June 14, 2023
Gleanings
- We forget that we are also entitled to acceptance. We are entitled to evolution. We are entitled to true healing, which often means escaping the initial story and writing a fresh one that is less about our pain and more about the full spectrum of experience (you notice I didn’t say heroism…another trap of a story).
- In my writing life, in my writing career, it felt like waiting was the primary state of being. What if the waiting is over and I’m just floating on my back down a beautiful wide peaceful river?
- There used to be a time, so long ago that if you’re under a certain age you likely won’t remember, that air travel was glamourous.
- I’m often challenged regarding my sense of what’s “on the way home.” More than an actual bucket list, I’ve envisioned a life free to swerve and bend the map and the calendar for stops at beaches, cute mountain towns, hikes, and retreat centers.
- Due to down time whilst recovering from some injuries, today was my first outing in a long while, and Wheatley welcomed me back with open arms. Well, at least with wide-spread branches.
- I’ve been re-training my brain these last couple of years to remember all the things I LOVE, and to try and spread that love. But once in a while it’s good to CONSIDER THE OPPOSITE and to also have that comedic distance. So it makes me laugh a bit to consider what I hate once in a while.
- To allow the whole of it, be a part of it, to not see things as right or wrong, good or bad, better or best, but to make room for all of it. To delight in difference, be open, and listen for the next true for us decision, willing to shift and change as it comes.
- Lately, therefore, I’ve come up with a little game I call “Poetry Serendipity”: every time I go up into the stacks of the university library, I take different routes on my way to and from whatever section I am specifically visiting and, as I wander, I scan the shelves for names I recognize or (more random and risky, but also more fun) for those tell-tale slim volumes that you just know must be poetry collections.
- Some mornings I don’t look up as I walk down to the water. But this morning I’m glad I did.
- It’s at this time of the year that my camera roll is chock full of flowers. The peonies on Brunswick, the poppies on Howland, Irises, lilacs, and wisteria. Some flowers are easier to photograph than others. The translucent quality of a poppy’s petals is hard to capture when too much sunlight is pouring through it. All the beautiful detail gets erased by the sun.
- But that does not begin to describe what I am leaving behind. My head is swirling with so many little moments. The ringing of the doorbell and a neighbour on my doorstep in tears, asking for a hug. Going to check the mail and finally returning two hours later, having stopped for several conversations. Laughing as a friend climbs through a window because her three-year-old has locked her out. Remembering my children avoiding neighbours on Hallowe’en because their displays were just too creepy. Fighting the removal of the basketball hoop that neighbours felt was too noisy. Grateful for the flowers and hand-drawn cards left at our door by children when our old dog, Tucker, died.
- think scalpel, not sledgehammer
