Tag: Gratitude

Walking. A morning walk on a dreary day…

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Here we are. Last day of 2022. I crawl out of bed, both knees are throbbing, why?   Doris Lessing: “But you just do not believe that you’re going to be old. People don’t realize how quickly they’re going to be old, either. Time goes very fast.” Truth Doris, truth.

970 consecutive (almost) days on this daybreak walk to Cove Island Park. Like in a row. And it’s a dreary morning. Dreariness lines up with the morning news. Bombing strikes on civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. More civilians dead. More civilians without power. It’s winter. It’s cold.

I walk.

I’m having to work to lift the camera off the shoulder. Blah…spoiled after a run of “money” sunrises this week.

I walk to the tip of the point, and stop to look out over the water. I stare at the bench, think about sitting down, and don’t. Body says yes, Mind refuses to walk over and sit. Will not do it.

A 2-man kayak comes round the corner, the most excitement I’ve seen this morning. I reach for the camera.

“Good morning” the man in the rear shouts. I let go of the camera. I reply in kind. Continue reading “Walking. A morning walk on a dreary day…” →

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it’s hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts.

—  Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and The Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, September 16, 2013) (via acti-veg)

Sunday Morning

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“In relationships, I’ve observed that a partner can start out as a friend, then become a passion, then a co-parent, a mother or a father of your children, and if you’re really fortunate, the partner remains—or returns as—a friend. It’s a lower-temperature take on a romantic life, but it’s enduring. I have been so fortunate. Great friendships can survive most of the crap thrown at them. They thrive on the manure of shared disappointment and drama. It’s hard to imagine a force as great as romantic love, but friendship comes close. Someone once argued that “friendship is higher than love,” and I understood what they meant. It may not be as melodramatic or grandiose or passionate as love, but friendship is often deeper and wider. Great friendships explain why we hold on to this life so tightly because it disappears so quickly. Just as Ali and I were becoming best friends, I was aware of the wider web of deep friendships we had both grown up in, this sacrament of friendship from the band to the community around us. Relationships we had chosen, not ones chosen for us by blood. Pandemics aside, I still embrace people when I meet them, which goes all the way back to the days of Shalom when that’s how we would say hello. I don’t know that I’ve ever shaken somebody’s hand without having to think about it. My instinct to hail a friend is to hold them.

— Bono, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono” (Knopf, November 1, 2022)

Photo: Bono portrait by John Hewson

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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I hadn’t done drugs since sniffing Lady Esquire shoe polish when I was fifteen. I didn’t need to. I felt the pinch of wonder. I felt everything sharply, the people we met, the sensation of being in a body, of eating or drinking. I knew there was darkness in the world, but I was sure it would not overpower us; rather, we would let ourselves be overpowered by the beauty of our discoveries as we traveled through this world. Railway stations and underground trains, the commons, a magnificent oak in a park, the redbrick Victorian buildings of England and Wales, the Georgian splendor of Edinburgh, of Glasgow with its occasional black eye. And the beautiful searching eyes of our audience. Every night, the show. The ragged and sometimes glorious show.

— Bono, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono” (Knopf, November 1, 2022)

Photo: via Zimbio

Saturday Morning

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I’ve noticed that people love to hurry. Meals are always quick, coffees are never savoured, glances are fleeting, conversations brief and it feels like this is becoming normal, that people only expect surface level and they only strive for surface level in all aspects of life. Mediocre coffee. Luke-warm love. Convenience. Because life is scary and when you sit with it long enough, and really listen to the silence, you notice what you’re missing, and some of what we miss, we know we will never be able to find again.

—  Seyda Noir (seydanoirwords @ Instagram, April 28, 2022) (via balancedhuman)

Photo: Pixaby