Birch Island Books

Challenged me to write all my gratitudes for the entire year 2020.

It went on for pages and pages.

In the midst of bad news nationally and globally, I am grateful for the time
the time,
the peace,
the slowing, slowing, slowing.

I look forward to this morning’s task,
this morning’s giggle,
this morning’s chuckle,

One kind of vacation has been one hundred sixty six and a half hours,
and that turns out to be plenty.

I get to see my writers again!
and I hope they are as glad to be mine as I am to be theirs.

and I can tell it’s a dragon by the red-hot, yellow-hot glow under the ashes.

Still fierce enough to consume the boxes and branches with flame when I make an offering.

Thank you, Dragon, Guardian of the Sun, for keeping your charge alive through the night.
Thank you, Dragon, Guardian of the Sun, for resting here on your endless way.

My daughter has a Great Blue Whale stuffy which she has not actively played with in years, but which gives comfort,
And yesterday when we were moving heavy things it fell to the floor, unnoticed.

This morning, Sgiobalta found the Great Blue Whale and carefully picked it up in her teeth and carried it to her bed under my desk.

I wonder if it gave her comfort or companionship.

It is just the right size to rest one’s chin upon.

It has snuggled the house in a blanket of protective, insulating, gorgeous fluff,

enough that a Small Dog almost got lost!

and I thoroughly plan to go sledding this afternoon.

Thank you, snow spirits.

First thing,
and I was reminded that the walk must come
first thing.

Later in the day is possible, but it requires planning
and finding a break in the schedule,
even though the schedule is to remain at home,
safely isolated,
waiting.

So if we walk first thing,
all that nonsense is shaken loose and the day can proceed apace.

Walked out to the car this morning
in pajamas and a shawl and slippers

It’s mid December.

I am frightened.

this morning,
over and over.
Today is the best!

Icing sugar now out on the meadow and yard.

Just enough.

not because of the music’s shape,
or any allusions; it just does.

I’ve been thinking about spaces after full stops. There should be two. To allow that little pause.

This music is nothing like the smell of pine and hemlock in chemical quality,
but there’s an openness to it,
like an old, sunlit, snowy forest.

bright and early
to get a parcel
which I have been looking forward to for many weeks.

It’s just beads,
but such bursts of color in my hand
on a raw brown-grey December morning
are flowers
from Hades.

There is a level of exhaustion which a good sleep can’t fix.
It takes multiple weeks of obeying the nap and going to bed with the sun.

It takes hours upon hours of quiet and alone and slowly, slowly remembering what our own bodies sound like when they speak to us.

It takes good, long walks or runs or swims every day to make our bodies’ tiredness begin to match our hearts’.

It takes being bored which lets in creativity or mischief, which hold the door open for delight to return.

Even that does not heal all the damage, but helps it to move to the past and scar over and not remain an active, acute thing.

Build up to stillness slowly,
greeting each new distraction, thought, worry, feeling with generous welcome because it is part of the path.

Rest for the heart comes in stillness, as rest for the body comes in sleep.
Not a lack of motion, but a balancing.
Stillness will come in tiny moments; that is enough to be going on with.

I hope that all my Morning Meander friends are celebrating Wolfenoot — a magical and wonderful day to celebrate.

Walk your pets, support an animal shelter, and let kindness flow.