cars on the road, and the hem of my skirt fluttered at my knees in the humid breeze.”

And with this, the weight of the week lifts, the tightness in my shoulders and neck releases, and Bliss rises.

With one eye on the road and the other on my iPhone, I flick down my Favorites playlist, turn the volume up, and then one more extra turn, and hit play.  Summer Breeze by Seals & Crofts.

See the curtains hangin’ in the window, in the evenin’ on a Friday night
A little light a-shinin’ through the window, lets me know everything is alright
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind

Notes: Other quotes by Sarah McColl in Joy Enough: A Memoir.”  Photo via Of Figs and Roses