Actually, I have done little of this. The rocking chairs are inside and the rest of the deck furniture is too heavy to blow away.
I’ll collect some extra tap water tonight, keep it around in pitchers and bowls. And I’ll check the basement frequently to see if rain is seeping in.
Beyond that I’m planning to clean, organize and watch movies.
It’s blizzard mode, only with rain instead of snow.
You know you are busy when you haven’t heard that a hurricane is heading your way. And more to the point, you know you are busy when you fail to write a blog post two weekdays in a row.
But when one of those days consists of driving from Lexington, Kentucky, to Washington, D.C., working for five hours and then driving home in torrential rain — well, that doesn’t count. And when you start behind the next day because you had to get a little sleep — well, that doesn’t count either.
Not that any of this “counts,” of course. All of it is self-imposed. My own schedule, my own project. But it is a project of the heart, and as such must be given its due.
So today I’m taking no chances. It is barely 5:30 a.m. I’m pushing the “publish” key.
I missed the moon in its blood-red rising. By the time I caught up with the orb, it was higher in the sky. This is better than I anticipated. With cloud cover for most of the day, it was unlikely I’d see much of the moon at all.
But the clouds provided a soft-focus backdrop and the moon glowed brighter than I had seen it shine in a long time.
I think the eclipse had already begun when I took this shot. The moon was just starting to disappear — though behind clouds or earth’s shadow — or only in my own imagination — I could not tell.
Yesterday the law school where I work lost a dear and long-treasured colleague. My office was responsible for pulling together the announcements of her death and building the In Memoriam page to record the notes that began pouring in the moment people heard of her passing.
This morning I was reading these lovely tributes. Over and over again they testify to what matters in life: the care and concern for others. This was a woman who touched everyone who knew her. She was always there with a laugh or a roll of the eyes. She was not smooth and perfect; she could be as frazzled as the rest of us. But she kept on trying until the end.
I notice that the comments come from a complete strata of the place: from the childcare center and the board of visitors, from the library and the accounts office, from the student life people and the professors.
When someone this good goes (and long, long before her time; she was only 45), there is a huge void. And in the void there is a reminder: This is how to live your life.
It is difficult to know that the Pope, the bishop of Rome and shepherd of the Roman Catholic Church, will be speaking less than a mile from where I’m sitting now and there’s no way to be present for it.
Even being on the West Lawn of the Capitol to see the Pope on Jumbotron is not an option. Those tickets went in less than an hour.
So this morning I’ll watch via live stream on my computer as the Pope address the U.S. Congress. I’ll sit quietly and absorb the papal aura. Watching clips from his appearances yesterday it’s hard to be unmoved by the outpouring of love and admiration for the pontiff, and by his smile and jauntiness in return, by his relish for the crowd and his appreciation of the American spirit.
Already some have attributed a stateside miracle to His Holiness. Roads are empty, Metro cars, too. The Pope has given us what we thought was impossible: an easy commute. If he can do this, who knows what else he can accomplish?
Walking is often a way for me to handle hard times by absorbing myself in activity, observation and rumination. Everything from real trials to an ordinary bad day can be smoothed and put in perspective by stretching the legs — and the imagination.
But what if time constraints take that walking time away? That’s what’s been happening recently. And, as is so often the case, the walking time is waning at the very time I need it most.
There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to pound the pavement as if my life depends upon it. Because, in a very real way, it does.
Robert E. Simon, the founder of Reston, Virginia, died yesterday at the age of 101. Simon was a big thinker — and the big plan he had for the parcel of hunt-country land in western Fairfax County was that people should be able to live, work, shop and play all in the same place.
What held his vision together were the Reston Trails, lovely paved paths that wind their way from village cluster to village cluster, passing lakes and wetlands, woods and meadows.
The Reston Trails are my stomping ground. I’ve walked them for more than a quarter century now, walked them in all weathers and moods. I’ve pushed my babies in strollers on them and, later, watched my kids bicycle ahead of me on them, still wobbly but proud to be training-wheel-free. Now I walk them in this new phase of life, my children living their own lives away from home.
While I’ve used the paths to muse and find some quiet time, the point of Reston was actually just the opposite. “Community,” Simon is quoted as saying in an obituary in today’s Washington Post. “That word is the whole discussion. … I think having facilities
readily available for people of all kinds, from little kids to the
elderly — that’s the most important thing of all.”
(Lake Anne Plaza, Reston’s original village and the home of Robert E. Simon.)
Yesterday’s walk took me past a couple of ponds. One of them sports a new fountain, a spray of water that gives the old farm pond an aura of glamour and glitz.
But the explanation is far more humble. It’s to aerate the lagoon, to make it healthy, to remove the green slime that fouls the waters of the murky pond next door.
Airflow is not only healthy for humans; it’s good for water, too. So even though I preferred the pond in its still state, I’m glad to see it’s looking clear and scum-free.
Bubbles matter. Flow matters. For ponds and for people, too.
Just back from a run with Mozart in my ears. Last movement of his last (41st, Jupiter) symphony. What a piece of music this is! Listen closely and you can hear the Romantic period bursting right through the Classical form, mowing down the guard rails with its energy and passion.
Bold, contrapuntal, complex — the sound comes from so many different directions that it feels like the inside of my head will explode, that my earphones must be smoking as I jog along sedate suburban lanes.
But they’re not, of course, and I try to maintain a poker face, offering no clue to the musical miracle taking place between my ears, to the near dissonance at minutes 5:40 and 8:40, to what some describe as a “cosmic” coda.
Instead, I exert every effort not to air-conduct as Mozart carries me surely from the first clean melody all the way to the exuberant and triumphant finale. Every time I listen I’m enlarged, calmed, emboldened, amazed.
How quickly we embrace perfection and come to expect it. I’m talking about this week’s weather. Cool nights for open-window sleeping. Light-sweater mornings. Days that start with enough coolness to refresh but that warm up nicely by noontime.
These days give us stability, they give us versatility (we can wear skirts or trousers, shorts or jeans), they give us perfect temperatures for walking, sleeping and waking.
The funny thing is how quickly we get used to them — or at least I do. Oh yes, another day in paradise.
So I’m trying to appreciate every spun-gold September day. Even if I’m stuck inside for all of them.