hello friends, wally here. beautiful day in connecticut today. like almost the first day of spring, 61 °F and toasty warm. sunshiny day with exception of dad (a large dark cloud) who started his ‘eliminate all sugar from his diet” day after his doctor visit…he mumbled something about total bullsh*t, and don’t eat margarine, don’t eat salt, wrong, wrong, and now no sugar. to distract him, we decided to haul the outdoor furniture from the basement to the backyard. i helped a lot, dad said, by staying the h*ll out of the way. i’ve never had a spring day in my short puppy life, but if this is what’s to come, wow, wally is pumped. have a great sunday. Wally.
Being born is like this…
September 3, 2022 by 15 Comments
Being born is like this:
The sunflowers slowly turn their corollas toward the sun.
The wheat is ripe.
The bread is eaten with sweetness.
My impulse connects to that of the roots of the trees.
— Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Notes:
- Quote: Thank you Beth @ Alive on All Channels)
- Book Cover / Portrait of Clarice Lispector via kobo.com
T.G.I.F. a little sunshine…
July 22, 2022 by 12 Comments
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 5:15, 5:25 am, July 22, 2022. 73° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. A few more pictures from this morning here and here.
- Poem Source: liriostigre
Lightly Child, Lightly
April 28, 2022 by 32 Comments
why don’t you read a poem about the sunrise written 5 centuries ago and contemplate the fact that we have been writing about the same sun for centuries upon centuries and then maybe you’ll calm down
— Michael
Notes:
- Photo: DK – 5:25 a.m., April 18, 2022. Sunrise @ Calf Pasture Beach, Norwalk, CT. More photos 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.”
Lightly Child, Lightly.
October 14, 2021 by 20 Comments
In Vienna there are shadows. The city is black and everything is done by rote. I want to be alone. I want to go to the Bohemian Forest. May, June, July, August, September, October. I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. I want to gaze with astonishment at moldy garden fences, I want to experience them all, to hear young birch plantations and trembling leaves, to see light and sun, enjoy wet, green-blue valleys in the evening, sense goldfish glinting, see white clouds building up in the sky, to speak to flowers. I want to look intently at grasses and pink people, old venerable churches, to know what little cathedrals say, to run without stopping along curving meadowy slopes across vast plains, kiss the earth and smell soft warm marshland flowers. And then I shall shape things so beautifully: fields of colour…
— Egon Schiele, as quoted by Reinhard Steiner in Egon Schiele, 1890-1918: The Midnight Soul of the Artist.
Notes:
- Photo: Angelika Horschlager, “we made no sound…and deep in the forest we get lost.” Taken in Lichtenau im Muhlkries (Austria)
- Quote via The Vale of Soul-Making
- 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.
October 7, 2021 by 23 Comments
…And I should mention the light
which falls through the big windows this time of day
italicizing everything it touches…
— Billy Collins, from “Old Man Eating Alone in a Chinese Restaurant” in Ballistics: Poems (Picador; June 18, 2009)
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. 6:30 am, October 7, 2021. 55° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
- 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.”
Guess.What.Day.It.Is?
October 6, 2021 by 18 Comments
Notes:
- Source: Desert Camel Rides via Getty
-
Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again.
Intoxication with color…often fierce, may express itself as a profound attachment to landscape
September 14, 2021 by 35 Comments
Notes:
- DK @ Daybreak. 6:34 to 6:40 am, September 14, 2021. 65° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. (@dkct25 on Instagram)
- Post title by Ellen Meloy, The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky (via Brain Pickings)
T.G.I.F.: 5:00 PM Bell
September 10, 2021 by 22 Comments
Lightly Child, Lightly.
July 29, 2021 by 14 Comments
All we ever talk of is light—
let there be light, there was light then,
good light—but what I consider
dawn is darker than all that.
So many hours between the day
receding and what we recognize
as morning, the sun cresting
like a wave that won’t break
over us—as if light were protective,
as if no hearts were flayed,
no bodies broken on a day
like today. In any film,
the sunrise tells us everything
will be all right. Danger wouldn’t
dare show up now, dragging
its shadow across the screen.
We talk so much of light, please
let me speak on behalf
of the good dark. Let us
talk more of how dark
the beginning of a day is.
— Maggie Smith, “How Dark the Beginning”
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. July 14, 2021. 4:45 a.m.
- 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.”
And then I feel the sun itself…
June 15, 2021 by 22 Comments
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire —
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
— Mary Oliver, ”The Buddha’s Last Instruction,” from House of Light.
Notes:
- Poem via The Vale of Soul-Making
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak. Cove Island Park. June 11, 2021 @ 5:34 am.
