How to catalog the sounds of the walk I took this morning? The crunch of stiffened grass, the swish of my parka as I strolled through the chill. The pounding of my feet on frozen ground.
It’s been for the most part a warm, gray, sodden winter. But today it’s blue skies and brisk air.
Most of all, it’s the music of the a frosty morning.
On a day dedicated to love, I think of my people and of love’s many faces. Of romantic love and parental love, the love of friends.
I think about the love we have for those who are gone, and the love we have for animals. The love we have for place, for movement, for moving through space, which I celebrate on these pages.
So many loves we are given. Loves that light the way. Even when we don’t see them, they are there.
An email newsletter I edit has a feature we call Team-Work. We decided to use a hyphen, though the word is typically spelled without it. I can’t remember now exactly why we did that, except it had something to do with emphasizing the separate nature of those words, the “team” and the “work.”
I bring this up today because, perhaps like many of us, I thrive on a mixture of teamwork and solo endeavors. The percentages of the mix depend on many things, including how busy I am and how protective I am of the product in question.
Lately I’ve realized that I wouldn’t make a very good ghostwriter. Though most of what I write now is without a byline, I’m well compensated for it and believe in the institution. In other situations, I enjoy getting credit for what I write. Not exactly teamwork, but there you have it.
Which is why I chose the multicolored rag rug photo to illustrate this post. It reminds me of the power and the beauty that’s possible when many become one.
All is calm on the back end of the blog this morning: 3,000 posts, 3,000 published, no drafts. There’s a sense of fulfillment and completion. Which means there’s a part of me (the tired part!) that wants to say, let’s take a break.
But of course, that part of me won’t win out. Not because thousands of fans are clamoring for each new post. Hardly! But because life is all about starting over.
So this is a post about doing that, every day. It’s time to begin again … like it always is.
A few months ago, when it became apparent that I was closing in on the blog’s 3,000th entry about the same time that I would celebrate its 10-year anniversary, I stepped up my posting schedule.
I’ve always written a post every weekday and usually one on weekends. But once I realized how close these two moments would be I started posting every day.
When I did the math I realized it would be close, really close, but I would be off by four — 2996 posts on February 7, the blog’s tenth birthday.
So I had a dilemma. Should I actually post twice a day for several days? How obsessive was I going to be? Apparently, thankfully … not enough!
According to the great sage Mary Poppins we should be wary of piecrust promises — easily made, easily broken. I would like to issue another recommendation, mostly for myself, and that is to strive for piecrust prose — to avoid the dry, overly worked and sometimes unsalvageable product that results from too much fussing and instead fashion a more pliable product.
Pie crust dough, as bakers know, must be handled lightly. It isn’t kneaded like bread dough, but turned lightly onto a floured board, then rolled, trimmed and tucked gently into a pie pan. Words are like that too. They must be handled lightly enough to fit and sing, but not so much that they lose their juice and joy.
I have been known to belabor the writing process. Words may tumble out joyfully enough in the beginning but I often work the poor things to near oblivion. It was in part to sidestep this tendency that I started A Walker in the Suburbs.
But such is the power of the nemesis that I now have two writing styles: blog-writing and everything else. Instead, I should have just one — and the light touch, the piecrust promise, must apply.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
I picked up Walking the Way, by Robert Meikyo Rosenbaum, because I was browsing the library and liked the title. (It was no doubt the word “walking” that did it.) I almost didn’t check it out when I saw the subtitle, 81 Zen Encounters with the Tao Te Ching, which sounded too esoteric for me. But I brought it home anyway — and now may have to buy it, so wise and calming do I find its words.
Walking the Way is a series of reflections on 81 poems from the Tao Te Ching, a book of wisdom and fundamental text for the Chinese religious and philosophical system of Taoism. It is, as the foreword describes, like an “ancient, weathered, solitary pine that exists above the tree line that whistles the tunes of the wind on a high mountain.” Reading these words reawakens my desire to meditate, or at least to sit quietly for a while each day.
Here’s a passage that speaks to me:
It is easy to fall into the tyranny of doing. The feeling that you should do more is a tyrant worse than any dictator. It will wear you out and bring not just an early demise but the daily death of a thousand stressful cuts. If you do not free yourself from this tyranny you’ll die early, or daily, or both.
(Illustration, Wikipedia: Laozi, reputed author of the Tao Te Ching.)
Never fear, dear readers, this blog isn’t taking a more salacious turn in its second decade. This post is not about the erotic novel and film “50 Shades of Gray.” It’s about what color to paint the bathroom.
The weekend remodeling project is proceeding apace, and by next weekend, we’ll need paint. Will it be Abalone or Barren Plain? London Fog or Seattle Mist? Wind’s Breath or Cedar Key?
This remains to be seen. I want a warm gray to match the swirls of color in the marble-like porcelain floor and shower tile. But I don’t want to ignore the marble vanity top, which is a bit cooler in tone.
Ah, dear, the problems of affluence — in which we are freed from the daily tedium of black and white (what will we eat? where will we sleep?) to contemplate … the shades of gray.
I’ve been looking forward to this day for months, but in the end it crept up on me. Here it is, though, 10 years since I began this blog on February 7, 2010.
I’m thankful beyond measure that I’ve been able to press on in this endeavor, even when time and troubles and life itself have thrown roadblocks in the way.
I noticed yesterday morning that the witch hazel had begun to bloom, and by mid-afternoon I caught a glimpse of two male cardinals in the tree. Of all the perches they could choose, they picked the ones closest to spring.
By the time I trained my camera on them, one had flown away. The symmetry of the shot was gone. But you can get a taste of it here.
There’s the splash of yellow flowers amidst gray limbs; the dab of red from the bird. It was a hopeful scene on a solemn day, a sign there is a “dearest freshness deep down things,” as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. I’m clinging to it now.