November – Live & Learn

Monday Morning

November 22, 2021 by Live & Learn 16 Comments

5/24/41…

After all that, the change … was like the sudden, unwelcome awakening from a glorious dream. An awakening on a Monday morning when, with one’s castle and clouds and the silver sea dissolved into a sordid room, one realizes that one has to get up and dress in the cold night in a few minutes and plod through a weary day.

— Patricia Highsmith, “Patricia Highsmith: Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995.″ Anna von Planta (Editor). (Liveright, November 16, 2021)— Patricia Highsmith, Her Diaries and Notebooks: 1941-1995

Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:52 a.m., November 22, 2021. 48° F & Rain. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: autumn, Connecticut, cove island park, Fall, Monday, morning, November, Patricia Highsmith, Rain, raining, swan, wake-up, Work

Saturday Morning

November 28, 2015 by Live & Learn 11 Comments

Even through curtains,
the sun will assert itself enough to soften a candle,
its warmth insistent as a kiss till the candle bends back.
We all fall under the spell of the sun
and are all at the end bent and consumed.
See how a long row of fence posts
leans over a deeply cut road
as if they’d been pushed by the light.

~ Ted Kooser, November. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book

Photo: Beechwood by Heiko Fritz

Filed Under: Inspire, Lit, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: candle, Inspirational, light, November, Photography, Poem, Poetry, Quotes, Sun, Ted Kooser, Tired, weekend

Again this morning, in a cold wind

November 19, 2014 by Live & Learn 11 Comments

Again this morning, in a cold wind from the future, I walked all the way to the end of the long bridge of my life, having a look at its cables, its rods and rivets, its perforated metal flooring through which I could see whitecaps slamming the pylons. Then I turned and came back, inspecting it all from the other direction, fretting about every hex nut and bolt though they seem sound enough to hold things together. I ought to give the long bridge of my life a little rest, but every day it seems I’m walking from past to possibility and back to past with my brush and aluminum paint, hiding the rust, the deepening cracks, dabbing a shine here and there.

~ Ted Kooser, November. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book

Notes:

Note to self: Now. 4:23 am. 21º F. Wind, cold. 13 mph from the West.
Credits: Photograph – peopleus.

Filed Under: Inspire, Photography, Poetry, Quotes Tagged With: Anxiety, Bridge, cables, Future, memories, Middle Age, morning, November, Past, Photography, Poem, red, Ted Kooser, Wind, worried

4:30 (a.m.) on a starry morning…

November 4, 2014 by Live & Learn 20 Comments

Four-thirty on a starry morning, and soon our Journal Star carrier will come roaring out of the east in his pickup, headlights like fists on the loose black reins of darkness, the road crunching under his tires, and slow down, stop, and drop the news in the dew-struck weeds under the mailbox. Without a pause he’ll wheel around, the gravel flying, headlights sweeping the yard and house, and roar back east. Such resentment he must feel for us, here at the far end of the news, this house hidden in trees with just one window lit, where someone is up early writing.

~ Ted Kooser, November. The Wheeling Year: A Poet’s Field Book

Credits: Photograph – Brenda Anderson