Tag: restless

Walking. With Greg Louganis.

~ Live & Learn ~ 26 Comments

4:50 a.m. 817 consecutive (almost) days on my daybreak walk at Cove Island Park. 816 days, like in a row.

I walk.

You know the formula for a great photo day-break:

  1. Low Tide.
  2. Clouds.
  3. No Humans.

And today, a Trifecta Miss = Poor shooting day on all three counts. (Shooting, meaning not assault weapons, but with a Canon. Sorry, assault weapons are top of mind.)

Yet, there’s a consolation prize. It’s the end of July. Humidity is low, it’s 63° F and breezy. What’s better than that?

But even with the magical weather, I’m restless, uninspired. I plod around the park, itching to get back into the car and do Something. And I’m apparently not alone, with Seán Hewitt, in All Down Darkness Wide, “Even in these quiet moments I was afraid of purposelessness.”

I turn back thinking I’ll get a stalker silhouette shot with some kids on the break wall. And at that moment, Something, makes me stop and look out onto Long Island Sound. There, in the sky, an osprey prowls in a tight circle overhead. Being a sh*tty measure of distance, I couldn’t tell you whether he was 100 feet or 100 yards up, but let’s just say he was high.

First miracle of the morning. I actually stop and see if anything will happen. He widens his arc overhead, and continues to circle. Just wait DK, just wait another bloody minute. If he can circle and wait for food, so can you. Just wait, damn it.

Continue reading “Walking. With Greg Louganis.” →

Monday Morning Wake-Up Call

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Mammals and birds have hearts with four chambers. Reptiles and turtles have hearts with three chambers. Fish have hearts with two chambers. Insects and mollusks have hearts with one chamber. Worms have hearts with one chamber, although they may have as many as eleven single-chambered hearts. Unicellular bacteria have no hearts at all; but even they have fluid eternally in motion, washing from one side of the cell to the other, swirling and whirling. No living being is without interior liquid motion. We all churn inside.

— Brian Doyle, from “Joyas Voladoras” The American Scholar, March 20, 2022

Photos: Lukas Souza in Foz do Iguaçu, Brasil

Lightly child, lightly

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…We came out of a time when birth was happy…

We are prizes. Perhaps we shouldn’t have been so important,
so healthy…

We were sold on dissatisfaction –…

I am very lucky but that’s not life. And maybe no more than
any person born in any year, I want but don’t know what, feel
unsettled in a sea of similarly restless faces. The breadth of
possibility makes choosing seem evasive. We decide but we are
slow and small with doubts.

It was 1954 when my parents moved to have room for me. I
remember a box my mother packed for me to store at school,
filled with canned milk and soup and Hershey bars.

Two thousand good nights. My checked uniform on a hook.
My face to the hall light because that felt like a day in the sun.
Not fear, not loneliness, but my preference for sleeping near the
window and near the floor, humming.

~ Killarney Clary, from “Who Whispered Near Me?”

Notes:

  • Poem Source: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels. Photo: Blue Canary Night light
  • 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.”

Lightly Child, Lightly.

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The heavy is the root of the light.
The unmoved is the source of all movement.

Thus the Master travels all day
without leaving home.
However splendid the views,
she stays serenely in herself.

Why should the lord of the country
flit about like a fool?
If you let yourself be blown to and fro,
you lose touch with your root.
If you let restlessness move you,
you lose touch with who you are.

– Lao-Tzu, from “Tao Te Ching” translation by S. Mitchell

Notes:

  • Poem:  via Thetaoteching (Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels). Photo: Eric Rose (via see more)
  • 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.”

 

Lightly child, lightly.

~ Live & Learn ~ 24 Comments

I saw none of that;
the only birds were tiny and caged,
beating their wings against the bars,
chattering like distant voices in dreams.
I’ve forgotten how I got there. I know
I knelt to a cold stream to wash my face
and wakened to music, an odd beat,
a melody I’d heard before. I followed
the sound over a rise to the open field
where the sun poured down its grace
on the long grass, the animals, the men
and women. The wind kept prodding
at my back as though determined
to push me away from where I was,
fearful, perhaps, I would come to rest.

~ Philip Levine, from In Another Country (The New Yorker, February 11, 2013)

Notes:

  • Photo: via Your Eyes Blaze Out
  • Prior “Lightly child, lightly” Posts? Connect 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.”