tuesday was a beautiful day. inordinately warm for late october, the sun drenched everything in autumn light – it all seemed to glow. it was a good day, particularly after monday. some days are just hard.
we took a long hike.
we sorted.
we processed.
with our feet on the ground – solidly – shuffling through fallen leaves – every sense alive, aware – we talked about all that was happening. the warm air around us helped.
our conversation never lulled; there is much to talk about. the world – the fighting. our country – the division. our community. climate change and its toll. friends who have experienced the sudden and unexpected loss of others. trauma that doesn’t release its grip. challenges of our very own. so much.
with each step into the sun, we both – once again – marveled at the moment in time where we would link arms, hold hands and walk together. sifting through all the colors, through all the layers, through all the everything, there is this.
and we are a little less tired.
“hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come.” (anne lamott)
“we got the chance to be young and the chance to grow old.” (kate)
in her next breath, her voice huskier with emotion, she added, “not everyone has had that chance.”
in the arc of the art of living, we hold gratitude for this very life.
and, hopefully, somewhere in there we have gained some wisdom. hopefully, somewhere in there we have held love and relationships before material gain. hopefully, somewhere in there we have chosen truth over institution or divisive politics or agenda. hopefully, somewhere in there we have helped someone else and we have tried to grasp what it might be like walking in their shoes. hopefully, somewhere in there we have stood in a sunrise or sunset, incredulous. hopefully, somewhere in there we have seen extraordinary color and shape in art, heard exquisite frequencies of pitch and timbre in music, moved in a dance, read words we store away to never forget. hopefully, somewhere in there we have granted and been given grace. hopefully, somewhere in there we have felt the flimsy threads of a floating dandelion seed, the solid rough granite, the dirt, beneath our feet, the breaking wave on a shore or a stream as it flows through our fingers, rain and sun on our faces, the embrace of a beloved, the wind carrying the love and wisdom of the arcs of all before us.
hopefully, we hold life itself – breathing – tenderly.
“…and i got saved by the beauty of the world.” (mary oliver)
there are the tiniest of moments – like this one – when everything harsh, everything wrought, everything dark or full of angst, everything of challenge just falls away. like the universe took a feather duster to the worries stoked up on your shoulders and reminded you. to breathe. to feel the realness of the moment. to be hyper-vigilant of all senses. to be in it.
it could just as easily slipped by, unnoticed. the fresh air, rich colors, the sun filtered through layers of pine, the scent of a humid summer day, the gravel path. it could have been lost.
but i am grateful to have stopped. i am grateful any time i remember to stop. to have perspective. to grasp onto the tiniests. to allow myself to be saved by the beauty of the world.
“the sun shines not on us but in us. the rivers flow not past, but through us. thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing. the trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.” (john muir)
there have been moments – holy and glorious moments – when i remember that i am, yes, one with nature. i am no more or less a part of the whole than the heart-leaf on the side of the trail, no more or less a part of the whole than the rocks on the beach, no more or less a part of the whole than the cloud as it floats by. and i remember that in my tiny-ness – within the vastness – i could just as easily have been the energy of the leaf or the rock or the cloud.
“how will you spend your time?” asked the thru-hiker at the end of the trail. mary oliver asks the same, “what will you do with your one precious life?”
i realize – in these sacred and suspended moments when i can feel the threads of soul connect me to the trees, to the living plants, to the creatures – that i am, perhaps, spending too much time in worry.
but – juxtaposed on the same life-wave-riding surfboard – i love to get away. i love roadtrips and adventure, exploring backroads, immersing in new places. though i am fed noticing the extraordinary in the familiar, i thrive on images of the unfamiliar. more than once i have cried entering a canyon or at mountain-range first glimpse or surrounded by the scent of a lodgepole pine forest or the quiet of an empty trail or the quaking of aspen leaves.
so i yearn for these places – the ones we have been to and have loved and the ones we dream about.
i’m not high-maintenance when it comes to vacations. i’m not a resort-type or a cruise-type, not a disney-type or an amusement-park-type. i don’t need all-inclusive or my bed turned-down. i don’t need all-you-can-eat-any-time-of-day-or-night. i don’t need fancy or plush or luxurious. i definitely don’t need contrived.
it’s pretty simple. what i do need – is a little or big getaway. short distance, long distance. time to leave, see new things, experience new places, feel the sun from a different latitude or longitude. and then time to go home and feel the hygge that is ever-present back here, the moments that go by perhaps a little underappreciated, to feel the here and now without regret or longing, a chance to revive my homebody-ness.
in december i have to chooooose. good grief. already?! the pressure.
we have had the good fortune of friends who have that-timed-it before us. and so, we are relying heavily on their medicare smarts. we even had an in-service up-north with our gang. handouts and everything.
so, when it comes time to actually signing up, we are hoping that it will be with ease.
because the fact-of-the-matter is that medicare – like most government programs – is not streamlined, not easy to understand, nothing less than dense, filled with loopholes and scary ramifications, rules and rules for rules.
and this is supposed to be a happy-happy social good-health-for-all program.
i can still locate my 1985-ish glasses. they are huge tortoise shell frames – bigger than my face – that sit way above my eyebrows and way down on my cheeks. i have no idea what i was thinking, but i suppose they were all the rage at the time.
well, guess what?
they are again.
giant frames, wide frames, frames that cover all expanse of your visage. yikes!
i look – decidedly – like a bug wearing any of these. like a fly – with big eyes – or an ant or – adding to my list of lookalikes – a meerkat or a spectral tarsier.
these are not good looks for me, i have decided. it didn’t even take pondering. it’s quite obvious.
so, re-using the 1985 glasses doesn’t work. i can’t find my glasses from the mid-90s but i know – i remember distinctly – that those do not sit low enough on my cheeks to cover the sometimes-dark-circles i have inherited from my poppo. somewhere in there i sort of remember a pair of big clear glasses. fortunately, they have gone the way of one of the charities that collects eyeglasses. i, in addition to ordering new lenses, was stuck having to look for a new frame.
but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
mostly, the experience of deciding what kind of lenses – lenses! – you want is complex.
i am a contact lens wearer and only need glasses when my eyes are tired at night and maybe we’re driving and i’m behind the wheel. in that case, i want the lenses that specifically deal with darkness and oncoming headlights and the possibility of rainy wet streets and glare off puddles and asphalt, orange barrels that populate every road in our vicinity and on every highway we choose to travel, equipped with deer-alerting alarms.
so – the anti-dark, anti-glare, anti-highbeam, anti-barrel, anti-deer, anti-sleepy lenses, please.
there’s no telling. no way to know. really anything. any. thing.
the mystery of the new year is enormous. giant arcing things will happen, life-changing. tiny morsels of moments will happen, life-changing. we have no way to truly predict. there is no artificial intelligence that can tell us the spectrum of life that we will experience in the new year. it is hidden in holiday wrap, too much scotch tape, gift tags that have become mixed up, like luggage on southwest airlines right now.
to greet it without a hint of anticipation, without a breath of celebration, without acknowledgement of the brevity of time, is to maybe miss it.
stardust falls on our shoulders as we walk into the turn of the year under the big, big sky.
reverse threading 