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Lightly Child, Lightly.

January 21, 2021 by 22 Comments

And I also know a way of life that is soft pride, grace of movement, light and continuous frustration, that has a skill at aloofness that comes from a long and ancient path. Like a tiny sign of revolt an irony light and eccentric. There’s a side of life that’s like drinking coffee on a terrace in winter cold bundled up in wool.

I know a way of life that’s a light shadow unfurled to the wind and flapping lightly on the ground: a life that’s floating shadow, levitation and dreams in broad daylight: I live the richness of the earth.

— Clarice Lispector, tr. by Elizabeth Lowe, “The Stream of Life” (Água Viva) 

 

Notes:

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T.G.I.F.: 23° F feels like 13° F

December 18, 2020 by 30 Comments

 

 

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Winter

December 17, 2020 by 45 Comments

 

 

Daybreak. December 17, 2020. 6:45 to 7:20 am. 24° F. Feels like 9° F. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT

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Today’s Forecast: Rain. More Rain.

October 30, 2020 by 37 Comments

How lonely it is:

A winter world full of rain,

Rain raining on rain.

—  Richard Wright, from “Haiku: The Last Poems of an American Icon”

Photo: DK. Daybreak. October 30, 2020. 6:37 am. Today’s Forecast: Rain. And more rain. 40° F, feels like 31 ° F. Wind Gusts up to 33 mph. Cove Island Park, Stamford CT

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Sunday Morning (Feels like 21° F)

February 16, 2020 by 16 Comments

Q: How is the goodness of God manifested even in the clothing of birds and beasts?

A: Small birds, which are the most delicate, have more feathers than those that are hardier. Beasts that live in the icy regions have thicker, coarser coats than those that dwell in the tropical heat.

~ Jenny Offill, Weather: A Novel (Knopf, February 11, 2020)

Photo: European Starling by Ostdrossel

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Truth

February 2, 2020 by 21 Comments

This is the blessing for the first garden tomato:
Those green boxes of tasteless acid the store
sells in January, those red things with the savor
of wet chalk, they mock your fragrant name.
How fat and sweet you are weighing down my palm,
warm as the flank of a cow in the sun.
You are the savor of summer in a thin red skin.

~ Marge Piercy, from “The Art of Blessing the Day” in The Art of Blessing the Day: Poems with a Jewish Theme. © Knopf, 1999.

Notes: Photo – Katharine Hanna with Organic vine-ripened tomatoes. Poem – A Year of Being Here

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Saturday Morning: We “Were” Running

February 1, 2020 by 22 Comments

WE WERE RUNNING

in memory of Annie Zeke*

We were running up the slope of a hill,
that dog and I, an early winter rain
beginning to fall, wind-driven and sharp,
the clouds so black the edges of the hills
were etched and incandescent. That dog
and I were running, the two of us
apart and yet together, and even now,
in the solitude of a quiet hour—the days
and that dog long gone—I can follow
those far-blown traces of unexpected joy
and find my way back again: heart wild,
lungs filling with the breath of winter,
and that dog beside me running headlong
into the world without end.

~ Peter Everwine, “We Were Running” in A Small Clearing (Aureole Press, 2016)

Notes:

  • Photo: Susan’s Photo of our Zeke* (RIP) taken at Baker Park.
  • Poem: Thank you The Hammock Papers
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32° F (Feels like 26° F)

February 18, 2019 by 26 Comments

Silence…

thrilling cold —

so much beauty.

Like breathing pure oxygen.

~ Susan Sontag, from “As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks 1964-1980“

Notes:

  • Inspired by: “The universe is still and complete. Everything that ever was, is; everything that ever will be, is – and so on, in all possible combinations. Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite astonishingly beautiful. In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others. All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue.” ~ Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale (via beyondthefieldsweknow.org)
  • Photo Source: Your Eyes Blaze Out
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It’s better than sex.

February 12, 2019 by 43 Comments

Speedskating on natural ice is a beloved Dutch national pastime. The tradition is alive and well — just not necessarily in the Netherlands, where climate change now yields winters too warm for the waterways to freeze over with any consistency. The consequences of this have been felt most profoundly in a historical event called the Elfstedentocht, a one-day, long-distance speedskating tour through 11 cities of the Friesland province. It maintains a sacred place in Dutch sports culture. This week, the original Elfstedentocht is passing a worrisome milestone: Friday will be the 8,070th day since the previous edition, the longest period without a race since its inception. But the Dutch refuse to let its spirit die. So every winter, close to 6,000 people from the Netherlands make a pilgrimage to Weissensee (Austria)…

A thousand Dutch skaters congregated before dawn on the frozen surface of the Weissensee, the long, slender lake that gives this small Austrian mountain town its name. The sky was dark, and the headlamps of the shivering skaters cast a spiritual glow onto the charcoal ice. They had been warned not to remove their goggles, lest their eyeballs frost over in the wind. The conditions, by any reasonable standard, were brutal. But the skaters were in heaven. “The most beautiful thing in life is skating on a floor of black ice, in the cold, hearing the sounds of ice skating in nature,” said Wim Wiltenburg, 53, a banker visiting from Tilburg. “It’s better than sex.”

~ Andrew Keh, from Racing the Clock, and Climate Change (NY Times, Feb 7, 2019)

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Monday Morning Wake-Up Call (February 11th)

February 11, 2019 by 25 Comments

The moon is out. The ice is gone. Patches of white
lounge on the wet meadow. Moonlit darkness at 6 a.m.

Again from the porch these blue mornings I hear an eagle’s cries
like God is out across the bay rubbing two mineral sheets together
slowly, with great pressure.

A single creature’s voice—or just the loudest one.
Others speak with eyes: they watch—
the frogs and beetles, sleepy bats, ones I can’t see.
Their watching is their own stamp on the world…

I steel myself for the day.

~ Nellie Bridge, from “February 11″ from Echotheo Review, July 18, 2011

Notes: Poem from 3 Quarks Daily. Winter Moon photo in Norway by Maren Fredagsvik

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