Tag: sad

Walking. With Nick…

Live & Learn17 Comments

3:40 a.m. It’s 67° F.  Overcast skies. Sleeping birds. Dew has made its way from somewhere to the front lawn, my footsteps mark the path behind me to the car.

Here it is — the 1,871th consecutive (almost) day on this early morning walk at Cove Island Park. Like in a row.

With 5 1/2 (!) solid hours of sleep in me, I’m near giddy — there’s almost a spring in my step that has me in a near-stable, upright position, stable as in physicality-only that is.

A Siri alert pops up calling for heavy fog, which lifts the spirit further. It’ll keep park traffic down (so great), and add some appropriate tonality to this Federal Holiday, Juneteenth.

There’s usually three or four of us walkers in the early twilight hours, a fisherman or two, and a runner or two. We all keep to ourselves (mostly all), and keep an eye out for each other, and a suspicious eye on all newcomers (aka interlopers, serial killers, marauders, etc.)

Continue reading “Walking. With Nick…” →

Truth…

Live & Learn20 Comments

BBC Radio 4 - Home Front - Olive Hargreaves

When you write something, it feels like you’re taking a bit of your brain out and letting other people look and judge – and hoping they won’t just be confused and mildly disgusted and ask you to pop it back into your skull, please.

— Rhiannon Neads, Why I quit Depression. I gave up believing depression had to be serious —  there’s humor even in the darkest moments. Neads is a British writer and actor. (The Guardian, April 26, 2023)

‘Feel’ This

Live & Learn28 Comments

sleep

(He) said that happiness is what happens when you go to bed on the hottest night of the summer, a night so hot you can’t even wear a tee-shirt and you sleep on top of the sheets instead of under them, although try to sleep is probably more accurate. And then at some point late, late, late at night, say just a bit before dawn, the heat finally breaks and the night turns into cool and when you briefly wake up, you notice that you’re almost chilly, and in your groggy, half-consciousness, you reach over and pull the sheet around you and just that flimsy sheet makes it warm enough and you drift back off into a deep sleep. And it’s that reaching, that gesture, that reflex we have to pull what’s warm – whether it’s something or someone – toward us, that feeling we get when we do that, that feeling of being sad in the world and ready for sleep, that’s happiness.

— Paul Schmidtberger, Design Flaws of the Human Condition

Notes: Quote: from liquidlightandrunningtrees via Last Tambourine. Photo: forward to forget

Tuesday, January 5, 1999

Live & Learn38 Comments

We’ve all heard of that future, and it sounds pretty lonely. In the next century, the line of thinking goes, everyone will work at home, shop at home, watch movies at home and communicate with all their friends through videophones and e- mail. It’s as if science and culture have progressed for one purpose only: to keep us from ever having to get out of our pajamas.

— Mick LaSalle, Chronicle Staff Writer in the San Francisco Chronicle, published Tuesday, January 5, 1999

Notes:

Lightly child, lightly

Live & Learn42 Comments

Human beings are creatures made for joy. Against all evidence, we tell ourselves that grief and loneliness and despair are tragedies, unwelcome variations from the pleasure and calm and safety that in the right way of the world would form the firm ground of our being. In the fairy tale we tell ourselves, darkness holds nothing resembling a gift. What we feel always contains its own truth, but it is not the only truth, and darkness almost always harbors some bit of goodness tucked out of sight, waiting for an unexpected light to shine, to reveal it in its deepest hiding place.

~ Margaret Renkl, “Be A Weed” in Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss 

Notes:

  • Photo: via Mennyfox55.
  • 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.”