I was up too early. It is another gray day. I’m tired, and I’ve got a headache I would describe as “my third eye hurting”. I’m tired. I walk the loop around the vineyard, and I’m back at the car before dawn.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
So… I nap in the car awhile and wake to heavy gray clouds and a stormy forboding sky.
Say hello to a new day.
I sit up, groggy and a little dizzy, surprised to have actually slept. I take my morning medications with a swallow of cold black coffee left over from yesterday. I yawn and stretch. The morning seems unremarkable. I’m fine with that. Another day.
…I’m grateful… but I’m also thinking about coffee 😆
It is a payday. Later I’ll do all of the budget stuff. Pay bills. Buy groceries. Ordinary mundane activities. Routine. Unexciting. I’m fine with that, too.
I sit listening to my tinnitus and the HVAC on the roof of a nearby building. Robins hop about, singing their cheerful song. I take time for meditation. I eye the gray clouds overhead. Looks like it might rain, later.
I sigh to myself. I really want coffee. I stretch and yawn, and decide on a course of action. I click my seatbelt into place, and get started on this new day. It’s as good a beginning as any.
I almost didn’t bother with writing this morning. I’m not having a bad morning, neither is it particularly good. It’s just a morning. It is a gray, overcast, mild, somewhat cooler morning than one might expect for a summer Monday. “Nothing to see here,” and nothing much to say about it.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
Hell, I’m not even complaining really, just noticing. I have no particular enthusiasm for this moment, and I take some bit of comfort in its underlying impermanence. Moments are fleeting. They pass.
I sit at the halfway point on this morning’s walk fighting a feeling of ennui and vague disappointment that lacks any objective point. My physical pain is vexing but commonplace. My tinnitus is loud and distractingly unpleasant, but hardly out of the ordinary for me. My headache is no worse, but also no better, and I can’t be bothered to deal with it at all. Nothing I do seems to change it. I sigh to myself. I’d complain about this crappy morning, but it’s honestly fine. It is a Monday, and not all that bad. I’m just struggling with a weird mood fed by strange dreams and interrupted sleep.
…All of this bullshit is purely subjective, and very human…
I frown at the gray sky overhead and think about the path I’m on, the life I am living, and the woman I most want to be. I think about change, and I think about “doing better”, and I reflect on brain damage and on character. I think about practice.
… I’d rather be painting…
I sigh to myself and watch the clouds capping distant hilltops, seeming almost to become hung up in the trees as the clouds continue to drift by. Yeah, I’d totally rather be painting. Or sleeping. I sit puzzled by my utter lack of enthusiasm for the day. Oh, well. It’s not as if moods are any more permanent than moments. I’m not “stuck” here so much as finding myself here through happenstance. It’ll pass at some point.
Another sigh. I get to my feet mildly annoyed with myself, and prepare to finish my walk and begin the rest of the day. I’m open to change, I’ve just got to get started and begin again.
It is a gray rainy summer morning in the Pacific Northwest. Nothing particularly unusual about that. The temperature this morning is a mild 14C/58F. Comfortable. A muscle up the back of my right thigh is aching painfully. I mostly ignore it, but approach a favorite weekend trail from a different trailhead, with fewer hills. The more level ground is an easier walk.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
What’s your moment like? I wonder briefly how it is we each have our own experience, living our individual “now” moment, like pages in a book; so similar at a glance, such differences in the details, and still so common and familiar we are able to understand each other.
I walk with my thoughts, feeling a delicate spatter of occasional raindrops on my face. Not enough to call it “raining”. The marshy places are barely damp now, replaced mostly with meadow until the heavy autumn rains return. The tall grass is already brown. Most of the wildflowers are fading, dropping seeds for next year’s Spring bloom. The trees in the distance are many hues and shades of green, looking fresh and lush from where I stand.
Doesn’t matter where you are, you’ve got to start somewhere, and that somewhere is where you are.
There’s a delicious spicy herb-y floral scent that I specifically associate with Oregon. I don’t know what it is. I love the scent of Oregon. Meadow, marsh, forest, dunes, desert, savannah…it hardly matters to me. I love the places I have seen and been and traveled through. Oregon is special to me, though I have trouble being clear as to precisely why. Of all the places I have lived or visited, Oregon is one of only two that draw me back again and again (the other is “the Eastern Shore” region of Maryland, with her marshy flatlands and peaceful coves). It’s not that I don’t like (and even love) many other places, it’s more that these “two” (Oregon is pretty vast to be a single place) call to my heart to come on home.
