Tag: Ocean Vuong

Sunday Morning. Yehi or!

~ Live & Learn ~ 55 Comments

No, it’s not my morning walk @ Daybreak @ Cove Island Park. Not yet 831 consecutive days, like in a row. It’s too damn early for that. 3 hours and 12 minutes before sunrise, to be precise. And here we are. As Ocean Vuong states in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: “Let me begin again.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Let me begin again?” or, “Here we go again?”

2:36 a.m. I snatch the iPhone and check Sleep data: 5 consecutive days < 4 hours sleep. I check the Dark Sky app: Clear skies.

Sully pauses his snoring to open an eyelid. His big brown eye looking through me: What is wrong with you Man? He turns his head, and falls back asleep.

I slip out of bed, head downstairs, my bare feet pattering on the hard wood floors, careful not to trip over myself in the darkness. I step outside, scanning the skies. There you are. Waiting for me.

It’s quiet. No Metro-North train whistles in the distance, the last train passing an hour ago. No dogs barking. No critters scurrying in the shrubs. Just me, and the cool grass under my toes, and my mind whirring.

Continue reading “Sunday Morning. Yehi or!” →

Saturday Morning

~ Live & Learn ~ 8 Comments

I love going on walks by myself. No pressure to keep up conversation. And there is something about movement that helps me think. To charge an idea with the body’s inertia. To carry a feeling through the distance and watch it grow.

—  Ocean Vuong, The Weight of Our Living: On Hope, Fire Escapes, and Visible Desperation (therumpus.net, August 24, 2014)

Photo: Daybreak. 5:49 a.m., April 30, 2022. 41° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. More photos from this morning here.

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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A butterfly,

pinked by the hour, lands on a blade of sweetgrass,

then flits off.

The blade twitches once, then stills.

~ Ocean Vuong, from his new book titled: “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel” (Penguin Press, June 4, 2019)

 

Photo Josephine Cardin with “Butterfly” by (via Newthom)

Driving I-95 S. With Hammer at Rest.

~ Live & Learn ~ 37 Comments

A nothingburger during a nondescript morning commute a month ago.

Not a Vuong nothing Moment that changed everything after it.

But it changed Something.

Why this particular Moment among the billions?

Why is it called up when it is?

And here IT comes again this morning.

This Moment. It’s pulled forward, to the front. Taking its right hand, sweeping aside the incessant swing of the Hammer on the searing molten metal, of not enough, not good enough and Now.

And it’s exactly at this Moment, when the Hammer rests, and Vuong’s luminescence offers its cooling respite.

It whispers listen, pay attention to This. And it hangs around until I do.

The pre-rush hour traffic on I-95 was detoured onto Exit 2. GPS routes me through Port Chester. I pull up to a stop light, and there they are.

Father and Son. Son, maybe 4 years old.  Dad is wearing an overcoat, much too heavy for the season.  Son looks up to his Dad, Dad bends over and picks him up, hugs him tight, then sets him down.

And they walk. Dad’s lunch box swinging in his left hand, his Son’s hand swinging in his right.

Let’s play it again Vuong. One more time.

The Hammer rests, for this Moment.

Photo Credit

Lightly Child, Lightly.

~ Live & Learn ~ 22 Comments

A trio of tulips in an earthenware pot stopped me in the middle of my mind. I had woken abruptly and, still dazed from sleep, mistook the dawn light hitting the petals for the flowers emitting their own luminescence. I crawled to the glowing cups, thinking I was seeing a miracle, my own burning bush. But when I got closer, my head blocked the rays and the tulips turned off. This also means nothing, I know. But some nothings change everything after them.

~ Ocean Vuong, from his new book titled: “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel” (Penguin Press, June 4, 2019)

 

Notes:

  • Photo: Tulips @ BT.com.
  • 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.”