Wow, let’s give DK an attaboy for showing up on his own blog? An unscheduled sabbatical, like forever. MIA without notice.
Let’s give Anneli credit for my return, this being a far less ambitious adaption of her February effort, but hey, it’s Something.
The mood has been shifting anxiously between Renkl: “often it feels like the only thing left to do is rage against the dying of the light” and Murakami: “All that remained now was a sort of quiet resignation” and my recent fan boy affection for Charlotte Wood: “The beauty of being here is largely the silence, after all. Not having to explain, or endlessly converse.”
The Cove Island morning walks continue, despite the bitter cold. If I was counting, it would be 1,746 consecutive (almost) mornings. Like in a row. But who’s counting?!
It’s early morning Feb 10th, I’m heading to the cliff at The Cove. I’m standing in the spot taking the shot above, fingers numb from the cold, winds gusting up to 30 mph.
Next morning, as the fog lifts, I have the sense I often have here, of seeing the world at the moment it comes to life. I recall looking down at the twenty-five pods gathered around the bell tower and the refectory, tiny against the hillside and the huge expanse of sea beyond; they looked so frail I wished to say a prayer for them, as for a newborn in the not always easy world. So orderly, too, in their hopeful human arrangement. Like the redwoods in the valley beside them: each with roots five feet deep, but intertwined, so the health of one depends on the health of every other.
— Pico Iyer, Aflame: Learning from Silence (Riverhead Books, January 14, 2025). Written from his cell at New Camaldoli Hermitage in the Santa Lucia Mountains of Big Sur, California.
Notes:
Other highlights from early in the book:
““When I go out into the world,” volunteers one of the brothers, “I feel like a sea anemone…A little creature of the sea. You know how sensitive and tender they are. If they trust where they’ve been placed, they open up. Put them in a harsh environment and they close very quickly.”
Where are such people in my daily life? I wonder, back in my trailer. Everywhere, comes the answer, but I can’t see or stop to hear them. I’m too caught up in my own schedule, my seeming busyness. Like someone who plays the radio all the time and claims never to hear the sea.
Luxury indeed to follow whim; my conscious mind can argue me out of any belief and into it again. Pure joy to inhabit a world whose dictionary has no place for “worry” or for “strife.” I recall the day I flew across the ocean after hearing that my father was in the ICU; as I stepped into the small hospital room, I realized that my bank account, my resume, my business card would none of them be of very much help at all. The only thing that could sustain him—or me—would be whatever I’d gathered in stillness.
4:00 a.m. I check the weather app: 18° F, wind speed 15 mph from the North, wind gusts up to 28 mph. Temperature feels like – 1° F. Winds from The Great White North, a reminder of Home. Add the presence of high tide, cloud cover of < 5% and there would be less-than-zero reason to be going out this morning, except one of the three requirements of a great morning trifecta being present, No Humans. Wally snuggles close, belly so warm, he snores. I tip toe out of the room, wood floors cold, body and bones resist, this Earth won’t stop spinning if I take the day off.
Last Night. Rachel asks if we would drive into the city to pick her up. Luggage, Sully, Christmas gifts, just way too much to haul solo on Metro North. The response was swift: Absolutely Not. Google Maps estimates ~90 minutes in both directions, if all goes well. Holiday traffic snarling. Tolls subject to surge pricing add to the misery. Now, why would anyone subject themselves to this? Well…It’s 8 p.m., and here I am, in the car, driving into Manhattan. Madness. 30 minutes to travel 30 miles. 60 minutes to navigate the last 10 minutes into Gotham. Think Mad Max in Thunderdome. Eastside highway traffic moving 55-70 mph, along NARROW, I mean a NARROW three lanes on something closer to a gravel country road than highway. Reach out your window and touch the yellow cab next to you. Reach out the passenger side, you’d be skimming the restraining wall of the East River. It’s less than one hour from bedtime, and here I am, bleary-eyed, hands clenching the steering wheel — the body knows, stomach cramps signaling high anxiety. I shift in my seat conscious of one errant move right or left and there is a pile up of massive proportions — followed by a 2 hour delay with cops, and accident reports. But, there’s something to prove here. Man-Child from small town Western Canada still has it — can make it on these tough streets of NYC. Cab driver behind me has his hand on the horn urging me to speed up, I’m going 60 mph. He passes giving me the bird, must be the Connecticut plates. I reciprocate with genuine kindness, turning on my high beams and tailgating him for the next mile or two, high beams flickering in his rear view mirror. Don’t mess with Country. He turns off at Exit 15. Still got it.Man-child.
4:30 a.m. I settle into my office chair. No longer reading the papers, nothing uplifting there. No longer following politics. I check the box scores. Check blog posts. Read another chapter or two, and then close my eyes reflecting on the drive into Manhattan, operating on < 5 hours sleep. “Yes, Lord, I am thankful today again for every reminder of how I have outlived my worst imagination. I will walk slowly through the garden of all that could have killed me but didn’t.” — Hanif Abdurraqib
Happiness is getting up and going downstairs in the morning, opening all the doors and petting the dogs, walking around the garden and along the wooden pier in the cool morning air and listening to the crows and the chirping of all the other birds as you wait for the water for your tea to boil in the kitchen.
Amazon: “For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him.“
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.
Emotions are high…this morning. It is a beautiful morning here. Unseasonably warm. The chickens are happy. The bees are happy. They do their chicken and bee jobs. I wrote last night that the work does not change. Temperance, magnanimity, prudence. Keep going.
DK Photo. Sunrise. 6:40 a.m. November 6 2024. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More amazing sunrise looks from yesterday 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.
