Tag: Gratitude

Walking. And walking. And walking.

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So, here we are. 1095 consecutive (almost) days on this morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

And but for Paul pointing it out yesterday, I would have missed this Large milestone. On May 5th, it was 3 years on this daily walk, I mean 3 years, I don’t even need to count the damn days. It’s been 3 years.

And it’s just like DK, not to ponder how he’s changed, what’s changed, and not to reflect upon all the good that’s come out of this….but to focus on the edges of some nonsense. Paul had to remind me. Can you believe that? I’m forgetting a lot of important sh*t, and don’t even know it.

Every 100 feet or so, my hand reaches for the camera, and then gently sets it back to rest on my shoulder. I’m seeing Nothing worthy. All I see, is Same. Been here. Saw that. Done that. Tired of that. Posted that. 1095 days, on the same track, what do you expect?

I walk.

Stewing. Tired. Dragggggging. Wally’s snoozing. Susan will be asleep for another 2 hours. And here I am traipsing around a worn out track.

Mary Louise Kelly’s Act III: “Act III is the one where it dawns on us that there may not be an infinite number of acts, that we’d best get on with making the most of this one. Which prompts a delightful, nerve-racking question or two: What now? What next?”

I walk. Continue reading “Walking. And walking. And walking.” →

With gratitude, optimism is sustainable

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What happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease…A question worth pondering with Michael J. Fox.

Watch entire video here on Youtube or here at CBS Sunday Morning.

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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Their experiences in the world are involvingly varied: one was a nurse in Colombia, another an orchid keeper in Vietnam. But as I prompt them with questions to write about, I feel repeatedly surprised by how alike their answers sound. 

What do you miss from your past? 

The warmth of home, the smell of grandmother’s cooking. 

What is life like in the present? 

Confusing. Lonely. 

What surprises you about Denver? 

People sleeping on the streets. In my country they’d be with family. 

When you picture your future, what do you hope? 

Safe children. To feel at home. To live my dreams.

— John Cotter, Losing Music: A Memoir (Milkweed Editions, April 11, 2023)

 

Notes:

  • 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.

I had one good ear that afternoon

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I had one good ear that afternoon, and it let me hear Golaski’s voice. What I also heard: the brush of my feet in grass and dry leaves and the pops of breaking twigs. Wind: the stop and start of it you can’t predict, or control. Skittering insects, chirps of forty birds, fifty clicks, chitters, squees, throat clearing, a rusty hinge squeal, a piping, pinched flutes, calls like a finger on a wet glass, return calls. The green insect almost too small to see— you couldn’t make out its shape, just a speck of green… the sound of lake water lapping a shore, the coos of doves interwoven with less familiar birds, the harmless buzz of insects with beautiful names: nyenje, usubi, nyuki.

— John Cotter, Losing Music: A Memoir (Milkweed Editions, April 11, 2023)

Book Review by Lisa Zeidner titled “In his moving memoir, John Cotter anticipates a world without sound. ‘Losing Music’ offers readers a compelling portrait of what life is like with the rare and incurable condition Ménière’s disease. (Washington Post, April 12, 2023)

Losing Music

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The most memorable sections in “Losing Music” recount John Cotter’s daily struggles: the frustration of trying to hear his companions at a restaurant, fretting that he’ll destroy his hearing aids in sudden rain, trying to have sex while wearing them (“You just have to learn how to hold your head”). He’s lyrical about sounds we take for granted: wind rattling windows, old-fashioned radiators hissing to life, a cat drinking water. But he reserves his most passionate writing for music, “a world you can live inside. … When you’re young and you’re the hero of a movie, and the Heifetz you play in your car or the Velvet Underground you first try out sex to isn’t just background, it’s location and weather. You feel it on your skin.” On one of the blessed occasions when his hearing and tinnitus aren’t at their worst, he listens to a recording of a soprano. Her voice is “like someone set a candle on the floor and the smoke rose and curled. You don’t see the wind without it — the wind’s too light to see.” Writing that precise and moving helps us to grasp the full measure of the losses Cotter mourns.

— Lisa Zeidner, from “In his moving memoir, John Cotter anticipates a world without sound. ‘Losing Music’ offers readers a compelling portrait of what life is like with the rare and incurable condition Ménière’s disease. (Washington Post, April 12, 2023)