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Category: perspective

Saving Posts

Saving Posts

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For the most part, I write a post, read it over once or twice to check for typos, then pretty much let it go. But today I’ve been making sure I have all the posts I’ve ever written, grouped in months, in PDF files on my computer. 

I couldn’t help but read a few as I went along: There was the round-the-world trip of 2016. 

And something much smaller: riffing on journalism after seeing the movie “Spotlight,” and remembering how my daughter said the film was “a little slow.” That made me smile.

And then there was the couch sitting in a field in the Rocky Mountains. There’s a story behind that one, as you might imagine. 

A Window on Oban

A Window on Oban

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I’m sitting in a window seat overlooking Oban Harbor, trying to imagine living in the midst of such beauty. Would you stop noticing it? Would it become just some pretty wallpaper, something you glanced at from time to time while going about your everyday life? 

The two charming rooms in this B&B make me think otherwise. The lady of the house showed us in, laid the key on the low coffee table in front of the window, stood with me just a minute explaining how things work, lingered as if to say, this is something special. 

Because it is, and you feel it the moment you walk in. The window frames a view of shining water, docked fishing boats, and many-chimneyed houses made of no-nonsense stone. But it’s a view that depends on the movement of clouds and the angle of the sun, or whether a small ferry or a large one is moving across the waves. It’s a view that’s always changing, and always lovely.

Singing Chicken

Singing Chicken

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For years I stored my oldest journals in metal boxes tucked away on the highest shelf of my closet. I had to stand on a step ladder and move so much stuff out of the way to reach them that it was as if they didn’t exist. But now they’re placed spine-side-up in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet next to my desk, so they are ripe for exploration.

Before my discovery of Moleskine notebooks I gathered my thoughts in a hodgepodge of blank books bound in everything from leather to corduroy. The journals are a motley crew, but they served the purpose, which was connecting the dots, remembering, as Joan Didion wrote, “how it felt to be me.” 

Sometimes I dip into them for a fact: When exactly did I leave for that trip to Yugoslavia? How long did I work for the lovable but crazy family on West 94th Street? But I always read more than I intended. 

The other day, I discovered an encounter I had with a singing chicken. The “chicken” had been hired to serenade a friend and colleague on her birthday. My job was to meet the chicken and escort him to my friend’s desk. In his other life, the actor who took on this second job was playing Theseus in a production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Or at least that’s what he told us.

You can’t make this stuff up. But, if you’re lucky, sometimes you write it down. 

Just the Same

Just the Same

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The Pacific Northwest is a city of vistas, proof of the good things that happen when water and mountains meet. 

Here on the other coast, a gentler, calmer, less dramatic form of beauty. My eyes adjust to it as they would a darkening room. 

I snap shots of one fetching curve of a favorite walk, note how trees and grasses frame a small pond. This is not the vast expanse of Puget Sound, the white-topped Olympic Mountains in the distance.  It’s a more humble, everyday kind of beauty. But it’s beauty, just the same. 

Smoke and Booms

Smoke and Booms

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Did you hear the boom, was the question on everyone’s lips yesterday.  It was a sonic boom caused by the scrambling of fighter jets to pursue a private plane that had wandered off course and into restricted airspace. I watched videos of people enjoying a quiet Saturday afternoon, gardening, doing chores — when they suddenly looked up and around, ran outside if they were in and inside if they were out. 

It’s been decades since I heard the sound, and I didn’t recognize it at first. But when I read yesterday’s newspaper (old school, I know), it all became clear.

What hasn’t become clear are our skies, filled as they are now with smoke from Canadian wildfires. 

We may think we’re living our own little disconnected lives, but the smoke and the booms are reminders that, in many ways, we are one. 

An Adventure

An Adventure

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Today, to avoid traffic, I plan to drive 20 or 30 miles out of my way, to etch a trail up and over rather than down and across. To take a country road rather than an interstate. It sounds crazy, which is why I’m calling it an adventure.  

I wonder if anyone has studied the miles people drive to avoid sitting on highways. If not, I propose the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area as a prime location for research. With two states plus the District of Columbia, one river and too few bridges (once you’re out of the city), our neck of the woods is filled with idling cars and fuming motorists.  

Tell us, please, what we can do about it … apart from having “adventures,” of course.   

(Evening rush hour on I-66)                                                                                                                                               

The Color Rose

The Color Rose

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It’s a day of rejoicing and the beating of wings. The swallows return to the mission of San Juan Capistrano, and the church celebrates Laetare Sunday, the midpoint of Lent, with its foretaste of joy.

At a morning retreat yesterday, I spoke with a woman who I often see on Sunday but have never met. She walks with some difficulty but always seems cheerful. Emboldened by the conviviality of the day, I reached out and commented on the lovely heathery rose color of her wool suit.

“I’m celebrating Laetare Sunday a day early,” she said, laughing. Something about her deliberate choice of this color, about her caring that much, is what I’ll remember most about the event.

I went to the retreat expecting wisdom from on high, from the prepared remarks of speakers. Instead, it was an ordinary interaction that made the day.

Fits to a T

Fits to a T

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I entered the woods at the intersection of Folkstone and Fox Mill, a T intersection with more than two choices. Although the driver must turn left or right or left at that spot, for the walker there’s another way; hiking straight into the woods.

And so I entered the park, map in hand, to search for my own Northwest Passage. But I was mindful of that extra option I had at the beginning of my stroll.

Walking is like that. It reminds me of choices I might otherwise miss.

Proud to be … Bipedal

Proud to be … Bipedal

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In class last night we talked about our earliest ancestors, about Australopithecus, Homo Erectus and the whole gang, the distant relatives on our ever-so-shaggy family tree.

A key trait, of course, is bipedalism, walking on two legs. In Maps of Time, David Christian talks about the hazards of this posture, especially for women, who had to bear children with large heads that required turning as they passed through the birth canal. 

For this, they needed help. Thus did a physical trait engender cooperation, social behavior, the collective efforts of women helping women during childbirth. And later on, the collective efforts of raising young humans, who are far more helpless at birth than most mammals. 

We don’t walk on two legs because we’re human. We’re human, in part, because we walk on two legs.

(One of my favorite toddlers shows off her stride.)

Walking’s Worth

Walking’s Worth

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If I ever needed proof of walking’s worth I got it yesterday. A sad day, as the last have been, but out on the trail, the rhythm and the movement brought me around.

It was good to be outside, to make my way past the tennis courts, around several small ponds and then down the long straightaway through the Franklin Farm meadow. 

It was only 45 minutes on my way to the grocery store, but sometimes, that’s enough.