I get to my halfway point feeling a soft gratitude just to be alive, existing, and able to experience the simple joy of a summer morning. Uncomplicated. Unbothered. From my perch on a fence rail, I watch a multitude of little birds flit about. They have their own way of enjoying the morning. I breathe, exhale, and relax. This feels like enough. Right here. Now.
…I am, of course, overlooking all the corruption, drama, and harmful bullshit going on in the US, and around the world. I’m ignoring, for the moment, all the violence and genocide. Drone warfare. The bombings of civilian targets. The fuckwittery of our gerontocracy. The obscene greed of billionaires. The commonness of hate speech and incivility. It’s much. We all need to take steps to preserve our individual peace, and our resilience; the future of humanity may depend on our persistence and endurance. This isn’t a sprint. I sigh quietly and let all that go, again, for awhile…
I spent a couple hours in the studio this weekend. I may go back for more. Painting fulfills something for me that nothing else does. It is soul-nurturing, healing work.
“Summer Sunrise, McMinnville June 2026”
I gaze across the meadow observing the changing light and thinking about palette choices, shade, tint, and hue. How best to capture a misty rain drenching a summer meadow, I wonder? I sit watching until the rain reaches me, then laugh with delight when it finally does, as if surprised. It passes by quickly, leaving me a bit damp, glasses spattered.
I grin at my happy predicament. I don’t mind the rain. I get to my feet and stretch. The trail through the meadow beckons me, and it’s time to begin again (already?). This, here, now, is as good a moment as any to take a next step, to choose, to walk on, and to begin… but really, anywhere is, it’s simply necessary to begin. To walk on. The clock is ticking.
“Waiting for the light” – metaphorically or as an approach to photography or art – is sometimes a requirement to “getting the right shot”, or for capturing a certain mood. More often, it’s a matter of fortunate timing. Even achieving some measure of “enlightenment” sometimes means waiting for the light. (Certainly I’ve had very little success with chasing it.) Waiting is not the fastest approach to such things, but it is often what puts me in the right place at the right time to catch the light at a moment when it becomes transformative.
The effect of light on a moment of waiting, like an unexpected epiphany.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
Qualities of stillness and light greet me at the trailhead this morning. I breathe in, inhaling the forest scents of summer at the river’s edge. There are bunnies frolicking at the edge of the meadow adjacent to the parking. The cloudy sky, although stormy looking, seems more comforting than forboding this morning. I feel relaxed and unbothered.
A gray morning on the river.
I sit with my thoughts, watching the robins and the rabbits, and relacing my boots. A break in the clouds reveals a baby blue strip of sky. No reason to delay, really, but I’m also in no hurry. Saturday.
She got here first. I wait my turn.
Nice morning to put a couple miles on my boots. I dilly-dallying a while longer, watching the bunny and her little ones, who creep out of the dense brush slowly. The tasty grass is apparently more tempting than I am any sort of threat, but they watch me warily. Later, the dog walkers will arrive with their boisterous animals, and the rabbits will be scared back into the dense brush, and the robins startled back into the trees. I don’t feel like cutting their breakfast short, so I sit quietly enjoying them. I can start down the path any time, it does not have to be now.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I sit enjoying the lovely moment of quiet and stillness. This is uncomplicated and beautiful. I don’t need more out of it than this.
I think about the day ahead. I’m eager to get into the studio. I feel inspired. This vexing headache though… I sigh to myself. My fingernails are too long for comfortably painting. I’ve got a manicure today, and manage to resist the momentary impulse to just cut them short.
“Waiting” is also a verb, but it won’t take me far.
I pull myself back to “now”. I’ll live the moments as they come. I yawn and stretch and get to my feet. This trail is waiting for me. It’s time to begin. Again.
It’s a gray and rainy morning. I woke too early, still groggy when I left the house. I reached the trailhead ahead of the dawn by a bit more than an hour. The darkness was chilly. The trail was dotted with unseen puddles. Everything is damp and smells of fresh earth and recent rain.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
I walk a bit farther than usual before I stop. I enjoy a different perspective on daybreak when it comes.
Blue morning.
… I’ll be fine after I have some coffee…
I sit awhile watching the blue hues become a rather ordinary uninteresting gray rainy day. I’d rather be sleeping. Or painting. I feel moody and cross.
I sit with my thoughts awhile, not really meditating, just thinking things over. Options. Choices. The way ahead. Life. I sigh to myself. The complexities of being human vex me sometimes. I watch the gray clouds glide past overhead. Stormy weather. Chilly enough for a sweater. I’m glad I wore one.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I look down the trail. The solitude is pleasant. Uncomplicated. I get to my feet, and stretch. It’s a new day. The clock is ticking. I remind myself to let small shit stay small – and I begin again.
Evening Light 