Ring of Fire
June 10, 2021 by 48 Comments
“Ring of Fire” Solar Eclipse. DK @ Daybreak. 5:46 am, June 10, 2021. 70° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT.
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
April 19, 2021 by 24 Comments
We ought to ask ourselves again and constantly: Why fill our lives with such effort and torment, when we know that we will be here only once and when we have such a brief and unrepeatable time in this indescribably beautiful world?
— Semezdin Mehmedinovic, My Heart: A Novel. (Catapult, March 9, 2021)
Notes:
- Photo: DK @ Daybreak @ 5:25 am, April 19, 2021. 46° F. Calf Pasture Beach, Norwalk, CT
- New York Times Book Review of My Heart titled “Forgetting Doesn’t Kill You, but It Sure Feels Like It.”
A quiet moment
April 14, 2021 by 28 Comments
Photo: DK @ Daybreak 6:31 am, April 14, 2021. 45° F. Norwalk, CT. More pictures from this morning’s walk on Calf Pasture Beach can be found here.
What is that weird, tingling feeling? Could it possibly be … hope?
April 1, 2021 by 15 Comments
But then the sun came out where I live this week, and I was alive again. Dunno if you’ve noticed this, but it’s been the longest year since records began, and the timing of lockdown restrictions easing this week coinciding with warm weather in parts of England – which the press was more than happy to call a “heatwave” – has me feeling quite hopeful. I can hear a bird tweeting as I type this sentence! The sun is in the sky! Life begins anew! …
There is a tingling, bright feeling in the air that feels alien to a lot of us – anticipation, maybe, the idea that lido visits will soon lead to pub visits that will one day lead to music festivals and cheap summer holidays. I have a haircut booked in for 12 April and, after a full year without anything to anticipate, it might be the most excited about anything I’ve ever been in my life. Spring is a season of green shoots. Being able to go to someone’s garden and interact with five other people who have spent a year forgetting how to make small talk finally feels like one of them.
— Joel Golby, from “What is that weird, tingling feeling? Could it possibly be … hope?” in “The Guardian” March 30, 2021
Photo: DK @ Daybreak, March 30, 2021, Norwalk, CT. 6:38 am.
Saturday Morning
March 13, 2021 by 33 Comments
DK @ Daybreak. 6:10 to 6:17 am, March 13, 2021. 32° F, feels like 22° F, wind gusts up to 30 mph. Rowayton Beach, Norwalk, CT
Walking. Heart & Out of My Mind
January 17, 2021 by 132 Comments
It’s been almost a full month since I’ve had anything to say on this blog. A full month. It’s as if I’ve lost my voice. Posting puppy pictures. Sylvia Plath quotes. Camels. What’s next? Memes?
This dry spell coincides with my sipping of the ~900 page tome by Heather Clark: “Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath.” And here’s Sylvia: “I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more—to learning. Always.” Live & Learn? We see where that got her, right?
257 consecutive days. My morning walks around Cove Island Park. Without a single missed day. That’s today’s climax, up top. What can one possibly say, or write about, that’s more important than THIS? That’s bigger than THIS?
It used to matter, blogging, that is. It used to mean something. Posting every day. Sometimes twice day. Driving stats. Checking stats. Boosting views. Gaining followers. Counting Likes.
Today, not so much.
Sawsan poked the Bear about a week ago when she noticed posts have moved from daily to something else. I’m reconsidering this blogging thing. Running out of steam. [Read more…]
Guess.What.Day.It.Is?
January 13, 2021 by 35 Comments
- Photo: “Camel Herding” by David Swindler: “Since we are in Mongolia, what could be better than taking on the role of a camel herder! It was a cold morning in the Gobi Desert as evidenced by the camel’s breath. Fortunately, we warmed up quickly as we climbed the steep dunes with the camels. Immediately after I snapped this shot, the camel came up and kissed Evelyn on her shoulder. What a memorable morning we had with these magnificent animals!” (Thank you for sharing Christie!)
- Background on Caleb/Wednesday/Hump Day Posts and Geico’s original commercial: Let’s Hit it Again.
Monday Morning Wake-Up Call
December 21, 2020 by 50 Comments
Daybreak. December 21, 2020. 6:45 to 7:46 am. 34° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT
This moment…this lovely Sunlit room of my mind. Holy…The whole toe of my boot…Tapping.
December 8, 2020 by 24 Comments
Notes:
- Post title: Excerpts from Jericho Brown‘s “Meditations at the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park,” in The Tradition for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. (via “who are you really, wanderer?“
- Photo: DK, this morning @ 6:16 a.m. @ Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. 27° F. Feels like 16° F.
Live & Learn 